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Admit it; if you follow the National Football League (NFL), both of the following statements are likely true: When talking about the preseason with friends, you say that the preseason doesn’t matter and doesn’t mean anything for the regular season, so you’re not really worried or excited about your…
I want you to see your customers in a (lucrative) new light. The old paradigm works like this: Your company produces goods and services that help customers get a job done. In return, the customers pay you money. You take that money and invest a good portion of it in traditional sales and marketing…
I’m back, writing about another Toyota dilemma of mine. In part one, interestingly titled “My Toyota Dilemma,” I wrote how I, as an avid fan and supporter of the Toyota Production System (TPS) have never owned a Toyota. I ended that column vowing I would use Toyota’s greatest gift—the 5 Whys—to…
(Hexagon: North Kingstown, RI) -- Hexagon Metrology has released the new Brown & Sharpe TWIN-CAL IP67 calipers with an innovative built-in output connection, which are on display this week at Hexagon Metrology’s booth E-5202 at IMTS 2012, Sept. 10–15, at McCormick Place in Chicago.
This…
Joseph M. Juran was a seminal 20th-century figure in the field of quality; his many contributions broadened the field from its original, narrow, and statistically-based focus. As early as the 1970s, he recognized the value and importance of regularly reviewing a business system and its ability to…
Joseph M. Juran was a seminal 20th-century figure in the field of quality; his many contributions broadened the field from its original, narrow, and statistically-based focus. As early as the 1970s, he recognized the value and importance of regularly reviewing a business system and its ability to…
Our Northeast Region Shingo Conference, held Sept. 25–26, 2012, is all about sharing information, ideas, problems, plans—all of those things that can make the sum of the parts greater than the whole. So a story about the power of sharing ideas seems appropriate.
As a new vice president of…
Sometimes the chain of measurement traceability—the unbroken series of links between a calibrated instrument and the official NIST standard—can get pretty long. But 250 million kilometers is remarkable, even for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
That’s the current distance…
My title this month is a funny metaphor for a common opinion I saw written on a bathroom wall. The gist of the graffiti was that the first mouse must die springing the trap before the second one gets the prize.
After observing big failures, it’s human nature to be a little wary of trying new…
At creative werks (cw), a manufacturing and co-packing business in Illinois, production is nonstop. Lines run 24/7 and data constantly accumulate. Accuracy and timeliness are crucial, but without an automated quality control system, the quality team relied on manual auditing for weight checking,…
(Pinpoint: Peabody, MA) -- Pinpoint Laser Systems, designer and manufacturer of measuring and alignment tools and solutions, is exhibiting this week, Sept. 10–15, at the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) held at McCormick Place in Chicago.
Pinpoint’s booth (No. E-4769) is featuring…
(Siemens: Plano, TX) -- Siemens PLM Software, will release in October 2012 the latest version of NX software, the company’s integrated computer-aided design, manufacturing, and engineering analysis (CAD/CAM/CAE) solution. NX 8.5 includes customer-driven enhancements and new capabilities that…
(LVMC: Chester, UK) -- The Large Volume Metrology Conference and Exhibition 2012 (LVMC) is accepting submissions for presentations for this year’s show, which is being held Nov. 28–29 at the Chester Racecourse in Chester, United Kingdom. The LVMC is the only European event dedicated solely to the…
America’s healthcare system has become too complex and costly to continue business as usual, according to the report, “Best Care at Lower Cost: The Path to Continuously Learning Health Care in America” from the Institute of Medicine.
Inefficiencies, an overwhelming amount of data, and other…
My mother started teaching piano when she was in her teens. She still does as a matter of fact, even though she is about to celebrate her 91st birthday.
When I was a boy she thought I should learn to play. Don’t get me wrong; I love the piano. I grew up listening to my mother play classical pieces…
In many ways, visual controls are a 24/7 mirror of leadership’s competency and credibility. That’s pretty scary if you think about it. It’s like voluntarily living in a fishbowl, not that everyone truly understands the gravity of that.
It reminds me of the Spider-Man quote (allegedly borrowed from…
The saying, “The devil is in the details” is true in all organizational and business environments. Often when leaders take the time to empower their employees and teams to handle minor details and problems, major problems are avoided or at least minimized.
The process of transformation and change…
During a debate with then-President Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan famously asked Americans if they were better off than they were four years previously. It worked for Reagan, so we’re going to try a variation of it here.
Is the Food and Drug administration (FDA) better off than it was four or five…
Another transformation initiative has been announced in your organization and you think to yourself, “How much change are we expected to undertake?” In a lean Six Sigma engagement, it is imperative to take into consideration the number of ongoing and past change initiatives. This article explains…
I recently bought myself an almost-latest-version smartphone. It was intended to celebrate my 62nd birthday; replace my present, obsolete portable phone; and be reliable and not too expensive.
Well, its “Quick Reference Guide” consists of 34 pages, three of which are blank, five give generic,…
(Teledyne: Waterloo, Ontario) -- Teledyne DALSA, developer and manufacturer of machine vision technology, is continuing its advanced CMOS sensor deployment by launching the Piranha4 8k color CMOS line-scan camera with 8k resolution and a 7 µm × 7 µm pixel size for optimized optical design. The…
After recently returning to the world of process improvement consulting, I began to ponder where U.S. manufacturing stands with regard to worldwide competitiveness after so many decades of highs and lows. Globally, we have U.S. manufacturing to thank for leading the way out of the great recession,…
Twelve U.S. organizations have reached the next step on the road to possibly achieving a silver anniversary Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The Baldrige Award is the nation’s highest recognition for organizational performance excellence. The Baldrige panel of judges has selected one…
There are two key aspects of the normal distribution that make it the central probability model in statistics. However, students seldom hear about these important aspects, and as a result they end up making many unnecessary mistakes. Read on to learn what it means when we say the normal…
“Quality is not free, but it has a pretty darn good ROI.”
So said James Rooney, chair of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), and keynote speaker at this year’s National Conference of Standards Laboratories International (NCSLI) conference in Sacramento, California. The comment got a good round…