All Features
Stewart Anderson
Story update 10/22/2009: We added a reference to Toyota Kata in the first paragraph.
The tools and techniques of what is commonly called “lean manufacturing” have their origin in the Toyota Production System (TPS). While the lean movement deserves much credit for popularizing these tools and…
Miriam Boudreaux
When you think about equipment that is used for measuring and test activities, you think about important equipment that is used to pass or fail product but may not necessarily see its correlation with a supply chain. However, this very equipment—whether it is calibrated in-house or off-site—does…
Ten years after the Institute of Medicine released its influential report "To Err Is Human" (www.iom.edu/en/Reports/1999/To-Err-is-Human-Building-A-Safer-Health-System.aspx), hospital care still has many safety problems, and the quality of care remains lower than it should be in many institutions…
Steven Ouellette
I'm not saying that the following apply to you... really. But, you might be a Black Belt if...
You test your co-workers for normality – and find some of them to be non-normal and a little skewed…
…and you know you can handle non-normal co-workers if you can just transform them
You recall…
Akhilesh Gulati
Isn't it the economy that's on everyone's minds? When will the economy pick up? Will we be able to survive until then or will we too become another company that used to exist? How do we ensure a stronger position when the economy turns around?
Alas, if only we had a crystal ball. Nobody does,…
Maribeth Kuzmeski
It happens to the best of us. An upset client calls to complain about a product or service, and you’re completely caught off guard. How do you react? Do you fly off the handle right along with him? Or do you respond in a calm, thoughtful way that salvages and even strengthens your relationship? A…
Forrest Breyfogle—New Paradigms
The balanced scorecard is a commonly used vehicle that is to align organizational-chart work efforts to executive-determined strategies and goals. With this approach, strategic planning could be considered as step one in this overall business-management-system process.
Consider now the true…
In 2005, according to a BBC News report at the time, operating rooms all over the United Kingdom were thrown into chaos and operations canceled due to broken, missing, or dirty surgical instruments. The Royal College of Surgeons called for a national audit of decontamination units, following a…
Andrea Kabcenell
What if hospital leaders had an easier, more streamlined way to chart an improvement path for their organizations? Imagine a list of key processes that could—if implemented reliably—lower mortality, reduce harm, lessen delays, create a better patient experience, and lower costs. This possibility…
GKS Global Services
In this case study of reverse engineering and rapid prototyping we will look at a company that developed an initial prototype of an anti-snoring device based on many years of research in the field of dentistry. The company’s main dental advisor is a pioneering dentist in the research and…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
On June 29, 1863, a 23-year-old First Lieutenant received an unexpected promotion. The freckle-faced, strawberry blonde, who graduated at the bottom of his class at West Point, was elevated directly to the rank of brigadier general in the Union Army. He completely skipped over the traditional…
Bill Kalmar
Regular readers of my column know that I abhor surveys that don’t provide some type of incentive or discount on a future purchase for completing the survey. I realize that I may have discussed this subject ad nauseam, but have you noticed that every store, restaurant, gas station, doctor’s office…
WinWare Inc.
What does a 13-person military team need to survive in Iraq and Afghanistan for five days by themselves without any base support? What types of protective gear and critical life saving items are needed? How much? Inside the storage warehouse of the 56th Security Forces Squadron (56SFS) at Luke AFB…
Georgia Institute of Technology
Radio frequency identification (RFID) systems are widely used for applications that include inventory management, package tracking, toll collection, passport identification, and airport luggage security. More recently, these systems have found their way into medical environments to track patients…
Jay Arthur—The KnowWare Man
I
n his inauguration speech, President Obama called for improving health care quality and reducing costs. In 2008, U.S. health care costs exceeded $2.4 trillion and are expected to climb to $3.1 trillion by 2012, according to the National Coalition on Health Care.
Of these costs, 25 percent…
A
n emergency response organization differs substantially from our usual public health organization for day-to-day business. However, as the spring 2009 H1N1 (also referred to as swine flu) outbreak highlighted, usual public health processes are fundamental for effectively responding to a…
Donald J. Wheeler
This is the final column in the debate between Donald Wheeler and Forrest Breyfogle on whether or not to transform data prior to analysis. Because the debate started with Wheeler's article "Do You Have Leptokurtophobia?" we are letting him have the last word on the topic.
The articles following…
Raissa Carey
To Chris Collins, lean and Six Sigma, just like government and business management, go hand in hand.
In Erie County, where he fiercely advocates that a lean government can and will save taxpayers millions of dollars, Chris Collins became the first county executive in the nation to implement lean…
ANDREA LAHOUZE
“It’s a messy world,” says Dusty Gibbs while walking past piles of copper wiring and kitchen sinks in the warehouse of Kirschbaum & Krupp (K&K) Metal Recycling LLC. “But this is about as clean and organized as it gets.”
Gibbs would know. As the new co-owner of K&K—and a longtime co…
Forrest Breyfogle—New Paradigms
Why did the current financial crisis occur? Among other things, we could point to greed, ethics, and policy creation. However, could we also consider commonplace business management systems and their metric-creation practices as a source for encouraging and amplifying these and other unhealthy…
Greg Hutchins
One week in May, I spoke on “Risk in the Supply Chain and Other Changes” at the World Conference on Quality and Improvement (WCQI), the Macon, Georgia, ASQ section, and the Atlanta, Georgia, ASQ section.
My message was that many business rules and assumptions have changed radically since…
Miriam Boudreaux
If you have ever found equipment that is out of calibration, then you know it is not something to take lightly. Whether you manufacture children’s toys or automobile tires, you know that the implications and ramifications of the decisions you make can be devastating for your company. Although the…
GHSP
The story of how one Michigan-based automotive supplier, GHSP, embraced the quality circle process and very quickly earned a spot as a leader from one of the most demanding customers in the business
There’s still a little surprise in Beth Koch’s voice when she talks about the Honda of America…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
All the talk of health care reform has resulted in many hospitals turning to lean Six Sigma to help improve efficiency and aid in cost cutting. However, health care efficiency expert Ron Wince contends that many of these facilities are not applying the tools properly and therefore will not reap…
H. James Harrington
Two months ago my column “Are Quality Methodologies All Smoke and Mirrors? Part One” was a review of my interview in 1988 with F. James Mc Donald, the CEO of General Motors Corp. at that time. The interview focused on what GM was doing to bring about a radical change in the quality of all of their…
