Without soil, water, and sunlight, a large, strong oak tree won’t grow. The same concept applies when building lean processes for a small to medium-sized manufacturer.

Have you created a vision? You might be excited about it, but are others? Does your vision inspire, motivate, and guide decision making?

For growth-starved Western entrepreneurs, the Chinese market is appealing.

Every year, Manufacturing Day brings attention to the career path that has financed millions of growing families throughout the decades—including mine.

If you think it’s hard to tell how you’re doing at your job, imagine being a hockey goalie. Let’s say you block every shot in a game. Was that performance due to your superior skills? Or maybe just to a lack of skill in your opponents?

Editor’s note: Read episode two in the Respect for People series here.

Attribute gauges are a type of measurement instrument or process that gives a binary pass/fail measurement result. Examples of attribute gauges include go/no-go plug gauges, feeler gauges, and many other types of special-purpose hard gauges.

I’ve written a lot about how to evaluate the uncertainty measurements.

In principle, the mountaineer’s work is simple: “To win the game he has first to reach the mountain’s summit,” said George Mallory, who took part in Britain’s first three attempts on Everest during the 1920s. “But, further, he has to descend in safety.”

One of my favorite equations from Factory Physics, by Wallace Hopp and Mark Spearman (Waveland Press, third edition, 2011) is Kingman’s formula, usually represe