All Features
Michael Baxter
You would expect a building where vinegar is made to have a sour smell, highly pungent, perhaps with a whiff of apple. World Technology Ingredients (WTI) smells nothing like this. Their manufacturing facility, off a county two-lane in Jefferson, Georgia, has a vaguely mineral aroma. More dry than…
Knowledge at Wharton
Have you heard of a media company called T-Series? Chances are, you probably haven’t. Gulshan Kumar, whose résumé up to 1983 read, “Fruit juice seller, streets of New Delhi,” founded it that year. Since its inception, T-Series has become an unlikely media powerhouse—its YouTube channel has 119…
Clinton Ballew
Legislative support is growing for the reimbursement of care delivery via telemedicine. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of Inspector General have recently made final and proposed rule changes to stimulate greater use and access for telemedicine delivery. These…
Patrick Moorhead, Gabriel Smith
According to the Journal of Consumer Research, a high price indicates either bad value or good quality, whereas a low price indicates either good value or poor quality.
At the heart of this dichotomy is the role that quality plays in both the actual and perceived price of the product. To…
Vaishali Gopi
Data, analytics, surveys, IoT, artificial intelligence, and automation are the leading buzzwords in retail and customer service. But what is the point of having all these data about our customers? The business implications can be overwhelming and never lead to anything meaningful.
However, for…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
What a year.
No matter your job, your industry, or your political beliefs, this year has been a heck of a ride. The (still ongoing) trade war with China, manufacturing gains (and losses), the 737 MAX, Hong Kong riots, North Korea, Brexit, impeachment. What a mixed bag of ups and downs that has…
As usual with Quality Digest’s diverse audience, this year’s top stories covered a wide range of topics applicable to quality professionals. From hardware to software, from standards to risk management, from China trade to FDA regulations. It’s always fun to see what readers gravitate to, and this…
William A. Levinson
How will the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement affect greenhouse gas emissions? Quality Digest editor in chief Dirk Dusharme and Mike Richman, principal at Richman Business Media Consulting, point out that most manufacturers already recognize that waste, including waste of energy…
Emily Safrin
When Scarlett hung up the phone, she was close to tears. Even more unexpectedly, so was the customer service representative on the other end. How did a seemingly simple inquiry end in two people so frustrated they were on the verge of a breakdown?
Scarlett had called to resolve a mistaken charge…
Mark Rosenthal
I was sitting in on a conversation between a continuous improvement manager and the operations manager the other day.
The operations manager was asking for help developing good leader standard work.
The C.I. manager was responding that she had already developed it for the value stream manager and…
Paul Laughlin
What tools should data analysts have in their toolbox? It’s a broad question and one with diverging views. So, I am delighted to welcome back a guest blogger who doesn’t shy away from controversy.
Martin Squires is a very experienced znalytics leader, whom I’ve previously interviewed in our audio…
Pavel Kireyev
Good salespersonship is a species of street smarts. It’s about quickly sizing up your customers and pitching your wares in terms that reverberate with their unspoken needs and desires. As artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning increasingly intersect with e-commerce, these priceless human…
Steven Brand
The food industry is evolving rapidly, with consumers demanding quality, authenticity, and transparency from food manufacturers. And they’re not just demanding it; they’re “voting with their dollars,” supporting companies that align with their personal beliefs. To keep up with consumer demand—and…
Jim Benson
Editor’s note: Read episode two in the Respect for People series here.
I was standing in a back room of the Honolulu Museum of Art that was off limits to the public. In this one room, protected from bugs, humidity, and light, was the world’s largest collection of Japanese woodblock prints. (My…
Annette Franz
I write about organizational culture and core values quite often. One of my most recent articles on this topic was about whether employees believe in their companies’ core values. I shared this statistic from Gallup: Only 23 percent of U.S. employees believe that they can apply the core values to…
Søren Block Olsen
Manufacturers face constant challenges of rising expectations as customers and regulators demand better quality and greater traceability throughout the supply chain. Exacerbating matters are unpredictable tariffs, which necessitate faster responses to changing trade barriers and regulatory…
Annette Franz
Being a customer experience (CX) professional is hard enough; misinformation just makes our work more challenging. Misinformation or confusing information by a person with a ton of followers and a ton of influence makes our work even more challenging.
Recently, Seth Godin published a post on his…
Annette Franz
You’re listening to customers. You’re combining their feedback with those bread crumbs of data that they leave with every transaction and interaction with your brand. You’ve developed customer personas to better understand who they are, what problems they are trying to solve, and what jobs they…
Barnaby Lewis
Put in the terms of this article’s title, most of us would run a mile, whatever the proposition. But the popularity of online reviews, and the trust we place in persons unknown when making major decisions about where to stay, what to eat, and how to get the most from a trip, tells a different story…
Knowledge at Wharton
A recent family biking vacation in the Dolomites region of Italy had my family and I all swept up in the charms of Northern Italy. Snow-capped peaks near the Austrian border, endless apple orchards, award-winning Chenin Blanc, and quaint Italian villages with healthy doses of affogato (strong…
Annette Franz
There’s a lot of bad press out there about journey mapping. And there’s a lot of bad journey mapping (or what people think is journey mapping). A few months ago, I shared my six-step journey mapping process. Remember, journey mapping isn’t just a tool; it’s also a process. Know the tool and create…
David Dubois
Faced with a growing range of tech solutions in marketing, from AI to big data to blockchain, business-to-business (B2B) companies too often choose the status quo. Recent evidence suggests the divide between success and failure is not about how much companies spend, but how well they integrate…
Alex Bekker
Do you know what a retailer and a tightrope walker have in common? They both have to balance. For the tightrope walker, the logic is clear. But what’s the balance that a retailer is looking for?
A typical dilemma of shortages vs. storage costs
Although the dilemma of shortages vs. storage costs is…
Annette Franz
I have been doing a bit of speaking lately, either about journey mapping or with journey mapping as part of the talk, and I’ve learned a lot, or rather, confirmed a lot. Namely, you might think you’re journey mapping, you call it journey mapping, but it’s not really journey mapping. Here’s what…
Bill Laverty
Operations management plays an important role in the manufacturing process, but similar to a stage crew at a theater, operations managers do all their best work behind the scenes. The best operations managers strive to go unnoticed, and why shouldn’t they? A seamless supply-chain process should…
