All Features
Bill Kalmar
Ritz-Carlton employees are passionate, disciplined, and fanatical about their jobs. Over the years, much has been written about the extraordinary customer service you can expect to receive from these bastions of performance excellence. Employees are always seeking to deliver spectacular service,…
Forrest Breyfogle—New Paradigms
A previous article of mine in this newsletter, “NOT Transforming the Data Can Be Fatal to Your Analysis,” addressed the need for appropriate transformations and a predictive performance measurement system.
The statistical business performance charting (SBPC) methodology that was described in…
Alex Lucas
Top-100 automotive supplier, Kautex, relies on Metris XC50-LS Cross Scanner on LK CMM to verify the production quality of composite fuel tanks. Kautex engineers set up and execute automatic measurement routines that speed up the serial inspection process for fuel tank by 30 percent. Incorporating…
Cathy Sunshine
When first hearing the word “clues,” your mind might start envisioning great fictional detectives such as Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple, but in the business world it is essential for every leader to be prepared to recognize and address the dangerous signs that lead to lowered productivity and…
James O. Pearson
We have all had to plan a trip to the airport. Sometimes it goes well and sometimes not so well. One of the problems we have is dealing with the variation in the trip time to the airport. Since I travel to the airport a lot and like analyzing data, I keep track of my travel time to the airport.…
Steven Ouellette
If you have been following my articles over the last few months, you have seen that even though statistical process control (SPC) charts are very powerful tools for examining a process, it turns out that there are a lot of ways to mess up SPC. This month, I am going to finish up with a few more…
John Stiller
Story update 9/23/09: Reference to 9.5.2.f was changed to 8.5.2.f in second paragraph.
As more suppliers are required by their regulators and customers to achieve ISO 9001 certification, and because certification symbolizes a point of competitive differentiation in a tight economy, emphasis on…
Matthew J. Savage
As companies downsize, they cut down on the number of employees, or move, or close, and thousands find themselves without jobs in a highly competitive job market that they never anticipated. A 55-year-old former NCR systems engineer is in line for jobs along with whiz-bang new college graduates,…
Stewart Anderson
Is the theory of constraints compatible with lean thinking and can the two approaches be used together? This article looks at some of the similarities and differences between the two approaches and suggests how they might be coupled to advantage.
The book, Lean Lexicon: A Graphical Glossary for…
David C. Crosby
Z
ero defects (ZD) is probably the simplest, most effective quality management concept ever conceived. Zero defects always works and it can’t fail—only the leader can fail. Once a leader accepts ZD as his or her personal performance standard, error will no longer be tolerated and defects will…
Forrest Breyfogle—New Paradigms
Not surprisingly, there was controversy over Forrest Breyfogle's article, "Non-normal Data: To Transform or Not to Transform," written in response to Donald Wheeler’s article "Do You Have Leptokurtophobia?" Wheeler continued the debate with "Transforming the Data Can Be Fatal to Your Analysis."…
Bill Kalmar
Quality professionals pride themselves in being efficient and are always searching for ways to improve their approach to improving processes. One of the methods for doing so is to have modern, up to date communication systems. Most people in the profession probably have the customary Blackberry…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
“Writing is not a job; it’s a hobby!” thundered my father when I told him my plans for college. “You need to get a profession: Medicine, law, engineering, or accounting.”
I cheerlessly acquiesced and enrolled in a pre-med program, but at the end of my first year, after struggling through…
Chip Bell
Ray Bell was a math teacher, turned credit manager of a farm equipment company in my rural southern Georgia hometown. He was also my dad. I knew he kept a very detailed ledger book that had information on every customer he gave a loan. He could tell you how often a farmer came into the tractor…
Paul Gay
Wireless communications have well and truly arrived in the industrial arena and considerable effort is now being put into integration and the writing of standards. In this article, the author considers the many benefits and a few drawbacks of this cost effective technology.
Wireless…
Thomas R. Cutler
Innovative vehicle-mounted, hand-held, and wearable mobile computers must be dependable, tough, and reliable. Wireless computers extend corporate networks to mobile workers in demanding conditions and only rugged mobile computers drive down costs and improve customer satisfaction. These are…
Sean M. Dozier
Do you really need to read another story about how project management and statistics helped some organization save money and meet their goals? Why are you even looking for case studies? Did your boss ask you to do some research to see if “this stuff” works? Well, let’s see... Yes! It works. Now…
Mike Micklewright
It’s pretty obvious that in so many companies, based on their actions and behaviors, CEOs and other top managers just don’t get ISO 9001 and all the derivative standards. The following 10 signs are written in no particular order. You’ll need to be the judge as to which ones are most prevalent…
Miriam Boudreaux
The ISO 9001 standard’s requirements with regard to suppliers are very short and concise but carry a lot of punch. These requirements can be very deceiving and in fact are often misinterpreted and carried out poorly or partially. By implementing the clause correctly, an organization will get the…
Makino
Many U.S. manufacturers have struggled to grow in the face of global competition and economic uncertainty. These factors have challenged the industry, put pressure on prices, and forced many shops out of business.
MacKay Manufacturing of Spokane, Washington, had a history of steady growth…
Resistance to the National Animal Identification Scheme (NAIS) has been strong. This six-year-old USDA policy initiative to reduce the catastrophic effects to the livestock and meat industry from a major animal disease outbreak has received so much negative reaction from so many and now seems…
Davis Balestracci
Remember my previous article on the quality pyramid where the very top element emphasizes the concept of “process?” One of the most powerful points to get across in any quality improvement effort is that your current processes are perfectly designed to get the results they are already getting.…
Chris Hardee
As moviegoers, we have all seen a wide range of animation—from early Disney features, such as “Snow White,” to Japanese anime, and Pixar’s “Toy Story,” to an assortment of recent blockbusters that seamlessly integrate animation with real actors. With each release, the movie magic gets more amazing…
Donald J. Wheeler
Following my article on Leptokurtophobics (Do You Have Leptokurtophobia?) it was almost inevitable that we should hear from one. We were fortunate to have someone as articulate as Forrest Breyfogle III to write the response. However, rather than offering a critique of the points raised in my…
Fluke Corp.
I
n process manufacturing, temperature uniformity is essential. Technicians rely on monitoring of all kinds, from fixed mount sensors to hand-held thermal imagers to track the condition of product and critical equipment. That’s because temperature measurement and control is one of the single…
