Content By Ryan E. Day

Using Quality Tactics to Create Strategy: A Hypothetical Case

By: Ryan E. Day, Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest, Taran March @ Quality Digest 09/30/2020

In order to best illustrate how enterprisewide SPC software can help address shop-floor problems and then funnel the captured data to the corporate level where strategic issues can be analyzed, here is a case study of a hypothetical manufacturing facility. In it, the company makes effective use of SPC for data-driven decisions.

A global food products manufacturing company with 11 sites worldwide had chosen to master quality, both tactically and strategically, as its top goal. Each site collected and analysed data in the company’s enterprisewide SPC software, both to monitor and respond to quality issues at the site, and to share those same data with the corporate office.

At the company’s Prague site, the quality manager looked at her shop-floor data for the previous month. As figure 1 indicates, the software reported a total of 737 events, which at first glance seemed like a big deal to the manager. However, on closer inspection, she could see that these weren’t massive quality issues with the product or processes. However, there were 517 missed data checks. Although not a line-stopping issue, missed checks could result in noncompliance to agreements with customers or industry requirements.

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Talking Quality But Speaking Strategy

By: Ryan E. Day 09/28/2020

If you're involved in business you know: Strategy matters. Your strategies guide you to reach your objectives. Behind every successful business are purposeful strategies. Then again, as Alvin Toffler said, “The absence of strategy is fine if you don’t care where you’re going.”

We’re talking specifically about data-driven strategies like using “improving operational efficiency” to support a goal of increasing your profit margin. Or “improving product standardization” to increase international market share. The question is, how do you support your data-driven strategies? Where do your data come from?

Many leaders don’t realize they are probably sitting on a gold mine of data just waiting to be transformed into actionable information to support their strategies. I’m talking about the quality control data that are collected every day on the shop floor.

By: Ryan E. Day 07/30/2020

Every so often an event, invention, or idea is so momentous it changes the face of entire industries. In some ways, the global response to Covid-19 has been such an event. In the case of metrology, however, it has only underscored that the foundational requirements of test and measurement remain unchanged. The trick is how we attend to those requirements in times of social and professional distancing.

Immediate challenges

The manufacturing industry worldwide is being challenged on an unprecedented scale. One has only to look at the OSHA’s Covid-19 Guidance for the Manufacturing Workforce, or listen to the drumbeat of continuing trade wars to get an inkling of what manufacturers may have to deal with on their way to meeting their test and measurement requirements. And yet, product is still being produced. And that product is being inspected.

By: Ryan E. Day 06/26/2020

Writing a press release is easy. Writing a great press release takes some thought. And great press releases can draw more potential customers into your sphere of influence. Fortunately, writing great marketing copy isn’t all that complicated. Include these three elements and you’re well on your way to writing a great press release.

What is it?

Identify what is the one product, service, event, or piece of information you are sharing. Write down what that one thing is, and then whittle away anything that isn’t necessary. Your headline is often the “what” of your press release. (See figure 1.)

By: Ryan E. Day 06/23/2020

An organization can achieve great results when everyone is working together, looking at the same information generated from the same data, and using the same rules. Changes can be made that affect a company’s bottom line through operational improvements, product quality, and process optimization. There are quality intelligence (QI) solutions that can help reveal hidden opportunities.

Companies can save money and improve operational efficiency by effectively focusing resources on the problems that matter most from both a strategic and tactical perspective. A proper QI system makes this practical in several ways.

The QI advantage

With a QI system, data are captured and analyzed consistently in a central repository across the organization. This means there aren’t different interpretations of the truth, and there is alignment among those on the shop floor, site management, and corporate quality.

Alignment is possible because of a positive cascade of events:
• Notifications are sent to the appropriate people, and workflows trigger the required actions. This means people are appropriately accountable for addressing issues. Those issues can then be analyzed to understand recurring problems and how to avoid them.

