All Features
Lean Math With Mark Hamel
Every part every interval, also known as EPEI or EPEx, represents the frequency that different parts are produced or services provided within a fixed repeating schedule. This fixed repeating schedule is often graphically portrayed, for training purposes and as a scheduling visual control, as a…
NIST
Detecting greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could soon become far easier with the help of an innovative technique developed by a team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where scientists have overcome an issue preventing the effective use of lasers to rapidly scan…
Patrick Runkel
Unless you’re 3 years old, you probably can’t have things just the way you want them all the time. You can’t always have peanut butter and ranch dressing on your toast. Or ketchup on your pineapple. Or sugar sprinkles on your peas. But there is one small arena in life over which you can still exert…
Jack Dunigan
Editor’s note: This continues Jack Dunigan’s series about unsung heroes in the workplace, and the 16 traits they all share.
For my birthday, my son took me to a new restaurant in downtown Fort Myers, Florida, near where I live. Fort Myers was a winter home to Thomas Edison. While here, he invited…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
Well, she’s done it again. Our generous friend and colleague, Margaret (Meg) Wheatley kicked off this year’s Chair Academy Conference in Phoenix. The beginning of her message remains dark, but the light at the end is a little clearer and brighter these days. We found her even more inspirational…
Michelle LaBrosse
There are TV shows about it. Thousands of professionals are hired every year for the sole purpose of taking it away. Most people hate it but find a hard time getting rid of it. What am I talking about? Clutter!
Even though the show Hoarders exemplifies the clutter problem to the extreme, most of…
Jim Verzino
We are all doing triple the amount of work we need to do, and most of us don’t even know it. At the same time, we are making things more difficult for everyone around us. The saddest part is that we’ve been doing this for a long time.
How is it that we manage to make this mistake but are not…
Bill Kalmar
Within the next couple of weeks, scores of college students and senior high-school students on summer vacation will join the workforce. Many will have jobs at summer resorts, while others will perhaps work as life guards, as wait staff at restaurants, or toil at some of the state parks. Others…
Association For Manufacturing Technology AMT
March U.S. Manufacturing Technology Orders (USMTO) totaled $507.91 million, according to AMT—The Association for Manufacturing Technology. This total, as reported by companies participating in the USMTO program, was up 30.4 percent from February and up 3.2 percent when compared with the total of $…
Quality Digest
Quality Digest and the Coordinate Metrology Society are joining forces to celebrate World Metrology Week 2013 starting on Monday, May 20.
The week will feature special editorial content, photos, games, contests, and prize drawings, all of which will appear in portions of the Quality Digest Daily…
Kevin Meyer
I n my past life as president of a medical device company, I had two reliable leading indicators of a potential customer relationship. Basically, one was if the customers demanded automatic annual price decreases, and the other was if their payment terms were greater than net-30. Those few…
Bean-to-cup coffee makers manufactured at De’Longhi can produce a cup of coffee by just feeding beans at the touch of a button. These machines include a boiler, grinder, brewing unit, and in most cases, a steamer. The machines are manufactured on assembly lines with each unit individually…
Mike Richman
As publisher of Quality Digest Daily, I often take a somewhat dispassionate view of process and performance errors. After all, our typical reader is a quality professional whose job, in part, is to figure out why something went wrong and prevent it from occurring again.
From that perspective, a…
Knowledge at Wharton
It was the memo heard around the world: In late February 2013, when Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer ordered the company’s staffers to stop working from home, she set off a ferocious debate over workplace productivity.
“Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” wrote the company’s…
Dawn Bailey
What do you do when revenues rapidly decline, banking and financial institutions pull back, and there’s a national workforce decline? For many business owners, it’s as if lightning has struck their organizations’ industries not once, but twice.
For integrated manufacturing service provider KARLEE…
Glenda Eoyang
Joe, a successful leader, is deeply frustrated. The strategic planning system that once served him well is failing. Regardless of his best-laid plans, other forces in the organization are overriding his strategies. His methods to motivate his staff no longer work. How can each day be such a…
Stacey Jarrett Wagner
There’s nothing I love as much as a paradox. So there’s a lot for me to get excited about with America’s current manufacturing paradox, which is whether U.S. manufacturing is the next big thing or a dying dinosaur. Should we steer our children from factory work, or should we embrace the…
Jim Clifton
During a recent interview with a big Los Angeles-area newspaper, a reporter asked me, “Is America now in permanent decline?” My answer was, “No.” Our country is not in permanent decline. But I’m concerned that our leadership is.
Actually, our leadership in Washington is failing miserably, and…
MIT News
Anyone who has seen pictures of the giant, red-hot cauldrons in which steel is made—fed by vast amounts of carbon, and belching flame and smoke—would not be surprised to learn that steelmaking is one of the world’s leading industrial sources of greenhouse gases. But remarkably, a new process…
Mark R. Hamel
As best as I can recall, I’ve never coined a phrase with any staying power. Until now. And, my phrase has been purposely captured on a T-shirt, by someone other than a close relative. It’s not quite like having my words recorded indelibly in marble and situated in the Parthenon, but I’ll take it…
Umberto Tunesi
Remember your Latin? In the Aeneid Virgil used the phrase notus calor to describe what Hephaestus felt when he embraced his wife, Aphrodite. Think you know what it is now?
It means “familiar warmth.” Not passion. Not animal lust, as one might suspect when describing the embrace of a goddess. But…
Davis Balestracci
“What if I were to tell you that one of the most important keys to your organization’s success can be found in a very unlikely place—a place many of you may consider to be complicated, inaccessible, and perhaps even downright boring? What if I were to tell you that this key to success is already…
Jack Dunigan
Editor’s note: This continues Jack Dunigan’s series about unsung heroes in the workplace, and the 16 traits they all share.
“You can buy a person’s hands but you can’t buy his heart. The heart is where enthusiasm and loyalty are.” —Anonymous
You can’t build a team without team players. Experience…
Knowledge at Wharton
How do you communicate with 5,000 employees across 17 countries in a simple yet effective and compelling way? This was a question that Jovina Ang had to answer back in 2010, when she joined Microsoft Services Asia as marketing communications director.
It was around that time that the organization…
Michael Causey
It’s no secret that Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspectors hone in on a medical device company’s corrective and preventive action (CAPA) program during an inspection. But a leading CAPA consultant says many companies may have overreacted and made things unnecessarily difficult for…