All News
In part one of this two-part column, we discussed the uses and occasional misapplications of the rolling action item list (RAIL). Now, let’s discuss some good practices and optional features that can help us make better use of this tool and become more efficient. The first and most important…
What resolutions are you making in the New Year to improve your supply chain? Here are a few of mine.
To remember that supply chains should be built backward from the customer
One way to do this is to use a perfect order metric as a key way of measuring the supply chain organization. The question…
Let’s talk about the rolling action item list (RAIL). It’s an essential tool for many organizations and project leaders. Unfortunately, it is a highly dysfunctional tool for many.
Let’s look at some mistakes that undermine the RAIL’s utility and some good practices that make it more useful. Get…
(AMETEK: Bognor Regis, West Sussex, UK) -- AMETEK Solartron Metrology, a leader in linear measurement and dimensional gauging, has introduced a Bluetooth-enabled interface controller for wireless communication with the Orbit 3 network.
The wireless interface module (WIM) allows communication…
My November 2014 post, which I titled “Gratitude, for Gratitude,” generated a large number of responses. Interestingly, most were private, commenting on both the nature of gratitude but especially on my daily routine. I had detailed my regular set of activities in the morning, including meditation…
Last month a New Delhi taxi driver allegedly committed a sexual assault on a woman rider. Reacting to the public outcry that followed, the Delhi government decided to ban Uber, the taxi company that contracted the taxi driver.
This startling news reminds me of some companies’ reactions to quality…
(Stratasys: Eden Prairie, MN) -- Additive manufacturing is changing the way we plan, design, and produce products. By augmenting traditional manufacturing processes with 3D-printed production tools, molds, and final parts, additive manufacturing can accelerate delivery times while significantly…
Tom’s board spun out from under his feet as he attempted to surf the large wave. As he plunged backward into the roiling surf, he was frustrated once again by the lack of stability from his traditional Hawaiian-style surfboard.
A few days later as he was walking along the beach, he came across a…
Whenever the original data pile up against a barrier or a boundary value, the histogram tends to be skewed and non-normal in shape. In 1967 Irving W. Burr computed the appropriate bias correction factors for non-normal probability models. These bias correction factors allow us to evaluate the…
Those of us in the media get into our careers for various reasons and in many different ways, but one thing that we all have in common is our love of a good story. Finding the narrative, discovering the angle, figuring out why we (and you) should care—these are the things that keep us coming back…
(ISO:Geneva) -- What’s good for the environment is often good for business, and efficient energy consumption is a perfect example. Now businesses can improve their energy performance even more with the addition of three new ISO standards to complete their range of energy management efforts.…
In my last column I wrote about the seven perspectives that pollute customers and culture. These perspectives rule the design of our organizations. They are inherent to our work cultures and thinking. They put us on autopilot as we toil in our everyday work. The first step to change that is to…
Why are so few companies values-driven? Even when they start down that path, why do they wind up dead-ended?
A 2012 study shows “employees want their organizations to display honesty and integrity in business activities,” and “when leaders behave consistently with the core values, they earn…
According to a recent IndustryWeek article, the 2015 edition of ISO 9001, the standard on quality management systems, is nearing completion.
The new version of IOS 9001 will have three areas of focus:
1. The process approach will be strongly emphasized; that is, the quality management system has…
Walls—structures, usually solid, that define and sometimes protect an area—have been built since the beginning of time. The Aurelian Walls were built between 270 and 273 in Rome during the reign of the Roman Emperor Aurelian. The 12.5-mile-long wall was intended to defend the city from barbarian…
I love “ugly” holiday sweaters. Face it: Many of you do, too. How else to explain the raging popularity of this wryly named commodity in recent years? As I bought one with bright colors and a fair-isle theme at my teenage daughter’s request last week, I thought about borrowing it to wear to an…
My wife, Carole, and I recently participated in the 16th Annual ILA (International Leadership Association) Global Conference. The theme was conscious leadership. At the conference, Meg Wheatley was given a Lifetime Achievement Award. That puts her in the company of Peter Drucker, Warren Bennis,…
Listening to classic Christmas music on a radio station that labeled the songs as “holiday traditions” certainly brought back memories of holiday traditions from the past. Some of them, in fact, are so traditional they’re in danger of being lost in the mists of time. As such, here is my top 10…
We were ready to head out to observe the inspection of a Miami seafood warehouse, but another team of investigators asked that we first look at evidence from their last job. They showed us a video of a huge quantity of rice contaminated with live insects.
Their work, they knew, would prevent…
We were ready to head out to observe the inspection of a Miami seafood warehouse, but another team of investigators asked that we first look at evidence from their last job. They showed us a video of a huge quantity of rice contaminated with live insects.
Their work, they knew, would prevent…
(ASQ: Milwaukee, WI) -- Manufacturers are increasingly positive as 2014 comes to a close, with 83 percent expecting revenue growth next year, up from 64 percent of manufacturers that anticipated growth in 2014, according to results of the ASQ 2015 Manufacturing Outlook Survey.
And their…
On Dec. 10, 2014, the MIT Technology Review ran a story titled, “How to Measure Planck’s Constant Using Lego,” based on a paper by NIST researchers posted to Cornell University’s arXiv.org site. (“A LEGO Watt Balance: An Apparatus to Demonstrate the Definition of Mass Based on the New SI.” Click…
During the 1980s, Joseph Juran, one of the Baldrige Program’s first overseers, coined the term “Big Q” to serve as a quality “umbrella”: “Little q” would encompass goods and those processes directly related to the manufacture of goods, while “Big Q” would encompass all of an organization’s…
During the last year or so I've heard a lot of people asking, "How can I calculate B10 life in Minitab?" Despite my being a statistician and an industrial engineer (mind you, one who's never actually been in the field) and having taken a reliability engineering course, I'd never heard of B10 life…
Everyone is talking about technology advancements. References to the cloud, mobile, big data, the Internet of things (IoT)—used as central talking points or tangential nuggets that bounce in and out of conversation—are nearly ubiquitous across manufacturing industries. Most professionals seem to…