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The Problem With Unexamined Processes

By: Ryan E. Day 06/22/2020

It’s no secret that manufacturing companies operate in an inherently unstable environment. Every operational weakness poses a risk to efficiency, quality, and ultimately, to profitability. All too often, it takes a crisis—like Covid-19 shutdowns—to reveal operational weaknesses that have been hampering an organization for a long time.

The nature of the problem

It is not just a manufacturing company’s production facility that faces operational challenges, either. The entire organization must address a host of risks and challenges; shifting consumer and market trends necessitate improving agility and responsiveness; dynamic and global competition force innovation not only in product development, but also service and delivery; evolving sales channels, including online outlets, challenge established profit margins. And these challenges are not going away any time soon.

The real problem, however, lies not with the challenges themselves but with a company’s reluctance to see the operational weakness that makes it susceptible to a particular risk in the first place.

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IIoT, Coronavirus, and the Supply Chain

By: Ryan E. Day 06/02/2020

The Covid-19 pandemic is disrupting business across the globe, and supply chains are being stressed to their limits by sudden and drastic increases in online commerce. As organizations strive to continue delivering physical product, the industrial internet of things (IIoT) is being considered as a sensible part of dealing with the massive strain on supply chains.

Supply chain efficiency may not be the hottest topic around, but more than one organization has made dramatic improvements to their profit and growth portfolio by rethinking outdated supply mentalities and methods. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has been making quiet inroads to supply chain efficiency for quite some time, and with online commerce at an all-time high, every benefit of IIoT is only compounded.

Tracking vs. supply chain visibility

As important as tracking is, there are other aspects of the shipments to be considered. Temperature, excess vibration, angle, and tampering are among the conditions that are vital to certain products in transit.

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Embracing Work-From-Home

By: Ryan E. Day 05/13/2020

As shelter-in-place orders make work-from-home (WFH) the new normal, some organizations are struggling with the transition to working as a remote team. But there are companies that have been doing so for quite some time, and we can benefit from their experience.

Covid-19 is forcing thousands of organizations to implement WFH programs, and it may well become a more common model in the future for a variety of reasons. Eric Doster, CEO of Dozuki, and Jennifer Dennard, COO of Range, have been working within remote teams for years. Their insight is built on experience, and we’re fortunate to have them share their hard-earned wisdom in this quick video touching on asynchronous communication, tribal knowledge, and isolation syndrome.

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Doing Business in a Post-Pandemic World

By: Ryan E. Day 04/02/2020

Although Covid-19 shelter-in-home edicts usually use the terms “essential” and “nonessential,” most business owners think of doing business as essential for survival. Many organizations don’t have the resources to temporarily suspend business. They must find new ways to get it done.

In a Think with Google article, Gina Shilavi outlines ways people are dealing with the new, albeit temporary, reality of social distancing within a business context. “From troubleshooting poor internet connections to equipment hacks to sharing creative ways for remote team collaboration, [Youtube content creator’s] advice is resonating [with viewers],” she says. “In the past week alone, searches for 'telecommuting' in the U.S. reached an all-time high on Google and YouTube, with no sign of slowing down.”

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IIoT Comes Off the Factory Floor

By: Ryan E. Day 03/31/2020

The internet of things, or IoT, is a phenomenon that merges real-life devices with online control. Think smart home systems or maybe the FordPass Connect app. The manufacturing industry has already begun to leverage this idea to monitor heavy industrial equipment and analyze data from multiple machines and even multiple facilities. The information gathered helps manufacturing companies make more informed decisions concerning things like maintenance, operating expense, and asset utilization. Now this has given rise to the term, industrial internet of things, or IIoT.

The IIoT builds on IoT with sensors that monitor things like vibration, power consumption, and run times. Manufacturing equipment is now more readily available in IIoT-ready configuration, and there are numerous devices to retrofit existing machinery to an IIoT ecosystem.

Todd Mirzaian, director of sales at Ibis Networks, talks about smart plugs

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