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Story update 12/06/2013: Wow did we mess up. When this story originally published we, the editors, introduced an error into the story regarding the Alaskan oil spill (which the author hadn't mentioned in his original) and didn't realize it. When readers pointed out the error we compounded the…
In Baldrige’s 2013–2014 Criteria for Performance Excellence, innovation is defined as making meaningful, discontinuous change to products, processes, or organizational effectiveness in order to create new value for stakeholders. So you might not expect to find an example of such innovation in a…
Editor’s note: This is a long article with lots of data… interesting data in our opinion. If the argument over the skills gap or STEM education interests you, this is worth reading.
This year’s Bayer Facts of Science Education survey, the 16th in the series, focuses on one of the major STEM (…
Only one in eight workers worldwide are engaged at work, but according to Gallup’s 142-country study, “State of the Global Workplace,” engagement varies considerably, depending on the region and country in which these workers live, and their economic and social conditions.
The United States and…
I read in September about the demise of 100-year-old Eiji Toyoda, and of his commitment to implant lean-oriented visions into his family-owned Toyota industrial enterprise. At the time I was reading Josip Krulic’s book, Histoire de la Yougoslavie: de 1945 à Nos Jours (History of Yugoslavia From…
In the race to combat global climate change, energy efficiency is the low-hanging fruit for reducing our carbon footprint. Featured this month on energy.gov are the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Labs and their accomplishments in energy efficiency. The National Labs are fundamentally…
Every quality manager is familiar with internal audits, a systemic check of all company departments to verify that they are following established procedures. Most department heads are also familiar with internal audits. But there is often a big difference between how quality managers and department…
Advances in materials are driving the proliferation of new technologies, from energy to smart phones and televisions to robotic surgery, MIT faculty and industry researchers said during MIT’s recent Materials Day Symposium, hosted by the Materials Processing Center.
Here are the highlights from…
My father’s generation came through the Great Depression and World War II. Because those times were so uncertain, security was, and remained, a critical factor for this generation. It might even have been the most relevant, predominant one for them. But companies and parents are learning that…
In my last column, “Deming’s Challenge to Us, Part 1,” I sounded the alert that just being improvement people is not enough, and waiting for management to do something is a poor strategy. In this column, I’m focusing on our choices and options to move forward as change agents.
For a couple of…
(Extech Instruments: Nashua, NH) -- Known worldwide for its superior test and measurement tools, Extech Instruments has announced that its versatile TKG series of ultrasonic thickness gauges is now available.
The TKG Series, which includes the TKG250, TKG150 and TKG100 models, uses ultrasonic…
Editor's note: This article continues the series exploring structured innovation using the TRIZ methodology, a problem-solving, analysis, and forecasting tool derived from studying patterns of invention found in global patent data.
Lessons about TRIZ learned at the monthly meetings of My Executive…
It’s astonishing how businesses and people are continually influenced by solution providers and consultants of change methodologies. These consultants somehow have the ability to convince others that if they want to obtain a desired change, then all they have to do is “execute this” or “buy into…
You probably have seen many consumer advertisements for prescriptions drugs—on TV, in magazines, or online. Although those ads are expensive, did you know that in 2010, pharmaceutical companies actually spent more money advertising to healthcare professionals than they spent advertising to…
I get the question all the time, especially from organizations that have significant investment in some process improvement program—like a lean Six Sigma or lean kaizen initiative. (I hear the ghosts of Toyota engineers booing.) These companies have picked all the low-hanging fruit, squeezed as…
Customers describe how they feel about companies and brands in profoundly personal ways. We hate our banks; we love our yoga pants. We can’t stand the cable company, but we consider our smartphone one of our very best friends.
How are we making these judgments? According to a new book titled, The…
It was the end of a long day. While sitting over dirty martinis with extra olives, my long-time colleague, Tisha Tomlinson, and I were discussing a situation and trying to plan a strategy that met the needs of all involved. We had spent the day with various quality and environmental, health, and…
They say the world is getting smaller all the time. Tell that to your supply chain manager.
It’s something of a conundrum that as technologies allow companies to deal with suppliers farther and farther away (for cheaper labor and reduced costs) the opportunity for a logistics nightmare increases…
(Danatronics: Danvers, MA) -- Danatronics has announced the latest addition to its thickness gauge family: the EHC-03. Packaged in the same, field-proven, IP54-rated case as its EHC-09 series, the EHC-03 is now Danatronics’ entry-level thickness gauge.
Key features of the EHC-03: • Made in the…
Design of experiments (DOE) is an extremely practical and cost-effective way to study the effects of different factors and their interactions on a response.
But finding your way through DOE-land can be daunting when you’re just getting started. So I’ve enlisted the support of a friendly golden…
Many of us have heard horror stories about ISO certificates that were fakes, or of medical-device quality system audits being performed by persons who were not competent. A recent report published by the European Commission found that two out of 11 notified bodies were performing so inadequately,…
When it comes to detectors for dangerous chemicals, toxins, or nefarious germs, smaller and faster is better. But size and speed must still allow for accuracy, especially when measurements by different instruments must give the same result.
The recent publication of a new standard—a culmination…
In “Standardize to Improve, Part 1,” I talked about how to map or document business processes, which I illustrated through the story of Grandma Cakes, a cake-baking business that boomed from secret recipes in one kitchen to eight factories in several cities. In this second part of the article, let…
Frequently, Quality Digest Daily has reported that many of our manufacturing readers say there is a lack of skilled talent to fill technical positions. For our audience, this has typically been in the area of metrology, which involves not only specialized knowledge but also a lot of experience,…
Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System, once said, “Where there is no standard [process], there can be no kaizen [improvement].”
In an earlier column, I wrote about how we used the customer-output-process-input-supplier (COPIS) method, which is a customer-first or an outside-in…
