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It seemed like a good idea at the time and an incredibly generous act on the part of the company. When Gravity Payments founder and CEO Dan Price announced that he would raise everyone’s minimum wage to $50,000 a year with $10,000 a year increases until everyone’s minimum was at $70K in 2017, it…
(5ME: Cincinnati, OH) -- 5ME’s new dashboards feature allows users to create a one-screen view of machine tool performance data pertinent to their job functions. The program builds on the data-capturing capability of the company’s Freedom eLOG software suite and combines multiple graphics, called…
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- For the first time in its history, the Baldrige Foundation has been accepted in the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). The CFC is the official workplace-giving campaign of the federal government. The mission of the CFC is to promote and support philanthropy through a…
Embracing sustainable and green principles is not just a trend. Cultivating such practices helps organizations become more efficient, competitive, and profitable. It’s more than simply a good thing to do. Manufacturers are realizing the many short- and long-term financial benefits from…
I have had friends and relatives who worried all the time. About all sorts of things. Most of which never came to pass. The problem for me was that all the exposure to their negative thinking was contagious. And, then I’d find myself worrying about things, too.
On occasion, I’ve had some serious…
Whatever industry you’re in, you’re going to need to buy supplies. If you’re a printer, you’ll need to purchase inks, various types of printing equipment, and paper. If you’re in manufacturing, you’ll need to obtain parts that you don’t make yourself. But how do you know you’re making the right…
Three months ago I sat in a meeting with seven talented executives whom I’ve worked with on and off for five years. For the past two, there have been major undercurrents of friction between them during executive meetings. After attending a few of these, I noticed people were on their best “fake…
(CMS: Weatherford, TX) -- The Executive Board of the Coordinate Metrology Society (CMS), the eminent membership association for measurement professionals, has changed the name of its Coordinate Metrology Systems Conference (CMSC). The new name of the event is the Coordinate Metrology Society…
(U.S. Dept. of Commerce: Washington, D.C.) -- During the recent White House Apprenticeship Summit, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker announced the first-ever effort to document the return on investment for U.S. employers using registered apprenticeships. The Joyce Foundation, JPMorgan…
Established in 1982, the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) is a nonprofit association with a diverse group of stakeholders—including retailers, suppliers of all sizes, automakers, manufacturers, service providers, academia, and the government—working collaboratively to streamline industry…
Double-digit productivity improvements resulting from workflow redesigns and new-capital equipment investments always get a lot of attention. But over time the returns from many smaller, more methodical changes and investments can rival more highly visible projects. Total productivity maintenance…
Last year’s Gallup poll of worker satisfaction revealed that almost 90 percent of workers were either “not engaged” with or “actively disengaged” from the work at their jobs—a shocking revelation that has apparently been repeated in many polls.
Barry Schwarz, a professor of psychology at…
Think about the things that you’re doing to transform your organization and your customer experience. Are you doing busywork, or are you doing real work?
Today’s article is inspired by this quote from Thomas Edison:
“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production…
The path to medical device commercialization requires FDA approval, which most often means filing a premarketing notification, also known as a 510(k). The FDA has specific criteria for accepting a 510(k), and it just released its new acceptance policy. This new standard, which will be effective…
My client, a leader in innovative rail-friction management, was recently preparing for an integrated ISO 14001/OHSAS 18001 audit, and I was asked to provide on-site training to help prepare their employees. The company and its staff are well-versed in audits, having been registered under ISO 9001…
(FDA: Silver Spring, MD) -- openFDA is releasing information on medical devices that could spur innovation and advance scientific research.
openFDA’s application program interface expands on the previous openFDA resources concerning medical device-related adverse events and recalls by…
I mean it! If your company can’t master 5S, try “1S” and stop! Stop the entire lean transformation until 5S is mastered in at least one process-focused area of the facility.
It’s a tremendous waste for a company to spend thousands, if not millions, of dollars on a “lean transformation” only to…
On the morning of Thursday, Aug. 13, 2015, I woke to find dozens of posts from netizens clamoring about events that had occurred late the night before. There had been two massive explosions reported from a warehouse in Tianjin, a prominent port city in northern China.
Shockwaves were felt several…
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We’ve all heard it before: Change is the only constant. This isn’t just cliché but a truth that all companies will come to recognize. Change is the driving force behind improvement. And all of the changes that take place within an organization, whether to products, processes, or…
(Theorem Solutions: Staffordshire, England) -- In every product life-cycle process there comes a time when design data and product information need to be shared, whether it’s with another department or external suppliers.
It used to be that engineers who designed products in CAD systems struggled…
(ASQ: Milwaukee) -- The American Society for Quality (ASQ) Service Quality Division has recently initiated a project to enhance the current version of the Service Quality Body of Knowledge (SQBOK). The division needs 10 to 12 volunteers from the ASQ community to contribute to this project. Upon…
Some of my friends commented that Harry the “Cheermudgeon” was too “mudgeonly” in my most recent Blogrige post. So I decided it was time to cheer. Here is a cheer to getting older. The topic came to me this past week, when I was given a senior-citizen discount at the supermarket without asking for…
One of the most important things you can do is to identify your team’s mission. And one of the biggest wastes of time is creating a mission statement that isn’t used.
An earlier post of mine, “How to Write a Mission Statement in 5 Steps,” explains what a mission statement is and how to write one…
As a person working in quality manufacturing, it’s probably in your DNA to look at a quality challenge and choose Six Sigma or something similar as the framework for getting to the answer. It’s also likely that you’re spending a lot of time gathering and analyzing data, applying hypothesis…
Many organizations talk about understanding customers and their needs, but few truly understand what customers value most. As we approach the end of the year, it’s a good time to reflect back on this year’s customer experiences and consider the following aspects of understanding your customer.…
