All Features
Bob Emiliani
During the early days, late 1970s to late 1980s, there existed just a few small organizations to help people learn about and implement Toyota’s production system (TPS). They were led by people with decades of hand-on practice at Toyota and its affiliated companies. Some organizations, however,…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
As a sort of character-building exercise, I recently opened an unsolicited email from my health insurance provider. I was intent on doing a quick purge of sham, spam, and flimflam, and I figured this one would be no different. But I also know I’m biased against health insurers, so I decided to set…
New River Kinematics
Learning to effectively use and troubleshoot geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) analysis can be a saving grace when you’re faced with the question, “Why did my check fail?”
This article will explain the fundamental principles of GD&T evaluation and provide practices to…
Quality Digest
Sponsored Content
‘My small business has landed a few very lucrative contracts and we’re growing. Honestly, we’re now struggling with quality control. We have management systems in place, and that’s helping, but we’re still having issues. I don’t know where to begin to get a handle on this.” —…
James Brewton
Keeping every healthcare employee focused on continuous improvement, every day, is a huge challenge. It’s natural for people to lose sight of long-term goals and objectives due to the pressures of daily responsibilities. One powerful tool executives can use to keep continuous improvement at the…
Dan Perreault
Sponsored Content
The CMM, or coordinate measuring machine, has long been the standard for dimensional inspection of complex parts across a variety of industries. But has the CMM outlived its usefulness? Is this technology now obsolete in the face of new technologies such as 3D scanning?
The …
Annette Franz
Are you listening to your customers? Do you understand what they’re trying to achieve? Are you using what you learn to actually design a better experience for them?
I was thrilled to be interviewed by Leah Berry and to a be part of her 30 Experts in 30 Days series; she asked me questions about…
Jeffrey Phillips
I recently had the opportunity to speak to a leadership team that is considering building an innovation capability in their business. I was asked a question I get infrequently, but one I always enjoy answering. The question is this: “What keeps businesses from innovating effectively?”
The answer…
Jess Scheer
T
he world’s worst-kept business secret is that most acquisitions fail. Depending on what metric you use to evaluate success, mergers miss their intended goals by as much as 85 percent of the time. With a failure rate that high, there’s no single cause, and there’s no silver bullet that will…
Davis Balestracci
As most of you know, one of my mantras for change agents is, “Those darn humans! God bless ’em,” i.e., don’t be surprised by anything. People never seem to mind change... for other people or departments.
Ever heard this: “It’s about time someone did something about that. They really needed to…
NIST
The prospect of a “hydrogen economy”—in which vehicles powered by fuel cells would travel the nation’s roadways emitting nothing from their tailpipes but wisps of water vapor—was making headlines 12 years ago.
In his 2003 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush issued a challenge to…
Marc Silverstein
Because many types of image analyses are performed to meet the different needs of industries and applications, imaging software and microscope companies have created software that serves as a “jack of all trades,” offering a variety of tools that apparently allow you to accomplish just about…
Mike Figliuolo
Time is your most precious resource. If you’re not mindful about how you invest it in your team members, you won’t be happy with the “returns” you get. Being more effective requires you to look at your time in a new light.
Do leaders work, or do they sit back and supervise others? Where you stand…
Matthew Barsalou
I gave a rather successful talk on communicating design of experiments (DoE) at the recent ENBIS 14 conference in Linz, Austria. Things went mostly well, but it’s also fair to say many attendees had one major criticism: I didn’t explain why one factor at a time testing (OFAT) isn’t ideal. That…
Marta Collier
The lazy days of summer are a thing of the past. Through a remarkably diverse set of summer camps and other enrichment programs, kids all over Arkansas spent the summer of 2015 participating in activities designed to spark their curiosity and teach them the joy of creating. That joy—and the 21st…
Maurice DeCastro
Would you market your business today the same way you were marketing it 30 years ago? Would you use the same technology? Would you lead your team the same way? I’m guessing most leaders would answer each question with a resounding “No.”
If that’s the case, why has the work culture for business…
William A. Levinson
We all know what happens when we assume. For example, traditional designed experiments assume that residuals, the differences between the actual and modeled data, follow the normal distribution (as seen in figure 1). These experiments include t tests, analysis of variance (ANOVA), factorial…
Michelle LaBrosse
When project managers establish effective routines for their daily work as well as for managing their teams, they develop healthy project management (PM) “hygiene.” This metaphor relates to having consistent processes in place, and it’s what project management is all about. Consistent routines…
Akhilesh Gulati
The big data revolution is requiring a seismic shift inside organizations, both in the way we build relationships and the way we make decisions. Each is now driven by data rather than intuition.
In general, decision making is accomplished via a thought process of selecting a logical choice from…
Michael Causey
Ironically, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is sometimes wary of issuing guidances out of concern it will appear to be imposing new rules that will stifle innovation, according to Ken Skodacek, a policy analyst for the Clinical Trials Program at the Center for Devices and Radiological…
Arun Hariharan
In my previous article, “Is Poor Quality ISO 9001’s Fault?” I shared the example of the chairman of a large company who ridiculed ISO 9001, saying, “Even the municipal office of this city is ISO 9001-certified. And we all know how bad the municipality is. I don’t believe ISO 9001 can do my…
Kevin Meyer
Awhile ago I discussed the value created by writing by hand. By writing on whiteboards or scribbling in a notebook, ownership, learning, and understanding is created. Similarly, truly understanding numbers creates ownership, learning, and understanding—thereby creating the potential for action.
I’…
Bob Emiliani
There are many ways to improve your thinking skills. One way is by practicing critical thinking. Teachers require their students, from elementary school on through college and graduate school, to do research to gather information, analyze the validity of data, determine the strengths and…
Jim Colton
How many samples do you need to be 95-percent confident that at least 95 percent—or even 99 percent—of your product is good? The answer depends on the type of response variable you are using—categorical or continuous.
The type of response will dictate whether you’ll use: 1. Attribute sampling:…
Arun Hariharan
The chairman of a large company once ridiculed ISO 9001, saying, “Even the municipal office of this city is ISO 9001-certified, and we all know how bad the municipality is. I don’t believe ISO 9001 can do my business any good.”
The chairman had similar uncharitable things to say about other…
