All Features
Tom Taormina
Chipmunks live in wooded areas, scurrying around outside and feeding on nature. Mice burrow into walls and attics, looking for nesting material and food. They’re considered pests because they leave their nasty droppings where we live. So for many of us, chipmunks are cute but mice are repulsive. On…
OpusWorks
Over two days, engage in eight unique best practice sessions with 11 process improvement and thought leaders at S.O.A.R. 2022, OpusWorks’ annual virtual conference.
Designed to present highly actionable information and game-changing strategies from highly experienced and inspiring human beings, S.O…
Theodore Kinni
Conventional wisdom holds that disruptive innovation is beyond the ken of large, incumbent companies. But then there are companies like Microsoft, which transformed its ubiquitous Office software suite into the Office 365 subscription service.
“If Microsoft had done that as a startup, it would be…
Harish Jose
In today’s column, I’m looking at the Ohno Circle in light of German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s ideas. I’ll try to stay away from the neologisms used by Heidegger and will only scratch the surface of his deep insights.
One of the best explanations of the Ohno Circle comes from one of Taiichi…
Bryan Christiansen
CNC (for computer numerical control) machines have made manufacturing easier, faster, and more precise. Supported by the development of IoT technology, the CNC machine market is set to experience significant growth. With that in mind, this seems like a great time to discuss the intricacies of CNC…
Kate Zabriskie
Despite our best efforts, it’s not as easy as it looks to get the job training equation right.
“I learned so much during orientation. It’s too bad I won’t use most of it for six months. I took some notes, but I’m sure I won’t remember half of what they told me to do.”
“I’m overwhelmed. I learned a…
Jeff Dewar
This is the second installment of a five-part series.
Some weeks ago, I attended ASQ’s 2022 World Conference on Quality and Improvement (WCQI) with Quality Digest’s editor in chief, Dirk Dusharme, in Anaheim, California. It was the first in-person conference since Covid hit the world, and…
Mona Rhodes
Standards of customer service rose in 2022, and your business needs to keep up if you want to be successful in the digital age. Each customer interaction is crucial, especially since PWC revealed that 32 percent of customers will stop doing business with a brand when they experience poor service.…
Sara Harrison
Have you ever had a really bad boss? Think Alec Baldwin as Blake in Glengarry Glen Ross, who announces that “coffee’s for closers only” and then threatens the salesmen he supervises with a number of choice terms not suitable to repeat here. Few leaders use quite so much verbal abuse, profanity, and…
Donald J. Wheeler
Many people have been taught that capability indexes only apply to “normally distributed data.” This article will consider the various components of this idea to shed some light on what has, all too often, been based on superstition.
Capability indexes are statistics
Capability and performance…
Del Williams
In industry, gas-fired boilers have been the standard for decades to produce steam and heat process water. However, not all boilers are created equal in terms of safety. By definition, combustion-fueled boilers can emit harmful vapors, leak gas, and even cause explosions and fires.
In a recent…
Gleb Tsipursky
Organizations need to incorporate constructive feedback from stakeholders to survive disruptions amid today’s turbulent economy. Securing constructive feedback is critical in helping you find which decisions are working and which ones aren’t. Yet, many organizations fail to engage effectively with…
Phanish Puranam, Ruchika Mehra
How should humans collaborate with artificial intelligence? This is a question of increasing urgency as AI becomes pervasive in the workplace. From screening job applications and chatting with customers to assessing investment portfolios, algorithms are working alongside us in myriad roles and…
Katie Rapp
The Covid-19 pandemic brought to light a stark reality about current supply chains. As Nissan Motor’s chief operating officer Ashwani Gupta points out, “The just-in-time model is designed for supply-chain efficiencies and economies of scale. The repercussions of an unprecedented crisis like Covid…
Alexander Gelfand
For years, researchers have known that our physical and mental well-being improves when we freely give our time to help others. And when we do so through company-sponsored programs, performance-related outcomes like job satisfaction and commitment to work also get a boost.
But there has been…
David L. Chandler
Virtually all wind turbines, which produce more than 5 percent of the world’s electricity, are controlled as if they were individual, freestanding units. In fact, the vast majority are part of larger wind farm installations involving dozens or even hundreds of turbines whose wakes can affect each…
Lauren Dunford
Industry 4.0 has been a hot topic for years now, for good reason: 86 percent of manufacturing C-suites say digital transformation is a priority, and about 91 percent of industrial companies are investing in digital factories. Yet Industry 4.0 has also become a buzzword in many ways, as so many…
Scott Dietz
The manufacturing community has long struggled with finding skilled workers, citing, among other things, the misconceptions that manufacturing jobs underpay, are monotonous, and involve working in dirty factories. With the adoption of Industry 4.0—automation and robotics—the issue is as much about…
Mark Hembree
‘Anyone can hit a home run if they try,” said the great Ty Cobb at the end of the deadball era as Babe Ruth rose to fame in the 1920s. Cobb was unimpressed by Ruth, the Sultan of Swat. “It’s a brute way to approach the game.”
In 2019, Major League Baseball (MLB) seemed to prove Cobb’s point as big…
Bruce Hamilton
With GBMP’s 18th annual Northeast Lean Conference on the horizon, I’m reflecting on our theme, “Amplifying Lean—The Collaboration Effect.” The term collaboration typically connotes an organized attempt by unrelated, even competitive, parties to work together on a common problem; for example, the…
Gleb Tsipursky
Forward-looking organizations use hybrid and remote mentoring to solve two of the biggest challenges for that type of work: on-the-job training and integrating junior employees. Yet despite solving this major problem, mentoring programs that pair new staff with senior employees are all too rare.…
Adam Zewe
Scientists and engineers are constantly developing new materials with unique properties that can be used for 3D printing. But figuring out how to print with these materials can be a complex, costly conundrum.
Often, an expert operator must use trial and error—possibly making thousands of prints—to…
Ken Moon
Henry Ford was onto something.
In 1914, the automaker began paying his factory workers $5 per day for eight hours of work on the assembly line. Although Ford had refined mass production to make it more efficient, he still needed employees to show up and stick around. The generous wage, equivalent…
Catherine Barzler
Falls are a serious public health issue that result in tens of thousands of deaths annually while racking up billions of dollars in healthcare costs. Although there has been extensive research into the biomechanics of falls, most current approaches study how the legs, joints, and muscles act…
Ella Miron-Spektor, Kyle Emich, Linda Argote, Wendy Smith
‘The experience was magical. I had enjoyed collaborative work before, but this was something different,” says Daniel Kahneman of the beginnings of the years-long partnership with fellow psychologist Amos Tversky that culminated in a Nobel Prize in economic sciences three decades later.
What…