Is customer service a lost art, or are today’s customers harder to please?

Is it possible to apply the principle of first time right (FTR) in a sales context? This two-part article looks at what happens when companies do just that.

First time right (FTR), or doing things right the first time, is an important concept in quality. Some experts even consider FTR the very definition of quality. This two-part article summarizes an experiment in which FTR was applied to sales.

Top executives in Europe and the U.S.

(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is hosting a free public workshop on best practices in federal conformity-assessment activities Wed., April 11, 2012, at NIST’s Gaithersburg, Maryland, site.

(Jossey-Bass: Cross Point, IN) -- At the top of every organization chart lies a myth: that a senior management team makes a company’s critical decisions.

During the the mid-1980s, two great schools of investigation were put up against each other. Each were immensely popular, and still are today, with fans firmly seated in one methodology or the other. One school was led by a disheveled, cigar-smoking character.

I am 100-percent certain that on the day they asked me to manage at Minitab, they did not tell me I would have to do so much process work.

It turns out you can be too thin—especially if you’re a nanoscale battery.

Exquisite home décor begins with products that epitomize attention to detail and artistic subtleties that are often hard to manufacture in volume without looking mass-produced.