All Features
If you work for an organization involved with meeting the requirements of a quality system standard, specification, or government regulation, sooner or later you will be on the receiving end of a quality system audit.
The auditor might be one who works for: • Your organization (an internal auditor…
Margaret A. Hamburg
Every year, millions of products regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) flood into the United States from 150 countries. Ensuring these products are safe and effective can be daunting task. It was heartening for me to sign two cooperative arrangements with some of our international…
Jim Frost
Previously, I’ve written about how to use Minitab to identify the distribution of your continuous data. That post prompted several questions about how to use and identify discrete distributions. If you are a quality improvement analyst who works with counts of defects or pass/fail inspections, you…
Matthew E. May
I remember when I first discovered the work of Mark Graban. The year was 2008, and I was preparing to speak to the Massachusetts Hospital Association, an audience of about 400 hospital CEOs and administrators. They wanted me to tie my work with Toyota to healthcare, which I had no firsthand…
John Hunter
Masaaki Imai is a consultant, author, and founder of the Kaizen Institute. The second edition of his book, Gemba Kaizen (McGraw-Hill Professional, 2012), was published in May. He agreed to an interview with The W. Edwards Deming Institute Blog.
The W. Edwards Deming Institute Blog (TDI): Did you…
Donald J. Wheeler
There are two basic ideas or principles that need to be respected when creating a chart for individual values and a moving range (an XmR chart). This column will explain and illustrate these two principles for effective XmR charts.
The first principle for an effective XmR chart is that successive…
Donald Caruth, Gail Caruth
Effective coaching is a skill that requires an understanding of human motivation and behavior. It also requires plenty of practice. To coach, according to most dictionaries, means to “tutor, train, give hints to, or prime with facts.”
The role of a supervisor or leader as a coach is to stimulate…
Matthew Barsalou
Six Sigma was originally created by Bob Gavin at Motorola during the 1980s; however, it could be argued that a comparable methodology was in use as early as the 1850s. Florence Nightingale is known for founding the field of nursing, but few people outside of the field of mathematics appreciate her…
You’re in a meeting when a colleague brings up an idea that you think (or even know) is not so great. For many of us, our first instinct is to shoot the idea down immediately, one way or another, before it gains traction. How often have you suffered through this challenging situation?
When it…
Jay Arthur—The KnowWare Man
The United States spends $2.5 trillion for healthcare. Healthcare spending is expected to reach $4.5 trillion by the end of the decade. With Obamacare becoming a reality, we need to find a way cut the cost of healthcare to help pay for these increasing costs. The Institute of Medicine (IOM)…
Portable 3D measuring devices have revolutionized the world of metrology since their invention some 30 years ago. They have brought the world of inspection right down to the production line, allowing measurements to be done much quicker and easier.
However, some devices, including portable…
NIST
With new treatments for disease, test suites that safeguard computers, and even expertise to rescue miners trapped thousands of feet underground, federal laboratories have a wealth of technologies and know-how that can give U.S. companies a competitive edge and improve quality of life.
These…
University of Michigan
At hospital shift changes, doctors and nurses exchange crucial information about the patients they’re handing over—or at least they strive to. In reality, they might not spend enough time talking about the toughest cases, according to a study led by the University of Michigan.
These quick but…
MIT News
A couple of decades ago, visitors to the quiet city of Zaragoza, Spain, had no reason to think it would become a capital of world trade. But in 2000, the city opened Europe’s largest logistics hub, called PLAZA, and now Zaragoza is a global shipping link, connecting manufacturers, suppliers, and…
Akhilesh Gulati
Brian had been running his machine shop as a third-tier supplier to the aerospace industry for more than 15 years, and it had been successful as a small shop. Over the years he had learned the importance of ongoing training and continuous improvement. He contracted with trainers and encouraged his…
Belinda Jones
Overlapping personal passion with technical expertise can often spawn a successful business. Chris Kelley, president of California Cycleworks, exemplifies the small business owner who envisioned opportunity and took a leap of faith.
While Kelley was working at CA Cycleworks as a college student,…
Bruce Hamilton
Last week I visited with JVS, a terrific Boston-area organization whose mission is “to empower individuals from diverse communities to find employment and build careers, and to partner with employers to hire, develop, and retain productive workforces.”
I was reminded of my first experience with…
Dale Pereira, Pete Marut
Firearm manufacturing has come a long way from the days when a room full of gunsmiths was needed to ensure accurate, quality weapons. Nonetheless, manufacturing firearm parts still requires a deep understanding of how the many small parts work together to create a successful weapon.
With the rapid…
Joel Smith
It’s no secret that in the world of statistics, the individuals chart and X-bar chart are pretty much the popular kids in school. But have you ever met their cousin EWMA? He’s all about exponentially weighted moving averages (EWMA). That’s him in the middle of the class, wearing the clothes that…
Renishaw
The Cliffs of Moher is one of Ireland’s top visitor attractions and a designated UNESCO Geo Park. O'Brien’s Tower stands proudly on a headland of the majestic cliffs, at the top of which you can see the Aran Islands, Galway Bay, and the Maum Turk Mountains in Connemara. The cliffs take their name…
Tim Egloff
Every manufacturer must conform to some level of product safety and quality, whether driven by consumer desires, competitive pressures, or government regulations. To this end, quality practices have become a business imperative for all industries.
Whether your company is certified to ISO 9001, the…
Paul Naysmith
My Tuesday evenings have recently been filled thanks to the entertainment provided by the very nice people at the History channel. I’ve been thoroughly entranced by the show, The Men Who Built America. Production quality aside, it’s really an incredible feat, on reflection, how a TV channel could…
Bill Kalmar
Thanksgiving is my favorite celebration. Unlike other holidays, there is no pretentiousness. One just arrives at the host home dressed in an everyday wardrobe and not encumbered with loads of presents.
Now, that is not to say that as a guest you can’t bring a tasty food dish or a bottle of wine…
Jon Miller
At the heart of the Toyota Way are two pillars, continuous improvement and respect for people. These are supported by five values: challenge, improvement (kaizen), seeing for yourself (genchi genbutsu), respect, and teamwork. The word “challenge” means either a tangible thing, such as competition…
Matthew E. May
In our world of excess everything, savvy innovators realize that less is actually best. They know that delivering a memorable and meaningful experience hinges on user engagement, which is best achieved through a subtractive approach. Anything excessive, confusing, or wasteful is intelligently and…
