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Brenda Percy
This is the fifth installment in our six-part series on how automating common business processes with enterprise quality management software (EQMS) can benefit your organization. In this installment, we’ll focus on the automated audit management process.
Manual systems often don’t provide the…
Mike Figliuolo
Along with an opposable thumb, we share one other trait with our hairy primate cousins: curiosity. We have an innate desire to understand “what happens if…” that begins in childhood. As we grow into adults, that natural curiosity dissipates, and we’re expected to have those answers (school, anyone…
Jim Frost
In a previous article, I showed why there is no R-squared for nonlinear regression. Anyone who uses nonlinear regression will also notice that there are no P values for the predictor variables. What’s going on?
Just like there are good reasons not to calculate R-squared for nonlinear regression,…
Lean Math With Mark Hamel
Full-time equivalent(s), commonly referred to as FTE(s), represents the number of equivalent employees working full time. One full-time equivalent is equal to one employee working full time. Typically, FTEs are measured to one or two decimal points.
FTEs are not people. Rather, FTEs are a ratio…
Arun Hariharan
Ihave worked with a number of CEOs during my many years of helping companies improve quality. Although all are different in their leadership styles, when it comes to their attitudes toward excellence, most top leaders fall into one of three categories.
The honeymoon CEO
The first is what I call…
Jack Dunigan
Rachel was a new employee at a retail outlet. She was given the requisite week in the training room and then sent out to the sales floor. Part of her job was to restock merchandise that had been returned. She had been on the job but a few days when an item was returned in a damaged box. She…
Davis Balestracci
I chatted about u-charts for rates last time, and this column was going to be about p-charts for percentage data. These are the two major charts for dealing with count data and are helpful for stratifying a stable section of process performance.
But something recently happened that saddens me and…
Annette Franz
I recently read an article about a new dress code being imposed on Walmart employees (effective later this month). The purpose of the new dress code is to help customers more easily identify employees. I don't have a problem with that; given my recent experiences in a few different stores, more…
Edna Falkenberg
The regulatory landscape continues to change. One of the quality system approaches defined by regulators and the industry for mitigating risk is corrective and preventive action, better known as CAPA. Companies are often challenged by the CAPA process, which is one of the most important and…
Bruce Hamilton
A recent viewing of a Marx Brothers film caused me to reflect on one of the questions I’m frequently asked: “How do you deal with people who are against lean?”
My stock response is to quote Shigeo Shingo’s advice that “99 percent of objection is cautionary,” that is, people who appear to…
Mike Micklewright
Editor’s note: This article ties in with the new video training series, “Enhancing and Sustaining Lean Improvements While Adding Spark to the Quality Management System” by the author. Click here for more details, or check out the free preview of the series, specifically focused on the topic of…
Quality Digest
The adage that “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” has been taken to task probably ever since it was first uttered. ThomasNet.com turned that whole idea on its ear with the newest round of upgrades to its website in 2014. In essence, instead of trying to teach old dogs (in this case seasoned…
Gary Phillips
Assuming there are still questions about the suitability of a gauge for a particular application after a gauge repeatability and reproducibility (GR&R) study, Measurement Systems Analysis, 4th Edition (MSA-4), published by AIAG in 2010, recommends using an additional study in the calibration…
Karen Martin
Any leader or skilled improvement professional knows that metrics are necessary to define what success looks like, to measure progress toward a defined target, and to assess performance against defined standards. Metrics also serve as a powerful way to demonstrate improvement success to people who…
Bob Emiliani
There are only two paths to lean leadership that people can take. One path, based on traditional human resource development models, nearly always results in failure. The second path nearly always results in success, but precious few leaders are willing to take this one.
The following image…
Jim Benson
Last month I was conducting a series of Boardwalks with a large company in Australia. The people in the company had an amazing array of kanban and other visual controls guiding their software development. Most important to me, they had achieved a culture not of continuous improvement, but of deep…
NIST
At the new NIST Center for Automotive Lightweighting (NCAL), workloads are fraught with stress and strain—all to help the auto industry take a heavy load off future cars and light trucks.
To meet proposed federal fuel-efficiency standards—54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, or nearly double today’s…
Jack Dunigan
Leaders, especially superlative ones, are achievers. They get things done. Typically, they are hands-on, roll-up-the-sleeves types who attack life and its opportunities head on.
It's that sort of attitude, a tenacious, never-say-die pursuit of achievement, that contributes to success. Superlative…
Mike Micklewright
The 5S System is one of the most powerful activities of lean manufacturing. Focusing on simplifying the work environment, reducing waste, and improving quality and safety, this strategy is a topic of much discussion. Unfortunately, many of those discussing 5S don't really "get" 5S. Including many…
Davis Balestracci
My last column, “Dealing With Count Data and Variation,” showed how a matrix presentation of stratified count data could be quite effective as a common-cause strategy. I’ll use this column to review some key concepts of count data as well as to demonstrate the first of two common statistical…
Akhilesh Gulati
An important concept within TRIZ is that someone, somewhere, has already solved your current problem. In other words, they have “been there, done that.” Or course, the problem has to be clearly stated, in a generic sense, to enable the recognition of existing valid solutions.
TRIZ is not alone in…
Denise Robitaille
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last two years, you can’t help to have noticed that the ISO 9001 standard is in the middle of its revision process. Seems like people have been talking about this revision for ages. And, it’s not even a whole new standard. They’re not starting from…
Tim Lozier
This is the fifth installment of our six-part series on common business challenges and the quality management system (QMS) tools that can help alleviate them. Here we’ll focus on the supplier management tool and why it is beneficial for both stakeholder and supplier.
The challenge: No visibility…
Bob Emiliani
The lean community continues to face a problem that hurts efforts to advance progressive lean management: It is the great difficulty in clearly separating and effectively communicating the difference between real lean and fake lean, i.e., lean management done right vs. lean management done wrong…
Tripp Babbitt
Are you losing customers? Is your employee morale low? Is your management focused on the wrong things?
Customers come into contact with your culture daily. Culture is shaped by your organization’s perspective on work and how best to do work. Your organizational performance is the result of the…