All Features
Scott A. Hindle
In everyday language, “in control” and “under control” are synonymous with “in specification.” Requirements have been met. Things are OK. No trouble.
“Out of control,” on the other hand, is synonymous with “out of specification.” Requirements have not been met. Things are not OK. Trouble.
Using…
Brian Lagas
‘Why are our changeovers taking so long?”
If you’ve asked this question on the shop floor, more than likely you were met with blank stares by your employees. Open-ended questions like this are overwhelming, so employees try to find quick answers that don’t really address the problem. They don’t…
Knowledge at Wharton
CEOs are stepping forward to confront public policy issues that often extend beyond their core business, in part at the urging of their employees, write Caroline Kaeb and David Scheffer in this opinion piece. Kaeb is co-chair of the Business and Human Rights Pillar and a senior fellow of the…
Jennifer Rosa
It takes more than a flashy website and clever promotional emails to compete in the manufacturing marketing arena. Chances are, your larger competitors are pitching similar products and services to the same client base. Your company’s industrial solution may be to offer state-of-the-art features at…
Susan Fowler
Are you lazy? Do you think most people are basically lazy? Do you enjoy being disengaged at work? Do you think millions of people worldwide enjoy being disengaged? Is that why we need to be prodded, bribed, praised, and pushed into doing what we’re tasked to do? If managers did not hold us…
Chad Kymal, Gregory F. Gruska
During the early 1980s, GM, Ford, and Chrysler established the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG), a not-for-profit organization with the mission “To improve its members’ competitiveness through a cooperative effort of North American vehicle manufacturers and their suppliers.” In the late…
Isaac Maw
How often do you check your phone at work? Maybe you’re reading this article on it right now (Don’t worry; we won’t tell.). Smartphones were a revolution for workplace distractions, but they can also be tools for productivity.
I recently attended the IBM Watson IoT Exchange event in Orlando,…
Shobhendu Prabhakar
In India, Mahatma Gandhi is one of the most revered leaders of our time. He was a man who devoted his life to truth and nonviolence. You may be wondering why I’m talking about him here. Well, we all enter our place of work with a set of values that influence how we see and approach our work. So it’…
Jyoti Madhusoodanan, Knowable Magazine
A frog the size of a fingernail. A poncho-clad farmer leading his mule. A tree, some intertwining leaves, a silhouetted figure holding a pot. Such logos are stamped on labels of coffee, cocoa, mangoes, jeans, and myriad other products, certifying that the object for sale is in some way “sustainable…
Ryan E. Day
Midwest Metrology Solutions (MMS) is a company in Indiana that provides onsite precision measurement services using state-of-the-art metrology equipment and software. With an extensive knowledge of geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T), a primary focus on quality, and a proven track…
Lawrence Lanahan
Ryan Tillman-French sat at his seventh-floor desk early on a Thursday morning, the skyscrapers of downtown Boston crowding the windows behind him.
On a laptop in the nearly empty office, he worked on code for a web page he was developing for his employer, the learning materials company Houghton…
Christine Alemany
No matter how siloed roles or departments are, no one works in a bubble. What happens in marketing affects finance. And finance’s forecasts have ramifications for customer service. In such an interdependent world, managers must learn to open up with all stakeholders or risk losing others’ faith—and…
Mike Figliuolo
Creating a business plan is the most fundamental step in building a business, and the importance of it cannot be underscored enough. You may ask, “Why do I need a business plan? Why can’t I just launch my business and get to market?”
First, you must define your business and how you’re going to…
Harish Jose
I must confess up front that the title of this column is misleading. Similar to the Spoon Boy in the movie, The Matrix, I will say, “There is no lean problem or a Six Sigma problem. All these problems are our mental constructs of a perceived phenomenon.”
A problem statement is a model of the…
Davis Balestracci
Recently, I’ve had a sad, increasing sense of déjà vu. Twitter has become even more vacuous, and LinkedIn has quickly devolved into a business version of Facebook. Literally right after I finished this draft, I read a newspaper headline: “Twitter Use Eroding Intelligence. Now there’s data to prove…
Boris Liedtke
‘Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants,” said Henry Ford in 1909, “so long as it’s black.” Ford’s strategy of standardization and efficiency made a runaway success of the Model T car and built Ford Motor Co. into one of the world’s biggest automakers. But 110 years on,…
Jon Speer
This notion of risk-based processes within quality systems is something that has become part of our formal lexicon following the release of ISO 13485:2016, the globally harmonized standard for medical device quality management systems (QMS).
Well before these risk-based processes became a quality…
Jason Furness
One of my hobbies is building and flying radio-controlled model aircraft. Not the small foam ones from Kmart but larger 2-m wingspan craft. It is a lot of fun and usually very relaxing.
My birthday was a few months ago, and for the first time I was given a plane. Somehow my family read my mind,…
Annet Aris
Even tedious jobs like cleaning out archives can sometimes lead to great insights. Sifting through my old files recently, I was pleasantly surprised to find a treasure trove of old memories and forgotten facts. Among these papers were notebooks from my engineering studies; I realized that I no…
James daSilva
When you think about Domino’s, you think about getting pizza quickly—30 minutes or less. Domino’s has also become known for technology, including flashy and fun concepts such as the Associated Talent Development (ATD) conference in Washington, D.C. There, attendees heard from Domino’s training and…
Larry Hardesty
MIT researchers have developed a computer interface that can transcribe words that the user verbalizes internally but does not actually speak aloud.
The system consists of a wearable device and an associated computing system. Electrodes in the device pick up neuromuscular signals in the jaw and…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
Many people are writing about innovation. Yet, the more I read, the more confusing the term becomes.
Some have said an innovation is an idea. Others have said an idea isn’t an innovation until it has been applied or implemented into a new product, service, or method. Hm, from my experience the…
Jody Muelaner
Whether we like it or not, manufacturing is becoming digitized and connected. Industry increasingly connects production machinery with internet of things (IoT) devices, gathers multiple real-time sensor information into large datasets, and harnesses machine learning to make data-driven decisions.…
James Beagle III, Donald J. Wheeler
In Parts One and Two we defined the equivalence of instruments in terms of bias and measurement error based on studies using a single standard. Here we look at comparing instruments for differences in bias or differences in measurement error while using multiple standards.
When we use multiple…
Jeremy Marvel
I was told there would be robots.
We are living in a world in which we are surrounded by technology tailored to our needs. Our clothes are treated with nanoparticles to resist wrinkles and stains. We have sent probes beyond the farthest reaches of our solar system, and we have selfie-taking…
