All Features
Michael Houlihan, Bonnie Harvey
Mistakes are a fact of life. No matter how much you try, you can’t completely avoid making them. And they can actually help to improve your company’s effectiveness and reputation if you handle them well.
It seems our society has turned dodging responsibility into an art form. From celebrities who…
Umberto Tunesi
I’ve been thinking of innovation these days, and how it’s being given as a password, and passport, to sustain economies, especially in the Old and New Worlds—that is, us. And how—and why—we are given rules to innovate. It’s odd to me that anyone should be told how to create.
I’m aware that…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
As I titled this column, I was reminded that W. Edwards Deming liked to say, “The most important numbers are unknown and unknowable.” But some numbers are important, and most managers do not know how to manage them. I don’t want to sound like a complainer, but this issue has been close to my heart…
Jay Earley
Some people are really good at procrastination: government bureaucrats, politicians, and kids, especially when it’s time for chores or bed. In a professional setting, the most common effect of procrastination is missed deadlines, which raises costs to the employer or client. For people who are self…
Davis Balestracci
Editor’s note: This is the third of a three-part series on effective, focused data analysis. Part one discussed helping management deal with common cause; the first common cause strategy—stratification—was discussed in part two.
In my last column, I introduced some aspects of common cause…
Tefen Management Consulting
When a medical institution aspires toward excellence and patient safety, quality enhancement proves to be a key factor essential to the process.
It goes without saying that there are countless risks in the healthcare system, and that it is always a priority to minimize these. There is nothing new…
Mike Micklewright
Many companies’ internal quality audit systems suffer from a reputation of being mildly effective to completely ineffective or just nonvalue-added. Often, it’s viewed as a policing department from which one’s dirty laundry must be hidden. Also, the audit system itself is not viewed as a true “…
Karl Stephan
This is a story that, as far as I know, has never appeared in print before. It’s not exactly hot news—the incident happened in 1970—but it exemplifies Henry Petroski’s dictum that engineers often learn more from failure than success.
One of the big tourist attractions of Texas during the 1960s was…
Davis Balestracci
As you all know, the influence of W. Edwards Deming on my career and thinking has been profound. A criticism always leveled at him was that he was short on specifics—but he would always growl at someone who alluded to this, “Examples without theory teach nothing!”
Enter Joseph Juran, the other…
The Lane Report
Whether analyzing Toyota’s supply-chain management, culture, history, or philosophy, writers have long been intrigued by the inner workings of the internationally successful automotive manufacturer. Some books have become celebrated best-sellers. Yet despite the acclaim, Fujio Cho, former president…
Michelle LaBrosse, Kristen Medina
Take a calming deep breath and maintain focus on the matter at hand. Find your center and stay balanced, calm, and ready. Now, tell me, are you on a yoga mat or in a boardroom preparing to negotiate? The reality is that the techniques learned in yoga can be applied across a broad spectrum of areas…
Alan Nicol
Most of us do some form of testing or other validation of our designs and production systems before we initiate production of our products. For some of us, especially those who produce products related to safety, we must prove to a regulatory agency that our products are safe and meet regulations…
NIST
During a recent ribbon-cutting ceremony, the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) unveiled a new laboratory designed to demonstrate that a typical suburban home for a family of four can generate as much energy as it uses in a year. Following an initial…
Davis Balestracci
Let’s revisit two scenarios from my July 2012 column, “The Sobering Reality of ’Beginner’s Mind.’” First, a medical center’s Harvard MBA COO insisted on nothing less than 100-percent computer uptime, no excuses. His IT department’s inability to get 100-percent uptime consistently has resulted in…
Nathan Jamail
One of the greatest misunderstandings in leadership and coaching is the term “micromanaging.” Most leaders never want to be thought of as a micromanager; that would be considered an insult or a weakness. When micromanaging is used as a coaching or leadership style, it will most likely deliver bad…
MIT News
MIT researchers have developed a new technique for magnetically separating oil and water that could be used to clean up oil spills. They believe that, with their technique, the oil could be recovered for use, offsetting much of the cost of cleanup.
The researchers will present their work at the…
Knowledge at Wharton
Has international trade come to a standstill with the crisis that started in 2008? Things are not that simple, says Pascal Lamy, the director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), during a recent joint interview with ParisTech Review and Knowledge@Wharton. Although protectionist pressures…
NIST
A refined method developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for measuring nanometer-sized objects may help computer manufacturers more effectively size up the myriad tiny switches packed onto chips’ surfaces. The method, which makes use of multiple measuring instruments…
Miriam Boudreaux
When implementing a new management system based on ISO standards, experts usually invoke the grandfather clause as a way to relieve the enforcement of some requirements. When, where, and how often can the grandfather clause be invoked?
The grandfather clause is a statement that an organization…
NIST
The United States already has one of the highest direct fire loss rates among developed nations, and progress in reducing this tremendous burden is slowing.
Fires claim more than 3,000 lives a year, injure more than 90,000 firefighters and civilians, and impose costs and losses totaling more than…
Joel Smith
Admit it; if you follow the National Football League (NFL), both of the following statements are likely true: When talking about the preseason with friends, you say that the preseason doesn’t matter and doesn’t mean anything for the regular season, so you’re not really worried or excited about your…
Bill Lee
I want you to see your customers in a (lucrative) new light. The old paradigm works like this: Your company produces goods and services that help customers get a job done. In return, the customers pay you money. You take that money and invest a good portion of it in traditional sales and marketing…
Paul Naysmith
I’m back, writing about another Toyota dilemma of mine. In part one, interestingly titled “My Toyota Dilemma,” I wrote how I, as an avid fan and supporter of the Toyota Production System (TPS) have never owned a Toyota. I ended that column vowing I would use Toyota’s greatest gift—the 5 Whys—to…
Joseph M. DeFeo, Brian Swayne
Joseph M. Juran was a seminal 20th-century figure in the field of quality; his many contributions broadened the field from its original, narrow, and statistically-based focus. As early as the 1970s, he recognized the value and importance of regularly reviewing a business system and its ability to…
Bruce Hamilton
Our Northeast Region Shingo Conference, held Sept. 25–26, 2012, is all about sharing information, ideas, problems, plans—all of those things that can make the sum of the parts greater than the whole. So a story about the power of sharing ideas seems appropriate.
As a new vice president of…
