All Features
For some time, auto experts have reported that objective quality differences have all but disappeared across most automotive brands. Indeed, the Detroit Three automakers have eliminated or substantially reduced large differences in defect rates after 90 days of ownership—no small achievement.…
Kimberly Douglas
If your team members (or you) hear “Meeting at 3:00” and think, “Here comes another waste of my time,” then it’s time for a meeting overhaul at your organization. While meetings can be important team-building and idea-generating opportunities for your employees, the key is knowing how to do them…
While I have been saying this for decades, and while K’ung Fu-tzu implied it millennia ago when he called for a balance of knowledge and action, it takes a while to sink in. W. Edwards Deming showed how simply taking a pencil with paper and plotting the data makes action possible. Experts in data…
Patrick Lanthier
There are several challenges that can arise when you start the process of measuring micro and meso scale parts. Some important factors to consider before you begin the actual part measuring are: part handling, cleaning, and fixturing. Using a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) allows you to …
David C. Crosby
Y
ears ago, when I was a field quality rep (source inspector), part of my job was to audit prospective suppliers. The basis of the audits was MIL-Q-9858A, the military quality system. Most audits were simply me sitting across the desk from the head guy or gal asking questions. Do you do this?…
Denise Robitaille
It was the great W. Edwards Deming who first applied this tenet, “Drive out fear,” to quality management in his book Out of the Crisis (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1982) It’s one of his 14 Points for Management.
Over the last two decades, more than a million organizations have…
Sidney Vianna
Aviation safety is a very critical issue. For millions of people to fly safely every day around the world, a very large and complex network of business and regulatory agencies have to operate flawlessly, delivering defect-free, on-time parts and hardware to all corners of the globe.
During the…
Raissa Carey
As auto making evolves and cars increasingly become simply computers on wheels, independent repair shops are facing a new kind of problem: trying to decode and read cars’ on-board computer systems in order to diagnose problems and hopefully repair them.
It’s common knowledge that automakers…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
