All Features
Davis Balestracci
This is an expanded version of an article that Balestracci wrote for Quality Digest in December 2007.
--Editor
I discovered a wonderful unpublished paper by David and Sarah Kerridge several years ago (Click here to get a pdf). Its influence on my thinking has been nothing short of profound. As…
William A. Kappele
US Synthetic manufactures high quality polycrystalline diamond compacts (PDCs) used in drilling for oil and natural gas. PDCs are manufactured with a sintering process that fuses premium saw-grade industrial diamond crystals under a heat of approximately 3,000 degrees Farenheit and a pressure of…
Geomagic
Besides the fact that it flies, an airship—better known as a blimp—has about as much in common with other aircraft as a whale has with fellow sea creatures.
Among a blimp’s unique design elements are custom fan blades used to cool its engine. The fan blades were especially problematic for…
Bob Bridges Ph.D.
Many industries, including the automotive and aerospace industries, must precisely measure the three-dimensional features of large objects. An increasingly popular way to do this is with the laser tracker, a device first introduced in the late 1980s. As its name suggests, the laser tracker…
David C. Crosby
The most important element in producing a quality product or service is the attitude of the people doing the work—not only the worker—but the attitude of all levels of management. Employee attitude about the product, about the work, about the boss, and about the company will pretty well determine…
Ben Marguglio
Human error is behavior that is wholly expected to achieve a desired result (in accordance with some standard) but that does not. A causal factor is anything that yields an occurrence resulting in an undesired effect or anything that exacerbates the level of severity of the undesired effect.
Why is…
Bill Kalmar
June 21 marked the beginning of summer, also known as the summer solstice. As a major celestial event, the summer solstice results in the longest day and the shortest night of the year. From here on out, we will have less daylight. It’s over folks, and frankly I haven’t even donned my bathing suit…
Minitab LLC
A $1 billion annual budget may sound ample, but a few years ago, the costs of services ranging from law enforcement to cleaning county buildings had squeezed the government of Erie County, New York, to its limit. Residents faced a painful choice: raise taxes or slash services. But Chris Collins,…
The emergence of green technology and increased environmental awareness has prompted a paradigm shift in the way companies think about the design of their products. Because robust designs mean creating products to meet customer and societal needs, it is important that all enterprises rethink these…
Laurel Thoennes @ Quality Digest
In his book Data Sanity: A Quantum Leap to Unprecedented Results (Medical Group Management Association, 2009) author Davis Balestracci passionately teaches a new way of thinking about improvement and integrating quality into the fabric of your organization.
How often do you find an expert who has…
Steven Ouellette
One of the most useful diagnostic tools for understanding what is going on in a process is the statistical process control chart (SPC). This is also a frequently misunderstood tool, and these misunderstandings lead to misdirected effort during a Six Sigma process, resulting in lost time and money…
Dale Hershfield
Twitter is the latest new thing. Want to follow John McCain or Al Gore throughout their day? Easy. Just sign up to receive their tweets. While their tweets may provide insights, or just entertainment (Ashton Kutcher and 50 Cent also tweet), does Twitter have value for business management?
The…
Denise Robitaille
"The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.”
—George Bernard Shaw
Can you think of a more rousing or appropriate quotation to justify the ISO 9001…
Laurel Thoennes @ Quality Digest
“You can put your clothes back on,” the doctor says as he walks out. Before you know it, he’s back and you’re still hopping around the cold floor, aiming for your pant leg and with your sweater on backward. There’s no time for embarrassment, because the doctor declares that you need surgery. You…
You know the fable, the Emperor who glorified in himself and considered no one to be above him. Having been told that the clothing he would be wearing could only be seen by someone wise, he proceeded to “wear” his new clothes. Not one of his trusted advisers dared tell him that he appeared to be…
Craig Cochran
When I first got into quality, I really hated verifying the effectiveness of actions taken to correct a problem. After all, I was young and inexperienced. All of the people whose actions I was verifying were older, wiser, and more experienced than I was. Who was I to say that their actions were…
Barbara A. Cleary
Specific techniques for data collection, fundamental to accurate analysis, are sometimes overlooked in the need to see outcomes or trends in data. The lowly check sheet represents a critical tool in effective data collection if it is used correctly.
Because check sheets are such simple tools,…
Mark Symonds
It’s no secret to anyone, anywhere, that we’re experiencing a global business challenge, especially in manufacturing.
One could argue that for too long, manufacturers in the United States have been complacent and indifferent to signs of market change, steadily losing market share to offshore…
Geoff Bilau
Geoff Bilau, senior writer for the International Association for Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO) Group, was awarded first place for his paper by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for describing the importants of quality standards and accreditation.
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t was…
Steve Daum
With several generations of statistical process control (SPC) technology under our belts, it may be time to rethink how we apply SPC in the 21st century. Basic techniques have been practiced since the 1930s. Some companies will soon be able to say, “we’ve been practicing SPC for 100 years.”…
James Odom
Charles Kettering, the famous inventor, once said: “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.” This implies that a good portion of problem solving should be devoted to a thorough understanding of what’s going on before any corrective action steps are taken.
In many cases, too much time is…
Scott Alamanach
Don’t miss the author’s follow-up to this article, “Going Low Profile in Afghanistan.”
--Editor
Profitable manufacturing requires efficiency, and this principle guides most (if not all) of our quality management systems (QMS). We’ve learned there’s little gain in correcting a production error…
FARO
Laser line scanning is ideal for non-contact measurement applications - including inspection, cloud- to-CAD comparison, rapid prototyping, reverse engineering, and 3-D modeling. Laser line probes use a triangulation process to find the position of objects in space. A high performance laser diode…
David Millar
The moment for action in the United States on climate change has arrived in earnest. With the election of President Obama and increased majorities of Democrats in Congress, there is unprecedented momentum to pass comprehensive climate legislation that caps the aggregate amount of greenhouse gases…
H. James Harrington
During the 1980s using flowcharts was the “in thing” to do. Today, technology has provided us with a much more effective and useful tool: simulation modeling. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then one that logically simulates tasks and collects data has to be worth a million. Simulation…
