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I am grateful for the opportunity to work for the Baldrige Program. We’re blessed with an engaged community of Baldrige practitioners—folks who have served as examiners at all levels, across the country. These practitioners not only understand but have often mastered how to use the Baldrige…
Recently, while providing training for new clients, I heard a comment from two different people that went something like this: “That gemba walking stuff is really nothing new; it used to be called ‘management by walking around.’” Admittedly I was caught off guard, especially the first time I was…
(ANSI: Washington, DC) -- Global supply-chain policy issues took center stage at the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) event held on March 12, 2015 in Washington, D.C., opening opportunities for policy discussions and collaboration. The event had nearly 150 attendees, including…
Suppose you have designed a brand-new product with many improved features that well help create a much better customer experience. Now you must ensure that it’s manufactured according to the best quality and reliability standards so that it gets the excellent long-term reputation it deserves from…
Over on the Harvard Business Review blogs, there’s a wonderful debate on the subject of strategy between Roger Martin, who wrote “Stop Distinguishing Between Strategy and Execution,” and Don Sull, an MIT scholar who believes there’s a meaningful distinction between strategy and execution.…
A big challenge facing academic medical centers is how to maintain a focus on patient care in an artificially divided environment.
Most academic medical centers were developed in a system with abundant resources, cost-based reimbursement, and a traditional academic departmental structure. This…
After a one-day observation at a local company, I participated in a wrap-up meeting with the general manager and his team.
“We’ve been at this for five years,” the general manager said to me, proudly referring to his division’s lean implementation. “Our 5S rating is over 85 percent, and every…
Right now I’m enjoying my daily dose of morning joe. As the steam rises off the cup, the dark, rich liquid triggers a powerful enzyme cascade that jump-starts my brain and central nervous system, delivering potent glints of perspicacity into the dark crevices of my still-dormant consciousness.…
In November 2014, I participated in the Hooked On Customers Summit, a webinar series hosted by Bob Thompson of CustomerThink. I joined Thompson, along with Jeanne Bliss, in the first webinar, “Creating Actionable Insight from a Customer Listening Engine.” Bliss talked about the role of the chief…
One of the primary objectives of surface metrology research, functional correlation refers to the relationships between surfaces and the phenomena that influence or are influenced by their topography. Surface topography is also called texture, particularly in mechanical and manufacturing…
One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is moving from vision to execution as though it’s a linear process. The widely held assumption is they are two ends of a spectrum, and that vision is about planning, while execution is about action.
The truth is that vision requires action to be clarified…
As a consultant and trainer specializing in the field of organizational psychology, I’ve come to realize that certain psychological conditions that affect individuals also apply to companies as a whole. That makes sense because, after all, a company is nothing but a collection of people.
In this…
What role does trust play in employee engagement? It’s a fairly large one, according to this Towers Watson research.
The study cites leaders’ ability to “earn the trust and confidence” of employees as one of the top drivers of employee engagement. There is also compelling evidence that…
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. has long demonstrated an organizational culture based on strong customer service. It received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award twice. And it has also earned hotel industry recognition for top customer satisfaction. So when an organization wants to learn how to…
One could argue that quality programs today share a common skeleton, with prototypes stretching back to the medieval guilds of 13th century Europe. The ISO 9001 quality management system (QMS), the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, the Deming Prize, Six Sigma, the European EFQM, the FDA’s…
(Phillips Precision: Boylston, MA) -- Phillips Precision’s products division has introduced the Rapid-Loc pneumatic vise for CMM inspection. Designed to take advantage of the air at your CMM, the soft jaws of the Rapid-Loc vise can be customized to hold most parts. Regulated air pressure can…
Before you read further, get your tissues out. I’ve had many memorable moments over the years at Quest for Excellence conferences. And I’ve never left an annual conference without some immediate action items and feeling inspired that excellence is achievable in every type of organization. But…
NFPA 70E, full title “NFPA 70E—“Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace,” is a standard written by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). NFPA 70E was created primarily to assist companies and their personnel in avoiding potential fatalities and injuries from electrocution, arc-…
Smart as they are, I doubt robots worry about things that keep CEOs up at night. But then, robots don’t “stay up at night,” unless they’re running continuously. Insomnia is just another cultural difference between us humans and our new co-workers, the sort of thing we’d want to talk about over a…
Last weekend we took all 16 members of our family on a ski trip. It was amazing, and we are incredibly lucky. We haven’t done such a thing in 17 years, when our first grandchild, Claire, was only one month old. Life gets complex and 17 years fly by.
That experience reminded me of work my wife,…
In an era of large-scale layoffs and precarious employment, it may seem as though there’s nothing you can do to secure your position, besides just sitting back and hoping for the best. But that’s no solution. In fact, it’s exactly the kind of attitude that will weaken your job security. If you see…
In part one of this two-part article, I began an evaluation of Deming’s 14 points, and how they influenced the final draft international standard (FDIS) version of ISO 9001:2015. Part one provided an overview of Deming’s first seven points; in this continuation we explore points eight through 14…
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that 2.2 million workers worldwide lose their lives each year due to workplace-related accidents, injuries, and diseases, and that another 4.1 million workers in the United States suffer serious work-related illnesses or injury. These and other sobering…
We all know there’s no free lunch. Continuous improvement (CI) takes time and energy. There’s a significant learning curve, skilled people need time away from “normal” work to analyze and plan improvements, and there is the disruption change causes.
Naturally, the more massive and disruptive the…
Regression equations, fitted lines, and sampling are familiar terms to people in the quality field. There are tools that we use (i.e., planning matrixes, tree diagrams, and flowcharts) to help our organizations optimize processes. These tools aren’t new, and their use isn’t limited to the quality…