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In my younger years, I might have asked that question to tell off someone who was getting in my face. Now I find it’s one of the most critical questions to ask when beginning a process improvement because often we either don’t really know the answer, or we answer incorrectly.
How can we answer…
Restoration is well underway for NIST’s 4.45-million newton (equivalent to 1 million pounds-force) deadweight machine, the largest in the world. The three-story-tall deadweight, comprising a stack of stainless-steel discs weighing about 50,000 pounds each, was disassembled last winter for the…
This month’s column was prompted by an especially thoughtful commencement address by Michael Ward, reproduced in the May/June 2015 issue of Imprimis (Hillsdale College). Ward, of course, encouraged the students to strive for success, but interestingly predicted that failure is inevitable and is to…
(Indicate Technologies: Santa Clara CA) -- Attend this no-cost, one-day workshop, on Aug. 19, 2015, in Santa Clara, California, to learn what’s possible with the latest noncontact measurement technologies.
Experience a range of state-of-the-art instruments and software from top manufacturers for…
If you’ve read the first two parts of this tale, you know it started when I published a post that involved transforming data for capability analysis. When an astute reader asked why Minitab didn‘t seem to transform the data outside of the capability analysis, it revealed an oversight that…
There once was a man named Robert DeRopp who wrote a book titled The Master Game (Gateways Books, 2003). No need to discuss his book or his philosophy here, other than to say it had to do with the shaping of one’s life and options through a lens few of us have ever looked through before.
However…
In my last post, I told you how I had double-checked the analysis in a post that involved running the Johnson transformation on a set of data before doing normal capability analysis on it. A reader asked why the transformation didn’t work on the data when you applied it outside of the capability…
I have been working with two multinational companies recently, and the need for “just do it” (JDI) daily improvements came up. One company is a pharmaceutical plant in Europe, the second an industrial equipment manufacturer in Indiana. Although the companies are very different, the team members in…
(Lean Frontiers: Indianapolis) -- What is it? It might not be Shark Week, but it’ll be just as exciting! Lean Leadership Week is made up of three events, taking place Oct. 5–9, 2015, near Jacksonville, Florida. The Summit on Lean Leadership is a stand-alone event held at One Oceans Resort, on…
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have come up with a way to shrink a research instrument generally associated with large machines down to a pinpoint-precision probe.
This electron spin resonance probe employs a large-scale technique used for decades as a…
Verifying the effectiveness of corrective and preventive actions (CAPAs) closes the loop between identifying a problem and completing the actions to solve it. It’s reasonable to assume that if a problem is worth solving, it’s also worth verifying that the solution worked. However, given the wide…
I don’t like the taste of crow, which is a shame, because I’m about to eat a huge helping of it.
I’m going to tell you how I messed up an analysis. But in the process, I learned some new lessons and was reminded of some older ones I should remember to apply more carefully.
This failure starts in…
Crystal may be clear, but crystal balls, at least metaphorically, are certainly not. The late, great political columnist David Broder of The Washington Post used to run a column at the end of the year tallying up where he had guessed correctly—and where he’d missed the mark. Not many columnists…
What happens when a product lasts too long? How long is good enough? Every product is different, and our ability to define what’s “long enough” is fraught with uncertainty. If it wears out prematurely, your customers will go elsewhere. If it lasts too long, they won’t need to come back.
In “The…
(Manufacturship: Green Hills, New South Wales) -- Despite popular opinion, manufacturing in Australia is far from doomed, but it does need help. One way to address the issue, as academic studies report, is to spend more money on educating a workforce that is better suited to meet today’s…
Delegating is often one of the hardest things for a manager to do. You give away your authority to make decisions but are still responsible for the outcome if something goes wrong.
Often managers don’t delegate because they hold one or more of these beliefs. Do any sound familiar?
“If you want…
When it comes to data management, I don’t think there’s any debate on where industrial businesses collectively sit right now. The landscape of our world is changing rapidly, especially with the emergence of the Internet of Things, or as GE calls it, the Industrial Internet.
There are a lot of…
(Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: Berkeley, CA) -- A major automaker came to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory recently wanting to better understand battery degradation. After many months of intense collaborative research with a Berkeley Lab battery scientist, the automaker gleaned some…
Last week, I heard a sermon at church that resonated within me. In the Gospel, Jesus said to his disciples, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.”
The message was not that we can be the salt and the light; rather, we are the salt and the light. This is transformative. As…
If you’re like most savvy manufacturers, you know to watch out for changes in labor laws that could affect you in countries where you have factories or where you sell your products. We’ve all seen examples of how manufacturers were held accountable for the safety of workers and consumers alike.…
(Humantech: Ann Arbor, MI) -- Humantech CEO and founder Franz Schneider is among one of the presenters at TEDx Saginaw Valley State University on Aug. 1, 2015. “You Hired an Employee, but a Human Being Showed Up Instead,” will focus on the criteria every organization must embrace to close the gap…
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- Lebanon, Missouri’s population is a few hundred people more than 14,000. To put that number in perspective, 1,120,000 people ride the commuter train on the average New York weekday. In Lebanon, people welcome you with open arms, parents interact one on one with school…
One of the arguments against journey mapping I often hear is that it’s an exercise in futility. You map. You put it on the wall. Nothing changes. To that I answer, “You’re doing it all wrong.”
You map because you need to understand the customer experience; you know that you can’t transform…
One of my regular readers and harshest critics, my wife, complained that my recent posts have been too pedagogical and lacked my storytelling instincts. So this post is for her.
Have you seen the recent commercial about buying a used car? It compares the experience to a dinner out and asks…
Convenience stores are located on most street corners the world over. These small enterprises offer customers a wide variety of items and often have gas pumps outside as well. Considering how long convenience stores have been around and the quantity of items they carry, you’d expect them to use…