All Features
Brian Maskell
If you are a CEO of a manufacturing company with many value streams, it’s impractical to think that you have the time to review all the performance measures of every value stream in your company. Yet you need to know the operational impact of lean on your entire organization.
The traditional…
Mike Richman
Leaders lead. Those two simple words conceal the complicated fact that being a change agent means confronting the failures of the past and confidently facing the promise of the future. Stories addressing these facts, along with hot takes on current news and a preview of an exciting upcoming webinar…
Roopinder Tara
It takes guts to come to the heart of high tech, in San Francisco, and preach a message that is about putting people—women, no less—onto the assembly lines of America’s factories. Danielle Applestone, of Daughters of Rosie, tells the hipsters gathered at Autodesk’s Design Night that, yes, there are…
David Currie
Metrics are an important part of an effective quality management system (QMS). They are necessary to understand, validate, and course-correct the QMS. They should be used to verify that it is achieving the goals and objectives defined by management. In an ISO 9001 system, metrics must be available…
Annette Franz
Traditionally, managers have relied on the annual performance review to provide employees with feedback. However, surveys indicate employees don’t find the process valuable. Simply meeting once a year to discuss their progress doesn’t give employees a thorough sense of their own performance. It…
Jeffrey Phillips
It finally came to me last week. For more than a decade I’ve been working with corporations, trying to help them accelerate their ability to generate new, interesting ideas to market as viable products and services. In some instances we’ve been successful, and in other instances there were…
Lolly Daskal
Every company I speak at, every leader I coach, I see a constant pattern: Virtually everyone sees struggle as something negative.
At the heart of this perception, people get too caught up in the idea of struggle to consider what struggle at its core is all about. Most people cannot see themselves…
Gary Bell
It is all too common in the industry: A part design is created and sent out for production only to hit repeated snags as questions arise about datums, locators, symbols, and values. Even simple misunderstandings, such as where the geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) lines terminate,…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
In this episode we look at data, data, more data, and then... engineering the perfect human?
“Your Data Are Your Most Valuable Assets”
Just what the heck is Quality 4.0? Remember this acronym: CIA. No, not that CIA. Nicole Radziwill explains.
“Applying Smart Manufacturing Technology to Conduct…
Mike Richman
This is the second half of our two-part interview with Doug Fair, who is the chief operating officer of InfinityQS. In part 1, we chatted with Fair about data gluttony, the process for uncovering actionable information, and the power of sampling. The conversation continues here as we dive into a…
Naphtali Hoff
In an earlier article, I shared some reasons that so many leaders do not delegate more often and presented arguments why they should. I also spelled out seven steps to more effective delegation. Here, I will delve into whom to consider when seeking to delegate tasks and projects.
Though the term “…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
Have you heard this? “Just because this department is a bit dingy—and it’s sometimes harder than heck to get the scoop on things—doesn’t mean it’s a bad place. Good work happens here. In fact, we’ve been doing darn good work in this area long before you showed up with a bucket of hope called…
Andreas Engelhardt
An international standard that specifies requirements for an occupational health and safety (OH&S) management system, ISO 45001:2018—“Occupational health and safety management systems–requirements” replaces OHSAS 18001 as the primary OH&S standard used internationally. It follows other…
Anthony Chirico
In my first article, the merits and cautions of AS9138 c=0 sampling plans were discussed and a simple formula was provided to determine the required sample size to detect nonconforming units. In the second article, the process control properties of MIL-STD-105 c>0 sampling plans were…
Sylvie Couture
In 2012, CMP Advanced Mechanical Solutions, a leader in the design and manufacture of sheet metal enclosures, mechanical assemblies, and machined systems, burst onto the Industry 4.0 scene with its avant-garde use of the visual work instruction software VKS. This software allowed the company to…
Mike Richman
One of the highlights on our calendar each year is the first Friday in October, which is Manufacturing Day here in the United States. This event offers us the perfect opportunity to celebrate the centrality of manufacturing as a driver of the economy, innovation, automation, education, and lots…
Laura Smith
Propelled by 30 years of audit experience, Craig Cochran channels his vast knowledge to author quality publications and teach others the fundamentals of auditing excellence. In his current role as project manager with Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership at Georgia Tech, Cochran spends his…
Nicole Radziwill
Data science and machine learning have surged in prominence during the past few years, and digital transformation seems to be on everyone’s agenda. Have you ever wondered why? Even though quality engineering has long been a data-driven pursuit, we now have the potential to get even deeper insights…
Carrie Van Daele
Karen is skinny. For almost 15 years, one of my personal goals was to join her in running three times a week. That never happened because I was skinny, too. I was able to eat as much as I wanted without gaining weight. And then, I turned 50. My clothes were not loose on me anymore, and guessing my…
Andy Slipher
How do we get it done? What’s our next move? Now that we know what we want and why we’re here, where do we begin? You’ve likely heard variations of these questions in your organization—particularly if you’re at any level of planning how to achieve favorable outcomes.
It’s one thing to know why you…
Anthony Chirico
In my previous article, I discussed the merits and cautions of the “acceptance number” equal zero (c=0) sampling plans contained within AS9138. A simple formula was provided to determine appropriate sample size, and it was illustrated that twice the inspection does not provide twice the consumer…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
During the past five to 10 years, the United States has seen more industry and academic institutions embrace apprenticeship programs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 2013 to 2017, the number of those participating in apprenticeship programs grew from 375,000 to almost 534,000, an…
Chad Kymal
Omnex began working in the automotive industry by assisting Ford powertrain suppliers in 1986. The U.S. automotive industry’s Big Three used GM’s Targets for Excellence, Ford’s Q 101, and Chrysler’s SQA standards to qualify its supply bases. The automotive industry was making deep reductions in its…
Dan Jacob
LNS Research published its research, “Driving Operational Performance With Digital Innovation: Connecting Risk, Quality, and Safety for Superior Results” to address fundamental challenges quality and safety leaders face today.
If quality and safety are separate functions in your organization (…
Harish Jose
I am a quality manager by profession. Thus, I think about quality a lot. How would one define “quality?” A simple view of quality is “conformance to requirements.” This simplistic view of quality lacks the complexity that it should have. It assumes that everything is static, the customer will…