All Features
Kimberly Kayler
As a major manufacturer and distributor of uncoated free-sheet papers, containerboard and corrugated containers, newsprint and market pulp, Boise Paper Solutions provides products that aid their customers in making their own products. That is why having to go offline for unscheduled lime kiln shut-…
Praveen Gupta
Lean and Six Sigma have been implemented for many years and organizations have benefited from both methodologies. With Six Sigma, corporations have reaped benefits in the billions of dollars. With lean, organizations have reported up to 90-percent reductions in space utilization and cycle-times.…
In the last InsideSixSigma issue, we published a brain teaser by Steve Wise, who proposed a scenario and asked you to pick a chart that best described the situation in a manufacturing operation. Here, Wise gives the correct response and comments on the wrong ones. Correct response The…
Bill Kalmar
Conversation at a business luncheon tends to be focused on work. The meal and service are secondary concerns. Still, clumsy service or a poorly prepared meal can ruin a productive business meeting, and a delightful meal and impeccable service can make such an experience enjoyable. Recently, I had a…
Jane M. Sanders
A newly developed family of biodegradable polymers has shown potential for use in intracellular delivery and sustained release of therapeutic drugs to the acidic environments of tumors, inflammatory tissues and intracellular vesicles that hold foreign matter. These polymers have several…
M. P. Bhattathiri
Editor’s note: The Bhagavad Gita is a guide for millions of people around the world, particularly in India. Quality Digest is interested in anything that can affect quality in business, and Bhattathiri’s use of the Bhagavad Gita is unique in our experience. See what he has to say and tell us what…
Steven Ouellette
This month let’s examine another common mistake that some people (not my loyal, intelligent, heretical and, let’s face it, downright attractive readers) make when they use Six Sigma. I expect to seriously annoy some practitioners when I say that Six Sigma isn’t a method of continuous…
Steve Wise
In a certain operation, a part is subject to a high-temperature curing cycle. The ideal curing scan is illustrated in the chart below. The oven chamber begins at room temperature, ramps up to a conditioning temperature of about 80 degrees, dwells for four minutes, ramps up again to the curing…
Craig Cochran
Last year I had the good fortune of doing some consulting with B&C Specialty Products in Hopeulikit, Georgia. B&C does light manufacturing, primarily plastic molding and assembly, and they also distribute imported products produced by companies in the Far East. They have about…
Fred Mason
No, this isn’t about promises you made on New Year’s Eve and broke the next day. It’s about measurement resolution—the number of decimal places to which a measured value is calculated and presented. The measurement can be of any parameter—voltage, distance, weight, temperature, whatever. The…
Denise Robitaille
I was recently asked to comment on the ISO 9001 requirements regarding external documents. My first reaction was to point out a distinctive subtlety in the actual text of the requirement. Many users have gotten into the habit of referring to this category as “external documents” when in fact, the…
Chip Evans
This is the first of a series of articles intended to share with Quality Digest’s readers key aspects of the global movement toward hazardous substance–free (HSF) products and processes and how they affect organizations. SBGi helps producers of electronic and electrical products prepare…
Thomas R. Cutler
The tagline to the 1989 film "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" was “The Enterprise is back. This time, have they gone too far?”
With up to 10 years of continued process improvements on the plant floor, and in back office and distribution operations, manufacturers have finally arrived at the front…
Praveen Gupta
Editor’s note: This is an attempt to use DMAIC methodology to resolve conflicts, in concert with the approach presented in an article titled “Feds may unleash Six Sigma on terrorism” by Del Jones in USA Today, October 30, 2002. By no means does either the author or Quality Digest consider the…
Bill Kalmar
Rather than travel to Pamplona, Spain, for the annual Running of the Bulls, one need go no further than the parking lots of many U.S. companies. Here people described in many company brochures as “our most important asset" are being herded and unceremoniously told to go home after years…
Douglas C. Fair
The last 20 years of my professional career have consisted of helping manufacturing organizations understand and deploy statistical methods. I’ve worked with operators on the shop floor, consulted with Six Sigma specialists, cajoled managers and convinced engineers. I have worked with and…
Tom Solon
Advancements in diabetes treatments By any measure, diabetes is a huge health problem. Approximately 16 million people in the United States have diabetes, and it’s a leading cause of associated medical conditions such as blindness, circulatory problems and digestive disorders. While…
Thomas R. Cutler
The key to quality throughput within a warehouse, especially in a high-speed/high-volume environment, is the ability to move a carton into and out of a pick zone expeditiously.When a warehouse control system (WCS) doesn’t process the information to divert products quickly enough, it causes…
Steven Ouellette
As I said in my premier Heretic column, “Dogma and Definition,” I’m interested in examining our assumptions and premises about Six Sigma so we can discard the dross and refine the potential benefits in implementing it.To that end, I have decided to co-opt an omnipresent element of pop…
Tony Coray
One of the latest trends in the ongoing evolution of Six Sigma is its rising popularity among college students and its appearance in universities’ curricula. These courses are exposing students to the power of data-driven quality improvement and, in many cases, giving them firsthand…
Craig Cochran
Last year I had the good fortune of doing some consulting with B&C Specialty Products in Hopeulikit, Georgia. B&C does light manufacturing, primarily plastic molding and assembly, and they also distribute imported products produced by companies in the Far East. They have about 150…
Fred Mason
Many people know about William Tell shooting the apple on his son’s head. What can this archery event teach us about accuracy and precision? What do these words mean? When are they equal, and when are they not? “Accuracy,” “precision” and “resolution” are sometimes misunderstood or…
Denise Robitaille
Don’t you love it when you go to the store and they have a “BOGO” sale? BOGO, as in buy one, get one. Who can resist the attraction of being able to get two things for the price of one?
Bill Kalmar
Being retired affords one the opportunity to relax periodically in a hammock on a hot summer afternoon, doing a crossword puzzle and contemplating quality and customer service. While trying to think of an eight-letter term for "a person used as cover," my thoughts wandered to several topics:…
Praveen Gupta
Considering the leadership at Motorola and General Electric provided by stalwarts such as Bob Galvin and Jack Welch, respectively, I believe that two leaders with totally different styles can get similar results using the same tools. When I worked at Motorola in Bob Galvin’s time, there was a rule…