Astronaut crews living and working in space experience as a matter of course what many of us experienced unexpectedly during the coronavirus pandemic. Consider these similarities.

In my work in collaboration and team effectiveness, I am sometimes approached about helping with a “dysfunctional team.” People use the word “dysfunction” liberally and can mean various things by it.

Total quality management (TQM) was in vogue during my undergraduate years and early career in industrial engineering. The United States was catching up to the Japanese in manufacturing production as their Toyota vehicles outperformed our Fords.

Metal additive manufacturing (AM) is a process with demanding requirements for in-process material management, specifically with regard to the use of powdered metals.

To enable raw water for use as cooling water, industrial facilities such as power, processing, and manufacturing plants prefilter raw water from rivers, lakes, gulfs, and coastlines to remove organic, aquatic, and other solids. It’s not as simple as it sounds.

We all know that

If you’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy, then you’ve gotten a peek into the complex hierarchies that rule a hospital.

Many techniques can be used to find the root causes of asset failures and other important events we want to analyze. Fault tree analysis is one of those techniques, and it is being utilized by many different companies to improve system reliability.

Each year after the Quest for Excellence Conference, I sift through my notes and try to identify themes I have heard in the presentations of the new