Harish Jose

Harish’s Notebook

Harish Jose has more than seven years of experience in the medical device field. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri-Rolla, where he obtained a master’s degree in manufacturing engineering and published two articles. Jose is an ASQ member with multiple ASQ certifications, including Quality Engineer, Six Sigma Black Belt, and Reliability Engineer. He is a subject-matter expert in lean, data science, database programming, and industrial experiments, and publishes frequently on his blog, Harish’s Notebook.

Wed, 01/28/2026 - 12:01
Karakuri Kaizen Harnessing the boundless ingenuity of the human mind
Tue, 02/25/2020 - 12:03
As readers of my columns know, I am an ardent student of the Toyota Production System (TPS). One of the core philosophies of TPS is kaizen, often translated from Japanese as “continuous improvement.” It is the idea that one should continuously find…
Weber’s Law at the Gemba Be surprised
Thu, 01/16/2020 - 12:02
In today’s column, I’m looking at Weber’s Law. It’s named after Ernst Heinrich Weber (born June 24, 1795, died Jan. 26, 1878), a German physician who was one of the pioneers of experimental psychology. I highly recommend the Numberphile YouTube…
Calculating Reliability and Confidence How to generate an OC curve based on sample size and number of rejects
Mon, 11/18/2019 - 12:03
It has been a while since I have written about statistics, and I get asked a lot about a way to calculate sample sizes based on reliability and confidence levels. So today I am sharing a spreadsheet that generates an operating characteristic (OC)…
Where Poka-Yoke and Cybernetics Meet Users ultimately determine the purpose of any device
Mon, 10/28/2019 - 12:02
Today I’m looking at design from a cybernetics viewpoint. My inspirations come from cybernetics and design theorists Ross Ashby, Stafford Beer, Klaus Krippendorff, Paul Pangaro, and Ranulph Glanville. I was curious about how the interface of a…
Where Ohno and VUT Intersect Insights into Kingman’s formula
Wed, 09/25/2019 - 12:03
One of my favorite equations from Factory Physics, by Wallace Hopp and Mark Spearman (Waveland Press, third edition, 2011) is Kingman’s formula, usually represented as “VUT.” The VUT equation is named after Sir John Kingman, a British mathematician…
Course-Correcting for Long-Term Success A cybernetic view of quality control
Wed, 08/14/2019 - 12:03
After reviewing Mark Graban’s wonderful book, Measures of Success (Constancy, 2018), I started rereading Walter Shewhart’s books, Statistical Method From the Viewpoint of Quality Control (Dover reprint 1986, originally edited by W. Edwards. Deming…
Solving a Lean vs. a Six Sigma Problem Hint: The problem statement is never the problem
Tue, 06/18/2019 - 12:02
I must confess up front that the title of this column is misleading. Similar to the Spoon Boy in the movie, The Matrix, I will say, “There is no lean problem or a Six Sigma problem. All these problems are our mental constructs of a perceived…
Toyota Physics A pull system for improvements
Wed, 05/01/2019 - 12:03
Today I’m looking at Factory Physics and the Toyota Production System (TPS). My main references for the post are the 1977 paper co-authored by ex-Toyota president Fujio Cho and key ideas from Factory Physics (Waveland Press, 2011). One of my…
Is Lean the Medium or the Message? Why and how vs. what
Thu, 03/21/2019 - 12:03
Today I’m looking at the profound phrase of Canadian philosopher and a media theorist Marshall McLuhan, “The medium is the message.” McLuhan noted that: “Each medium, independent of the content it mediates, has its own intrinsic effects, which are…
Herd Structures and Complex Adaptive Systems Lessons from ants and The Walking Dead
Tue, 02/05/2019 - 12:03
The TV show The Walking Dead, about survival in a post-apocalyptic zombie world, is one of the top-rated currently. I’ve written previously about the show, but today I want to briefly look at the complex adaptive systems (CAS) in the show’s plot…