Sometimes when studying something that has become too familiar to us, we can gain valuable new insights by looking at it from a radically different perspective.

Last week I had occasion to view once again, in the company of a client, the excellent little video, “Toast Kaizen,” produced by t

A common error of many Six Sigma and operations research professionals is not properly selecting the correct subgroup sampling technique when constructing a statistical process control (SPC) chart.

Here at Quality Digest, we get a lot of mail: Some of it’s critical, some of it’s praiseworthy, some of it’s cantankerous, and some of it’s challenging. All of it is insightful. And then, every once in awhile, something comes along that simply... well...

I have identified myself as a “reformed” lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt. Some will see this as an affront to lean and Six Sigma. I want to assure you that there are many things to like about lean and Six Sigma.

Lean, lean Six Sigma, total quality management (TQM), and other techniques have helped companies improve processes through the execution of projects.

I was flipping through some Japanese books on sayings and speeches given by Taiichi Ohno looking for inspiration for a new article when I found the following passage:

If you are buying two or three complex assemblies per month from a contract manufacturer, it would be reasonable to check every one carefully; there’s a lot that could go wrong.

I became aware of a truth about lean problem solving and kaizen yesterday while reading an article about 10 internet rules and laws, “Internet rules and laws: the top 10, from Godwin to Poe,” published on the Daily Telegraph’s web site (

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