Without manufacturing, the room where you make dinner would be rather stark and barren. There’d be no pots, no pans, no stoves, no spatulas, no appliances—big or small. There’d be no way to prepare the meals that give you and your family sustenance.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, Japanese products were synonymous with cheaply made. Anyone over the age of 50 probably remembers cheap Japanese transistor radios when they were a kid. We all believed, in the day, that the more transistors a radio had, the better.

In June of 1950, W. Edwards Deming began offering training to the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) on the precepts of statistical process control.

Markets and manufacturing practices continue to evolve, and companies now outsource to an increasing number of global manufacturing and supply partners.

Process improvers the world over rally around root cause analysis as if it were the holy grail of all things organizational. But is it?

The importance of supply chain solutions relative to a company’s efforts to maintain and improve quality are almost impossible to underplay.

Traditional corporate hierarchies tend to rely on static design. There’s the CEO at the top, followed by directors and managers. Red tape and inefficient processes can bog down decisions. 

Supply chains’ last-mile delivery has become the new Pony Express.

A couple of weeks ago I posed the question, “Are you overproducing improvements?” and compared a typical improvement “blitz” with a large monument ma

One of my great pleasures is going for a walk on the six-mile-long and generally empty beach a couple blocks from my house. There’s the remnant of a long-dormant (hopefully!) volcano at one end that is strangely humbling.