All Features
To remain the valuable business system that it currently is, ISO 9001 needs to continue to evolve, ensuring that organizations of all sizes, complexities, and locations see a clear connection between their strategic objectives and their quality management system (QMS). It is not just about meeting…
Stewart Anderson
A new book on strategy recently crossed my desk, and I have to say it is an excellent read. It’s called Understanding Michael Porter, by Joan Magretta (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011). Porter’s ideas and concepts are foundational to the subject of competitive strategy, and it is always good to…
Banner Medical
Banner Medical is committed to an ambitious approach to quality assurance, one developed specifically for the evolving, critical needs of the medical device industry. The company believes this investment achieves multiple payoffs—in relationship-building with customers, in risk mitigation, and in…
Michael Causey
Predicting things on Capitol Hill is never easy, especially as the election campaign “silly season” enters the picture, but it’s beginning to look like medical device companies should expect heavier regulation in 2012, and that will only increase if President Obama is reelected in November.
The…
Umberto Tunesi
I’ve been baptized; I do believe in religion. But I really can’t stand the fact that the Ten Commandments had to be set in stone. The human brain is capable of effectively remembering some 100 words—and much, much more.
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I don’t object to documents as such. I love books; my…
Bill Kalmar
Have you noticed that sometimes it’s better to be a new customer or subscriber than a long-time devotee of a particular company? Every day you see ads and hear commercials about discounts or free memberships or extended warranties for new customers. Some gyms waive the initiation fee, magazines…
Bruce Hamilton
Some years back while working in an administrative department, I encountered a curious condition. Along with about a half-dozen employees, I was following the information flow from sales order to shipping. Our spaghetti diagram kept looping back to an in-box on a table just outside John’s door. It…
MIT News
For Tim Gutowski, advanced manufacturing is an opportunity not just to boost employment, but also to improve the environment.
Gutowski heads MIT’s Environmentally Benign Manufacturing research group, which looks at the environmental cost and impact associated with manufacturing traditional…
Quint Studer
In work, as in life, we learn from trial and error: I was having Problem A, so I implemented Solution A, and it didn’t work. Then I tried Solution B and it did. Next time I’ll know to use Solution B first thing.
And that’s how it goes, over and over again, throughout your career. Forty years or so…
Jim Benson
I will not be accused of burying the lead here, and say right up front: Your value stream is wrong. And it always will be. This is a good thing because as we work from day to day, the steps we take to complete our work can subtly or even violently change. When we move from home to work to a special…
Knowledge at Wharton
Is customer service a lost art, or are today’s customers harder to please?
On the one hand, moments of tear-your-hair-out frustration are commonplace—from shopping in stores where sales associates are nowhere to be found, to dealing with salespeople unable to help locate a sought-after item, to…
Arun Hariharan
Is it possible to apply the principle of first time right (FTR) in a sales context? This two-part article looks at what happens when companies do just that. Part one defined FTR in sales, and outlined some of the obvious advantages. Part two looks at FTR in sales’ effect on revenue, profits, and…
Arun Hariharan
First time right (FTR), or doing things right the first time, is an important concept in quality. Some experts even consider FTR the very definition of quality. This two-part article summarizes an experiment in which FTR was applied to sales. Is it possible to sell something right the first time?…
NIST
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is hosting a free public workshop on best practices in federal conformity-assessment activities Wed., April 11, 2012, at NIST’s Gaithersburg, Maryland, site. Conformity assessment determines whether a process,…
Paul Naysmith
During the the mid-1980s, two great schools of investigation were put up against each other. Each were immensely popular, and still are today, with fans firmly seated in one methodology or the other. One school was led by a disheveled, cigar-smoking character. The other had a lady more akin to your…
Dawn Keller
I am 100-percent certain that on the day they asked me to manage at Minitab, they did not tell me I would have to do so much process work. They didn’t clearly articulate that as a manager, I’d spend a considerable part of my time discussing how we develop software rather than actually developing…
NIST
It turns out you can be too thin—especially if you’re a nanoscale battery. Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); the University of Maryland, College Park; and Sandia National Laboratories built a series of nanowire batteries to demonstrate that the thickness of…
Kevin Atkins
Exquisite home décor begins with products that epitomize attention to detail and artistic subtleties that are often hard to manufacture in volume without looking mass-produced. For more than 55 years, Baldwin Hardware, part of the Stanley Black & Decker’s Hardware and Home Improvements (Stanley…
Mountz
In the manufacturing and assembly world, tightening, controlling, or measuring torque fasteners is imperative for production efficiency. An inadequately torqued fastener can vibrate or work loose; conversely, if the tension is too high, the fastener can snap or strip its threads. Faced with these…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Not too long ago, my wife and I attended a fundraiser hosted by one local restaurateur on behalf of another. The locally owned and long-time eatery, Humpty Dumpty, in Grass Valley, California, had burned to the ground, obviously putting all its employees out of a job. So, the staff of Kane’s…
Michelle LaBrosse
During your career, it can be tempting to fall into comfortable patterns, turn autopilot on, and coast from project to project. But as your job description changes and projects become more complex, it’s imperative to be alert and aware while in the driver’s seat so you don’t create roadblocks that…
Forrest Breyfogle—New Paradigms
I n my February column, "Avoiding Company Decline," I described how part of a corporation's economic slide could be attributed to organizational scorecards or dashboards because they are often ineffective in promoting the most appropriate behaviors. In this column, I will show how creating and…
Timothy F. Bednarz
The process of problem solving can at first blush appear relatively simple: The difficulty is defined, facts and evidence are collected and analyzed, and a solution agreed upon. However, because imperfect people make decisions, the entire process is fraught with traps that can lead to serious…
Society of Manufacturing Engineers
Recognizing that advancement in the way things are made is critical to the success of manufacturing, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) announces its 2012 list of Innovations That Could Change the Way You Manufacture.
Selected by SME’s Innovation Watch Committee, the new and emerging…
Tripp Babbitt
Bounties in the National Football League (NFL)? Most fans were appalled when former professional basketball player, Charles Barkley, disclosed on The Dan Patrick Show that players will pool money, called a bounty, which goes to the player who hits an opponent hard enough to intimidate him. With a…
