Adding a control element to any system may seem like an easy path, even a necessary one. Redundancy reassures the stakeholders and the auditors, and it might become a sales pitch for the customers.

M ore than 80% of restructuring efforts in firms fail. Most explanations focus on poor execution or bad strategy.

On a Tuesday morning, a support agent in Dublin closes a tricky ticket while an engineer in Bengaluru ships a fix, and a sales manager in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, joins a customer call spanning four time zones.

William Overman began his Ph.D.

Most early-stage medical device companies never decide to skip a quality management system (QMS). They just never decide to buy one.

Painter Bob Ross taught us that “happy accidents” can make beautiful art. Happy accidents also happen in science when experiments take research in unexpected directions. One dramatic example is Sir Alexander Fleming’s accidental discovery of penicillin.

A problem shows up, and the fix usually arrives five minutes later.

“We need more training.”

“We need a better system.”

“We need another person.”

“We need a new checklist.”

People pitch ideas all the time. Most of those pitches never get heard. Why? Because they don’t consider the audience.

It’s one of the most dangerous sentences you can hear on a factory floor: “The drawing is updated, and we’re good to go.”

It sounds like the finish line. We fixed it! Nothing else to do here.

Four years ago, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researcher Cyrus Daugherty developed an algorithm to virtually unroll the tightly wrapped layers of a cylindrical lithium-ion battery.