All Features
ETM Manufacturing
ETM Manufacturing, a fast-growing sheet metal manufacturer, will join with customer, HTP Inc. and supplier, Ryerson, to test the effect of lean manufacturing strategies and practices on the extended supply chain. The company, which has used lean manufacturing principles to streamline its own…
Giuseppe Pagnoni
In early 2010, I decided to take a step forward in my personal development and prepared for the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Certified Quality Engineer (CQE) exam. Considering the complexity of the exam and my limited spare time, this was really a challenge. But I worked hard and achieved the…
NIST
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) wants to help turn manufacturing robots into dexterous, nimble-fingered machines—affordable mechanical helpers that can easily handle different types of objects and flexibly assist human workers at even small U.S. factories.
At a January 24…
FDA
Last December, Sunland Inc. entered into a court-ordered agreement imposing requirements that must be complied with if the company is to operate. This consent decree follows the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) suspension of Sunland’s food facility registration in November 2012. The suspension…
Patrick Runkel
In this multi-part transcript from a hypothetical trial, we find Lionel Loosefit standing before a court and facing charges of gross statistical misconduct when performing a regression analysis. Day one featured testimony by the prosecutor; during day two, the evidence is put to the test during…
Patrick Runkel
In this three-part transcript from a hypothetical trial, we find Lionel Loosefit standing before a court and facing charges of gross statistical misconduct when performing a regression analysis. Day one features testimony by the prosecutor; during day two, the evidence is put to the test during…
Kyle Toppazzini
One of the most challenging issues I hear from people within the lean Six Sigma community is how to ensure that a lean Six Sigma project is sustainable. If your lean Six Sigma project is highly dependent on top leadership support to keep it going, there’s a risk of losing the focus and support when…
Bruce Hamilton
As we begin another new year, here’s a post about resolutions. In most organizations there are plans for something new in 2013—maybe a new product or market, or a new machine or facility. For those of us in the lean world, new also means re-new, i.e., getting better with what we already have.…
Eric Weisbrod
“If only I had known.” This phrase has been uttered countless times by nearly everyone. Additional information or a different vantage point could help us know when to buy or sell stock (“I should have bought that Google stock at the IPO”), what birthday presents to buy (“I wish I knew their son…
Jeff Dewar
To begin, let’s use the right words. Instead of just talking about “exceeding expectations” or “customer satisfaction,” try including these in your customer vernacular: Impress. Surprise. Delight. Enchant. Bewitch. And my favorite… dazzle.
For example, instead of asking the product packaging team…
Eric Heckman
It’s your first day at the Jedi Temple, working as a lightsaber manufacturer. Your first task on the job is to run a capability analysis on the length of lightsabers being produced. Your main concern is to see if the lightsabers fit within the required length specifications set forth by the Jedi…
MIT News
High stresses combined with a corrosive environment can cause critical components inside power plants and other systems to crack and fail, sometimes with little warning. MIT researchers now have new insights into how such “stress corrosion cracking” may be affected by nanoscale disruptions in the…
MIT News
Inexpensive labor has defined the last decade in manufacturing. The future may belong to technology.
When GE expanded manufacturing of home heaters and refrigerators at its facility in Kentucky last year, the reasons included big wage concessions the company had won from local workers and the…
Timothy F. Bednarz
Problems can arise throughout team development and management, but leaders must pay particular attention to the structure and focus of the team. There are many potential pitfalls associated with establishing a team’s mission and focus. These foundational problems can linger and hinder the team’s…
Alex Lucas
The current focus on improving production efficiency and part quality while meeting stringent production schedules is unrelenting. Measurement and inspection is one vital area that can benefit from advances in laser-scanning technology. Retrofitting coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) or…
Norman Bodek
Centuries ago, people learned their skills by apprenticing with a master artisan. They started young, doing all the drudgery and repetitive work—sweeping floors, keeping the fires burning. But they didn’t care. They knew that over time they would become highly skilled in a craft and would have a…
Stewart Anderson, Angelo Lyall
Every market has two sides, buyers and sellers. Markets are where the forces of supply and demand operate, and where buyers and sellers interact to trade goods and services, usually for money. If obtaining needed goods and services is the purpose of market activity, information is the glue that…
Donald J. Wheeler
Last month I described what makes the XmR chart work. This month I will describe some common failure modes for the XmR chart and show how they come from a failure to follow the two fundamental principles behind the XmR chart.
When administrative and managerial data are placed on an XmR chart, the…
Akhilesh Gulati
Editor’s note: This article is the first in a series exploring the TRIZ methodolgy, a problem-solving, analysis, and forecasting tool derived from studying patterns of invention found in global patent data. TRIZ identifies 40 principles, of which segmentation is one.
Faced with increasing…
Alan’s Apothegms with Alan L. Austin
I love the holiday season, and the ending of 2012 and beginning of 2013 has been no exception. I love the story of Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation from a miserable old miser into a positive influence in the lives of his employees, his family, and the community.
The story is especially…
Bruce Hamilton
Our machine shop was assisted by Toyota Supplier Support Center (now called Toyota Production System Support Center) in 1996 to reduce setups on our CNC lathes. TSSC had already helped us in a downstream final assembly department, and now we were endeavoring to provide just-in-time delivery to that…
IBM
Many organizations adopt agile software delivery because it reduces cost and risk, improves quality, and helps speed innovations to market with continuous delivery capabilities. Companies use agile methods to deliver simple web applications, enterprise multiplatform applications, and embedded…
Mike Richman
Before I begin this column, I want to offer a heads-up to those who believe that Quality Digest Daily should only cover standards, test and measurement equipment, performance excellence methodologies, and the like. This will not be a piece related to any of those topics, unless you believe, as I do…
Kyle Toppazzini
Allow me to introduce you to FUSE, a value-based lean Six Sigma model that enables organizations to maximize enterprise performance with the least friction. FUSE embodies three core Chinese concepts of trust (shin), relationships (gunaxi), and knowledge (zhi), or more specifically, reflective…
Tripp Babbitt
The recent NFL brouhaha over pay for performance (Saints style) has seen a lot of media coverage. An ESPN fan poll finds coaches more to blame (by a large margin) than the players. In the business world, this is the equivalent of workers “accepting” practices put in by management—as if they had a…