Quality professionals in most manufacturing plants still have safety under their area of responsibility. Safety has been a growing concern in the workplace for decades, and in warehouse operations, forklift safety is one of the biggest.

Ask how you can help, always keep a smile, respond to requests promptly... the list goes on. You’ve probably been exposed to an abundance of tips and tricks about how to become more customer-friendly.

Flu season typically peaks between December and February, but by the time the winter holidays roll around, many of us will have already waited in line at area clinics, grocery stores, and pharmacies to get our annual flu shot. The Centers for Disease Control reports that U.S. vaccination efforts since 1994 have prevented an estimated 16 million illnesses every year.

Manufacturers, robot suppliers, and researchers, here’s your chance to get in on the ground floor of an upcoming national competition intended to help make robots more handy and nimble on the factory floor.

While contemplating the teachings of Edwards Deming, who is widely known for being vocal on the topics of quality and statistical analysis, I thought I’d delve into a few areas where he was a little less known, but just as passionate and to a certain extent influential: leadership and innovation.

As process improvement practitioners, we get hired to drive waste and variation out of our clients’ businesses. But what if we hired ourselves, provided frank advice, and then listened to it to drive waste out of our own business or process?

For more than a century, Salt River Project (SRP) has produced power and delivered water to meet the needs of its customers in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area. Today, as one of the nation’s largest public power utilities, SRP provides reliable electricity and water to more than 1 million customers and employs about 4,500 people.

When a consumer goes to purchase a new car, the first thing they’ll notice is the vehicle’s make. Yes, the car may say “Toyota” or “Ford” on the outside, but what’s on the inside? In reality, the car’s components—from the tires to the transmission—are typically manufactured by third-party vendors and suppliers. These and a myriad of other vendor-made parts are assembled in OEM factories all over the world, where the final product comes to life.

You import promotional goods from China. You're sitting at your desk, staring down at the balance sheet, burning the midnight oil again. You have an order of 20,000 pens currently in production and scheduled to leave the factory in less than a week. You have a choice to make.

Do you save some money in the short run by skipping product inspection altogether? Or do you somehow allocate part of an already limited budget for inspection?