Wed, 06/11/2025 - 12:02
Last year, after many years of physical therapy, cortisone shots, and experimental treatments to prop up my failing knees, I decided to go bionic and get full knee replacements. Holding out hope for more than a decade that emerging cell-therapy…
Wed, 05/28/2025 - 12:01
A few months ago I visited a potential customer, a high-tech startup, which like many Boston-area tech companies is developing astounding products that would have been considered science fiction only 10 years ago. The parking lot was half full at 8…
Mon, 11/04/2024 - 12:02
For an organization to develop a sustainable, continuous improvement culture, it must, as we say at Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership, involve everybody, every day—i.e., process improvement must become an everyday part of everyone’s job. That…
Thu, 10/17/2024 - 12:02
Not long ago, I accompanied two of the Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership’s consultants, Bob Elliott and Peter Melnik, to a Shingo Systems Design workshop at Osram, a terrific host site in Hillsboro, New Hampshire. Bob and Peter did all the…
Tue, 09/17/2024 - 12:03
I once attended a presentation that Eli Goldratt gave for the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. We were seated in an auditorium, listening as Goldratt paced back and forth on the stage, puffing on his cigar, gesturing for effect, and occasionally…
Mon, 06/24/2024 - 12:03
As years roll on, I’m noticing more parts of me breaking down: Teeth, eyes, knees, cardiovascular, stomach—the list keeps getting longer, as does the list of docs I see. I’m blessed to be living in an area with the world’s finest medical care and…
Thu, 05/02/2024 - 12:03
Deming Prize recipient Ryuji Fukuda introduced a document to my company in 1989 referred to as the “X-Type Matrix for Objective Management.” Relatively unknown at the time, it’s since become a popular format for strategy deployment.
Named for the X…
Mon, 04/22/2024 - 12:03
I was asked to lead a workshop in the sales order department of a manufacturer that we had helped with process improvement on the factory floor. Those efforts had positively reverberated across the company in the form of fewer late and expedited…
Wed, 04/03/2024 - 00:00
In a humorous moment from Steve Martin’s comedy Father of the Bride, there’s a scene where George Banks (Martin) argues with a store clerk that the number of buns in a package is mismatched with the packaged number of hot dogs: “I wanna buy eight…
Thu, 10/05/2023 - 12:03
I’ll admit it: After five decades watching U.S. companies turning to simplistic accounting tricks to remain profitable, I’m discouraged.
I was a kid when I first discovered the Toyota Production System (TPS). My eyes were opened to the immense…
