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Today’s challenges in the turbine industry to meet the ever growing requirement to manufacture parts faster, on schedule, and at reduced costs, have made it apparent to industry experts that traditional inspection methods are too slow and inadequate to achieve the required results. With the…
Michelle LaBrosse
When there’s a lot going on, we often push the fundamentals aside and forget the basic skills that have been part of our success. Project management has been a central part of my own success from the beginning of my career. So, when I’m faced with new challenges or when I’m wondering why a project…
Mike Micklewright
Nearly 30 years ago, W. Edwards Deming gave us his 14 Points for Management regarding how Western management must change. His 11th point was actually two points:
11a) Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
11b) Eliminate management by objective.…
Akhilesh Gulati
Toyota’s name has been plastered in the headlines providing it the publicity no organization would wish for.
Historically, Toyota had achieved a global reputation for the production of very high quality vehicles. The Toyota Production System, or the Toyota Way, is being taught, learned, and…
Bill Kalmar
One of the elements of a successful community is a strong school system. Real estate brokers will always discuss the educational resources in a community when showing homes to prospective buyers. There should be no argument that schools are the lifeblood of any community.
During the last…
Denise Robitaille
Ok, men. Leave the room.
Today, I want to discuss fulfilling customer requirements as they relate to one particular product: The bra. For those men who’ve not heeded the warning to leave, you may, by the end of this article have discovered, one of the perennial reasons for your spouse’s…
How a country copes with a brutal economy depends in no small part on how well its people maintain their confidence in their own personal financial future. Will consumers be confident enough to spend? Will investors be confident enough to buy? Will employers be confident enough to hire?…
Oriel STAT A MATRIX
After years of focusing on the pharmaceutical industry and establishing better controls for reviewing the safety and efficacy of pharmaceutical products prior to approval, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now directing its attention to the medical device industry.
On Feb. 18, the FDA…
Tim McMahon
A management system is the framework of processes and procedures used to ensure that an organization can fulfill all tasks required to achieve its objectives. A lean management system consists of the discipline, daily practices, and tools that you need to establish and maintain a persistent,…
Steve Moore
The following words of an anonymous poet as he (or she) immortalized the lessons from Deming’s funnel experiment.
“Tamper, tamper is the game, try to make all the same. Squeak and tweak it every day, off we go to the Milky Way.”
—Anonymous
I offer a corollary that may help…
GKS Global Services
A mechanical engineering firm was contracted to install new cooling equipment in a municipal ice rink’s mechanical room. The challenge was to design the equipment installation without tearing out the old equipment first, and to install some elements and piping that housed the refrigerant around…
R. Eric Reidenbach Ph.D.
“Our corporate mission is to deliver the ‘Best Value in Energy and Related Services,’” according to a large Midwestern electric and gas utility company. This is a mission statement, which after a minor modification (just change the industry), could be posted on any boardroom wall and inserted into…
Stewart Anderson
Organizations can be considered as systems of processes whose aim is to achieve customer satisfaction by meeting and filling the needs of customers. The famous flow diagram of W. Edwards Deming, illustrated in figure 1, shows an organization as a system and illustrates how certain key processes…
Georgia Institute of Technology
The cross-functional team at Piedmont Newnan was made up of employees that deal with the process daily. For this process improvement project, they focused on case carts, which are used for pulling together all supplies needed for surgical procedures.
Pam Murphy, a…
Louis Sirico
Aerospace and other manufacturing industries have accelerated outsourcing of manufacturing operations to increase efficiencies and reduce costs. However, moving some of the operations outside of the traditional four walls of the factory has created “dark areas” in the manufacturing visibility…
H. James Harrington
With the onset of Six Sigma methodology, many organizations have spent large sums of money to make all of their products and processes as close to six sigma as they can. I agree that the higher the level of sigma value, the better the quality of the output is if it’s not screened. But is that the…
Robert Parsons
The AS9100C standard (also referred to as AS9100:2009 and AS9100 Rev C) has been published since January 2009. You are not alone if you are confused about the delay in being audited to this standard. Like you, most companies seeking registration to AS9100 are in the process of trying to figure out…
Donald J. Wheeler
In the 1940s the War Production Board trained approximately 50,000 individuals in how to use process behavior charts (also known as control charts). At that time the computations were done by hand, and the emphasis was on making things as easy as possible for those doing these computations. As a…
David C. Crosby
A major part of the zero defects concept is to recognize outstanding performance on the part of employees by presenting them with an award. After all, you asked for zero defects performance, so let people know when you get it.
Recognition can be a tricky business. Done right, it’s full of…
Mike Richman
As you can see, and as I tend to do in these occasional column entries, I’m freely mixing metaphors above. My point, or points, as it were, are that, first, times are tough. Well… duh. OK, point number two is that in tough times, change, which is always inevitable, seems inevitabler. Yup, I…
BMGi
On July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, signaling the attainment of President John F. Kennedy’s vision to put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth. The accomplishment required nearly a decade of research and experimentation by NASA as it worked to overcome one…
Max Kalehoff
The science of harnessing customer loyalty and satisfaction is getting very trendy in business. And perhaps nothing has been more responsible for driving excitement than Net Promoter.
Developed by Fred Reichheld, Net Promoter is a loyalty metric and a discipline for using customer feedback to…
James Wells
How many times has this happened to you? You’re leading a Six Sigma project on a transactional process of some kind, something not directly tied to manufacturing or measurement of product quality. You get to the measure phase of your Six Sigma project and struggle to figure out how to satisfy the…
Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMMs) are used in practically every industry that requires precise dimensional inspection of manufactured parts. In today’s competitive environment, manufacturers demand CMMs that are accurate, reliable, fast, economical, and provide maximum flexibility with respect…
Knowledge at Wharton
Toyota’s legendary lean processes didn’t come out of nowhere. They were forged by the fire of urgency in post-World War II Japan when resources were scarce. Toyota innovated—and continued to innovate. Today, the Toyota Production System is the most respected manufacturing and inventory control…
