From metal-fitting factories that keep machinery calibrated manually to high-tech companies whose production systems use self-diagnosing analytics, every manufacturer is continually working to improve shop-floor performance using analytics.

The second annual Manufacturing Day took place in Evanston, Illinois, last week. Although I attended last year, I skipped it this time around.

Leadership is the ability to establish standards and manage a creative climate where people are self-motivated toward the mastery of long-term constructive goals, in a participatory environment of mutual respect, compatible with personal values.
—Michael Vance

Capability statistics are wonderful things. They tell you how well your process is meeting the specifications that you have. But there are so many capability statistics that it’s worth taking some time to understand how they’re useful together.

Recently, a friend from my undergraduate days complained that he was written up at work for low productivity. He operates a forklift in a warehouse and was informed that he only reached 97 percent of the previous week’s productivity.