All Features
Peter Theobald
In part one of this two-part article, I began an evaluation of Deming’s 14 points, and how they influenced the final draft international standard (FDIS) version of ISO 9001:2015. Part one provided an overview of Deming’s first seven points; in this continuation we explore points eight through 14…
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that 2.2 million workers worldwide lose their lives each year due to workplace-related accidents, injuries, and diseases, and that another 4.1 million workers in the United States suffer serious work-related illnesses or injury. These and other sobering…
Alan Nicol
We all know there’s no free lunch. Continuous improvement (CI) takes time and energy. There’s a significant learning curve, skilled people need time away from “normal” work to analyze and plan improvements, and there is the disruption change causes.
Naturally, the more massive and disruptive the…
Akhilesh Gulati
Regression equations, fitted lines, and sampling are familiar terms to people in the quality field. There are tools that we use (i.e., planning matrixes, tree diagrams, and flowcharts) to help our organizations optimize processes. These tools aren’t new, and their use isn’t limited to the quality…
Angie Morgan
Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows.... But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.—Rocky Balboa
On a recent Friday night, I was flipping through channels to find a movie to watch with my oldest…
Timothy Lozier
The ISO 9001:2015 standard may still be in draft form, not quite set to replace the existing standard until the end of 2015, but it’s important to keep apprised of these changes and what they will mean for you when complying with the new standard. So what changes lie ahead? In this article we’ll…
Thomas Prewitt Jr.
As we begin the journey to value-based healthcare, the relationships between a hospital and its medical staff are changing. For decades, these relationships were straightforward: Doctors admitted patients to the hospital, performed procedures and delivered therapies, and at some point, sent the…
Rod Farrar
In his book Decision Making: Risk Management, Systems Thinking, and Situation Awareness (Argos Press, 2003), Alan McLucas introduces the concept of the risk management paradox. “If risks are being effectively managed as a matter of routine, there will be very few surprises,” he writes. “Nobody…
John Niggl
What are the best ways for a foreign company to monitor quality at a contract Chinese manufacturer? What groundwork should you lay before working with a Chinese supplier?
It should come as no surprise that China remains a major manufacturing hub for buyers abroad. As of 2013, Chinese suppliers…
Michael Causey
Sometimes it’s nice to be told what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) isn’t going to do. The agency issued a guidance last month that should make anyone building or working with a medical device data system (MDDS) happy and relieved. Can you hear the collective sigh?
FDA defines MDDS as…
Arun Hariharan
When I was a child, my grandfather used to take me to a garden. On one such visit, I saw the gardener watering and tending the plants and trees. I noticed that he took care to water them at the roots. Out of childish curiosity, I asked him, “Why do you water only the roots? Why don’t you water the…
Mary McAtee
One of those pronouncements that are widely accepted despite a murky link to facts or origin concerns proficiency. “They” say it takes repeating a task 1,000 times before you become an expert. I guess I can understand why they might take this position. Clearly, repetition fixes memory. But I’m…
Annette Franz
I have a few questions for you about your company: Are you focusing on acquisition or retention? Are you rebranding your image or are you reinventing the customer experience? What are your priorities?
I recently wrote some articles about how companies have this misguided focus on anything but the…
Paul Axtell
There is a difference in life between acting out of obligation or inspiration. Inspiration is shaped by having some possibility in mind—seeing the connection between how you are spending your time and a desirable future that doesn’t exist right now.
There’s a story about golf pro Byron Nelson,…
Davis Balestracci
In my last column, I discussed how even a well-designed study with a statistically significant result doesn’t necessarily mean viability in the real world. Post-study, one must study the manifestations of variation on the result in any environment in which the result is applied—and each…
Matt Treglia
Design of experiments (DOE) is an approach used in numerous industries for conducting experiments to develop new products and processes faster, and to improve existing products and processes. When applied correctly, it can decrease time to market, decrease development and production costs, and…
Mike Figliuolo
If you’re frustrated with your team members not delivering high-quality work, you might be the root cause of the problem. It’s time to stop being an enabler of their bad behaviors.
Alan leads a team of highly intelligent scientists. Although most of their time is spent on scientific work, a…
NIST
Smartphones and tablets are everywhere, which is great for communications but a growing burden on wireless channels. Forecasted huge increases in mobile data traffic call for exponentially more channel capacity. Boosting bandwidth and capacity could speed downloads, improve service quality, and…
Eston Martz
In part one of this column, I showed you how to set up data collection for a gauge R&R analysis using the Assistant in Minitab 17. In this case, the goal of the gauge R&R study is to test whether a new tool provides an effective metric for assessing resident supervision in a medical…
Scott Berkun
The worst, and most common, way to try to make people think is to use force. When people ask the question, “How can I make people think?” they usually mean, “How can I get other people to think the way I do?” They don’t precisely want more people to think well, since free thinking is unpredictable…
William A. Levinson
‘I’m shoveling two feet of your partly cloudy off my sidewalk” is an old joke about what happens when meteorologists get the forecast wrong, and there is a similar running joke among quality practitioners. “Your centered Six Sigma process is delivering 580 defects per million opportunities!” That’…
Dawn Keller
Juvenile idiopathic scoliosis. That was the diagnosis given to my then 8-year-old daughter last January. In short, it means that she’s young (under 10), she exhibits an abnormal amount of spinal curvature, and there’s no identified cause (aside from some bad luck).
Emilia’s X-rays indicated an S-…
Good ideas—for new products, new processes, or new services—are terrible things to waste. Yet time and time again, inventions and discoveries that first sprouted in the United States have taken root in the factories and economies of other nations.
Think of computer-controlled machine tools, solar…
Peter Theobald
In 1982 the late, great W. Edwards Deming condensed more than 50 years of innovation and experience into a book designed to be a wake-up call for U.S. industry. That book was called Out of the Crisis (MIT reprint, 2000). At that point in his career Deming’s legacy as a mathematical physicist,…
Paul Sloane
In 1959 Nils Bohlin, an engineer at the Swedish car manufacturer Volvo, invented the first three-point safety belt. It was far more effective than the standard lap belt, like the ones still used on airplanes. Volvo, realizing the importance of this invention, chose not to patent it but rather…
