As we arrived in the lobby of the Westin in Grand Cayman, George Davidson was playing the love song from The Phantom of the Opera on the grand piano.

During the early 2000s, people discovered how great pomegranate juice is. It’s filled with antioxidants that help us avoid colds and other maladies. Well, no one likes to be sick, so people started buying the juice by the case. Sure enough, they felt healthier.

I was three or four jokes into my routine, when I realized that one of the troublemakers my client warned me about was sitting dead center in the front row.

My monthly newsletter’s theme is “Integrating Lean and Quality.” I call it this because there seems to be somewhat of a common understanding and acceptance that lean and quality have no relationship to each other.

For one Connecticut manufacturer of close-tolerance, precision metal parts, a nearly 20-year commitment to lean manufacturing has naturally evolved into using self-directed work teams for the past two years to set the ambitious objectives of 100-percent on-time deliv

Editor's note: Lisa Greenleaf will be appearing on the May 4, 2012, episode of Quality Digest Live at 11 a.m. Pacific, 2 p.m. Eastern.

It was a thrilling ride for the team of students representing the University of Michigan’s solar car, Quantum, in the World Solar Challenge in Australia.

Scott Stern doesn’t work in a laboratory or have a degree in the hard sciences. You’ll never find him using a genome sequencer or an MRI scanner. Yet he knows more about some aspects of science than almost any practicing scientist does.

Compliance is an unfortunate word in connection with standards because it suggests something arduous, unpleasant, costly, and annoying that one must do to “get the certificate.”

When it comes to project management, most organizations put their practices before their people.