All Features
Tim Lozier
’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the shop
Santa’s quality manager feared that all production would stop
The FMEA showed high risk, nonconformances were a fright
But Santa knew better—his QMS would help on this magical night.
I really enjoy the holiday season. I love the…
James Brewton
Lean Six Sigma has proven itself as an effective strategy for business success in both private and public sectors. The methodology has helped enterprise leaders recognize business processes as engines that drive performance excellence and help to deliver value. Lean Six Sigma offers a…
Diane Ciotta
A traveler attempting to book a ticket by phone became frustrated after choosing from a menu of endless options, then waiting on hold for 20 minutes before eventually being transferred twice—the second time to a dial tone. When she called back, the first live person she connected with got an…
Michelle LaBrosse
The holiday season is like a magnifying glass that enlarges both the best and the worst in us. This time of year induces joy, caring, and generosity, but it can also magnify stress, anxiety, and heighten conflict at home and in the office.
The holidays can be stressful. You see it in people…
Tim Hyden
It sometimes seems that few people can accurately define risk management, let alone apply it in their organization. Yet, a risk management plan can help an organization identify and correct hazards and substandard work practices before bad things happen. Risk management is by far one of the…
Ross School of Business - University of Michigan
Cisco Systems Inc., headquartered in San Jose, California, runs one of the most complex supply chains in the global information technology industry. The company relies on more than 1,000 suppliers, four contract manufacturers, and 50,000 purchased parts. It also outsources assembly. In October…
Forrest Breyfogle—New Paradigms
Organizations need a systematic approach for risk containment when quality, delivery, and design product and service issues occur. Such a system should also help them to recover quickly from errant decisions made by executives, operations personnel, and the quality department.
This article…
Kirk Wehby
On the face of it, today’s supply-chain risks don’t seem too different from any other time in history. We are faced with natural and man-made disasters, frequent dissolution of supply-chain partners and suppliers, constantly changing regulations, counterfeiting, and the long-standing question…
Denise Robitaille
The ISO 9001 requirements pertaining to preventive action would get a lot more attention if people grasped the very simple fact that this is all about managing risk—which is really about managing the consequences of change. Whenever we change something, even for the better, there are…
News-Medical.Net
Japanese vehicle manufacturer, Toyota, is well-known for developing the principles of lean manufacturing. Research published in the International Journal of Technology Management suggests that the lean approach might also be beneficial to medical procedures, making hospitals more efficient and…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
A few weeks ago, my eyes filled with tears as our daughter, Lisa, told those whom we call the Macaronis, that she was struggling to decide between her current occupational choices (yes, she’s that talented and in demand); what she really wanted to do was work more closely with my wife, Carole,…
Steven Ouellette
Last article, I wrote about the importance of correctly classifying variables as part of the research design process, and discussed the benefits of the hugely useful, but oft-neglected, blocked variables. As part of my ongoing crusade against poor experimental designs, and the people who love…
Mike Micklewright
Lean training and programs are more popular than ever. Implementing lean strategies is all the rage, but has your CEO really seen the lean light? Use these 10 signs as a gauge to find out.
10. He initiated a brand new lean department.
His thinking: Lean is something new. We don’t want to taint…
Eston Martz
It’s all too easy to make mistakes involving statistics. Statistical software can remove a lot of the difficulty surrounding statistical calculation, reducing the risk of mathematical errors, but correctly interpreting the results of an analysis can be even more challenging.
A few years ago,…
Robert Whipple
A frequent refrain of top managers is, “We need to do a better job of holding people accountable.” Accountability seems to be the mantra for organizational get-well programs these days. One can agree with this in part, and yet there is an aspect of accountability that feels like a cop out.
The…
NIST
On Nov. 18, 2011, President Obama signed into law the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2012 (P.L. 112-55), which provides fiscal year (FY) 2012 funding for a number of government agencies, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The act…
Thomas R. Cutler
In production, “zero defects” is a frequent quality metric, but zero worker injuries, while a stated goal of most manufacturing plants and distribution centers, has not made it to the gold standard. There is no disputing that defective product costs companies millions of dollars in repairs,…
Tripp Babbitt
He is nameless in the movie Polar Express and the closing credits only give him the name, “Hero Boy.” The adventures depicted in the movie follow the plight of a young boy who doesn’t believe in Santa Claus. Hero Boy cannot hear the bells of Santa’s sleigh because he doesn’t believe.
For…
Davis Balestracci
I recently attended the annual forum of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), which is probably the leading health improvement organization in the world. The forum has grown from under 100 attendees in 1989 to almost 6,000 this year—half of whom were there for the first time—with now…
UC Berkeley NewsCenter
A nurse refuses to help an ailing alcoholic who is upset to find a hospital detox unit closed. A hospital clerk brushes off a deceased woman’s grieving family as they try to pay her bills and claim her belongings. A charge nurse keeps the mother of gunshot victim from seeing her son, saying the…
Mark Graban
To improve quality, the most effective hospitals and leaders focus on processes and systems, instead of just lecturing and cajoling their employees and physicians to do better. W. Edwards Deming famously stated that the problem with posters and exhortations was that “they take no account of the…
William A. Levinson
Hospital-acquired infections, ventilator-acquired pneumonia, patient falls, and similar events are (hopefully) rare enough to promote discussion of control charts for rare events. A Google search will, for example, turn up the application of u charts to falls per 1,000 patient days (u being…
William A. Conway M.D.
As a 2011 recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit has achieved recognition as a top-performing organization for excellence in innovation, efficiency, and quality improvement. The highest priority of our quality improvement work is to…
University at Buffalo
Humble leaders are more effective and better liked, according to a study forthcoming in the Academy of Management Journal.
“Leaders of all ranks view admitting mistakes, spotlighting follower strengths, and modeling teachability as being at the core of humble leadership,” says Bradley Owens,…
Bruce Hamilton
I attended a gathering of health care providers recently to participate in a site review and listen to some nice Toyota Production System (TPS) success stories. During a Q&A session at the conclusion of the review, this question came from one of the participants:“How can we get the docs to…
