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Last week I started a discussion post in the lean Six Sigma LinkedIn group about Gemba Academy’s latest featured video showing a morning stand-up meeting at my old company, Specialty Silicone Fabricators. I had started the morning meetings years ago. My successor has added some really interesting…
It was a result so unexpected that MIT researchers initially thought it must be a mistake: Under certain conditions, putting a cracked piece of metal under tension—that is, exerting a force that would be expected to pull it apart—has the reverse effect, causing the crack to close and its edges to…
I was once in a room full of people to whom a presentation was being made. The findings of a root cause analysis that had been done on a recent defect in the company’s product were being presented. A couple of young people were enthusiastically presenting how they had identified the root cause of…
(Quality Digest: Chico, CA) -- Are you passionate about quality? Do you want to lead tens of thousands of like-minded quality individuals? Then this job is for you.
The American Society for Quality (ASQ) is looking for a new CEO. According the job posting on ASQ's site:
"The next CEO will lead and…
Organizations today face unprecedented challenges to increase productivity and performance. Having an effective internal audit system is an important tool that allows organizations to determine where key strengths and weaknesses exist within their processes. Once identified they can build on their…
The second annual Manufacturing Day took place in Evanston, Illinois, last week. Although I attended last year, I skipped it this time around.
Manufacturing Day, I’d discovered, isn’t long on nuts-and-bolts realities or objective facts. Rather, it promotes a specific corporate agenda, with…
You've heard the expressions: "He lost his nerve," "He doesn't have the stomach for it," and "No guts." As it turns out, those expressions are anatomically accurate.
The nerve that you lose when you're afraid is the vagus nerve, which runs from the belly to the brain. It transmits messages about…
Ibex is another company that clearly understands its customers, or “tribe,” as Seth Godin would say. I discovered this Vermont-based wool clothing company a few years ago when I was looking for a better quality vest than the ones on display at REI.
My older brother put me onto Ibex. I not only…
Leadership is the ability to establish standards and manage a creative climate where people are self-motivated toward the mastery of long-term constructive goals, in a participatory environment of mutual respect, compatible with personal values. —Michael Vance
The four teenagers sat around the…
It’s often said that what gets measured gets done. Part of this is human nature. Everyone has more piled on their plates than ever, and many workers find themselves constantly reprioritizing their work activities. Therefore, metrics that have the attention of business and manufacturing leaders…
As many of you know, I hate bar graphs. They are ubiquitous, and most of them are worthless. I'll make maybe two exceptions: 1) a Pareto analysis; 2) a comparative set of stratified histograms disaggregating a stable period of performance (a Pareto analysis proxy for continuous data). Displaying…
Capability statistics are wonderful things. They tell you how well your process is meeting the specifications that you have. But there are so many capability statistics that it’s worth taking some time to understand how they’re useful together.
Two capability statistics that are hard to keep…
Kimball International Inc. offers a variety of products from two business segments. The Kimball Electronics Group provides engineering and manufacturing services, which use common production and support capabilities globally, to automotive, industrial, medical, and public-safety markets. The…
Recently, a friend from my undergraduate days complained that he was written up at work for low productivity. He operates a forklift in a warehouse and was informed that he only reached 97 percent of the previous week’s productivity.
I asked for details, but there was not a lot he could tell me;…
The hour was late, quite late, in fact, somewhere around 8 p.m. The office had technically been closed since 5 p.m., but I was still there working with two volunteers. I was tasked with the job of preparing registration packets for the 1,300 or so incoming guests at a conference. The sponsoring…
For those working in quality or regulatory environments, waste is a mortal enemy. The Japanese call it muda, which in my own oddly mnemonic fashion I’ve always associated with mud slung into high-speed gearing or splattered all over clean rooms. It’s the opposite of smooth, efficient operations.…
“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs,” Rudyard Kipling begins in “If,” his beautifully written poem for his son. It’s a poem of advice and guidance for becoming a well-rounded adult, and dealing with the crises that life will throw at you. Kipling’s son John went on to…
What do you see when you look at the image in figure 1? Do you see a bulging sphere that stretches the checkerboard pattern in the center, causing its lines to curve?
Are you sure? Look again. This time, test any “curved” line by holding a straightedge next to it.
Figure 1: Curved lines or…
Last week marked the 100th anniversary of the introduction of a moving assembly line at Henry Ford’s Highland assembly plant, an innovation that inaugurated mass production.
Ford was not the first to build cars in an assembly line. Ransom Olds did that first in 1902, and Ford copied him. And,…
In theory, most manuals sound promising. In practice, they often show their true colors. Gottfried Giritzer can look back on a work experience of more than 20 years. In his book Positive Quality Management for a Change (BoD Norderstedt, 2013), he sums up years of experience and presents basic and…
Negotiation is a word that conjures up images of board rooms, power plays, and attorneys. However, we all negotiate every day with our co-workers, spouses, and neighbors. Whether you’re in a court room or your kitchen, here are seven steps to prepare for a negotiation, from identifying your…
The U.S. economy retains myriad sources of innovative capacity—but not enough of the innovations occurring in America today reach the marketplace, according to a major two-year MIT study.
The report, by MIT’s commission on Production in the Innovation Economy (PIE), found that potentially…
Last spring my dog, Buddy, started chasing chipmunks. They would quickly escape into one of their holes in the ground, where he would dig for a few minutes, then give up. Then one day a chipmunk ran into the mouth of the corrugated plastic pipe that carries excess rainwater away from my backyard…
Years ago I had the good fortune to work at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. I had been hired by John Porretto, the executive vice president for finance and administration, to support and further the university’s continuous improvement efforts.
John was one of the most…
As Thomas Edison said, “Genius is 1-percent inspiration and 99-percent perspiration.” Perspiration may be boring, but it gets you results.
I don’t know about you, but I have come across numerous senior executives who were are all fired up during the intellectual phase of a new quality initiative…
