My first exposure to manufacturing was nearly 21 years ago. My on-the-job training was brief and mainly consisted of general safety, machine operating, and maintenance instructions with little focus on problematics or quality requirements. After all, I wasn’t forming sheet metal for an airplane; I was sewing a feed sack. Nearly a decade later I realized sewing feed sacks on a production line was the beginning of my career path and commitment to quality.

When we look at business dynamics, regardless of industry, we see an increasing rate of change in products, processes, and regulations. One process affects the next, and with a growing focus on regulations and standards, complexity becomes an ever-expanding theme, whether related to quality management or general compliance.

One poorly understood concept in lean Six Sigma is how much to “stretch” when setting S.M.A.R.T. goals. These letters are defined as S—specific; M—measureable; A—assignable, attainable, or achievable; R—realistic, reasonable, or relevant; and T—time-based or time-bound. Regardless of the different interpretations, what do we really mean by these terms?

Driven by market expansion, financial pressures, and the need to accelerate innovation, today’s manufacturers have expanded their global operations and supply partners. This evolution has only amplified the manufacturer and supply-chain relationship, which is often characterized by a delicate balance between cooperation and adversarial negotiation.

A trained mechanical engineer, Mark Chang found himself “totally uncertain and unprepared” the first time he was called on to hire someone else.

“I didn’t even know why I was hired in the first place—what did they like about me?” Chang recalls. “So, how do I go out and look for the next person?”

Increasingly dynamic workplaces have made organizational change an everyday reality. Demands for workforce agility require a step up from those commanding—particularly in ongoing measurement and making use of feedback during this breakneck pace of change.

The start of a failure investigation may involve brainstorming, but empirical methods will be required to actually identify a problem's cause. Implementing an improvement action without a confirmed root cause risks a reoccurrence of the issue because the true root cause has yet to be addressed.

It’s no surprise that multinational companies have complex global supply chains. What’s less obvious is how to simplify supply-chain processes and arrive at a lean, consistent, reliable, and cost-effective solution. One global leader, ITT Corp., has taken on this challenge with the help of Ultriva, a supply-chain solution by Upland Software, which supplies cloud-based manufacturing and supply-chain collaboration and execution solutions.