All Features
Sal Lucido
In Part I, “Savvy Compliance Strategy Can Improve GMP,” we took a high-level look at a process for automating regulatory compliance management. The closed-loop process starts with documenting your processes, followed by monitoring or checking that the processes are being followed. Next, you…
Steven Ouellette
So I thought I was done with measurement system analysis after my last column, but I just finished reading Don Wheeler’s June 1 column, “Is the Part in Spec?” and the first thing I thought was, “Well, that was… complicated and ultimately unhelpful in answering the article’s title question.” I like…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
During the 1996 Summer Olympics, I saw a young athlete with his brand-new silver medal around his neck and a massive smile on his face. He was so thrilled with his achievement that he was mixing and mingling with everyone he met on the sidewalk. Perfect strangers were shaking his hand, slapping…
Tripp Babbitt
The worst man-made environmental disaster in history is a tough pill to swallow for everyone, but especially for those responsible for it. Overnight, BP’s name and reputation has turned from a respected energy company with a predictable dividend to the company that should not be named…
Bruce Ballinger
A recent article published in Quality Digest Daily pointed out that to foster a problem-solving culture, managers must serve as mentors and cultural leaders—building the systems and atmosphere that support and encourage team members at all levels to problem solve effectively.
That is…
Standards Council of Canada
The Bre-X gold scandal that rocked the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) during the late 1990s forever changed the Canadian mining sector. When millions in pension dollars were lost due to fraudulent and falsified test data, investors around the world were outraged.
It remains one of the most…
Emil Venere
This image shows a new “hybrid optoelectric” device, developed by researchers at Purdue. The device uses a combination of light and electric fields to position droplets and tiny particles, such as bacteria, viruses, and DNA, representing a potential new tool for…
Bill Kalmar
Permit me to take a break from all things quality- and customer service-oriented and talk about what’s really important.
Baseball.
That’s right; I feel the need to respond to the “perfect game” controversy from a Detroiter’s point of view. We in the Motor City regularly get criticized and…
Thomas R. Cutler
There is no shortage of standards. There are standards that define how something should be made vs. those related to processes, such as ISO 9001. According to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), standards that provide requirements or give guidance on good management practice…
Michelle LaBrosse
When the summer sun beats down, there’s always someone in the family who reminds you to put on your sunscreen. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to easily avoid getting burned at work? There is. It’s called project management.
Grab a bottle of water, put on your baseball cap, and think…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
For more than 20 years, Toyota’s methods, known as “lean,” have made headlines. And that’s how long engineer, researcher, and author Mike Rother has been involved with the subject. Like many others, Rother began with Toyota’s production tools. And like many others, he found that these are…
Gene Rider
Approximately three-fourths of product safety recalls in the United States are the result of some design flaw in the product rather than a manufacturing or other defect. Most violations of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) “small parts” standard, for example, are the result of…
Criterion NDT
(Criterion NDT: Auburn, WA) -- Doctors, hospitals, and individuals depend on the highest quality hypodermic needles to administer medicines and draw fluids. Unfortunately, 100-percent visual and/or water-leak test inspection of the needle tubing or finished product for microscopic cracks or…
Sal Lucido
The compliance department’s primary function is to ensure that the company complies with all applicable regulations, rules, and laws. Regardless of the industry—life science, energy and utilities, or financial services—this is a universal mandate.
As someone who serves customers across many…
Jon Miller
In a recent e-mail, a reader of my blog asked me, “How can we enhance top management commitment and involvement for implementing total productive maintenance (TPM)?”
This is a great general question to ask during any effort to establish excellence, maintain excellence, or transform excellence…
National Association for Healthcare Quality
The Toyota Production System and U.S. health care improvement share a long history. What lessons can health care leaders learn from Toyota’s recent production troubles? A few experts recently discussed this on WIHI, an audio program sponsored by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). Here…
Jon Padfield
On the evening of April 14, I boarded a plane to London, where I was scheduled to teach a series of continuous improvement classes. The following morning, as my flight neared the United Kingdom, the pilot announced that our flight was being diverted to Brussels due to a cloud of volcanic ash…
Tripp Babbitt
I challenge myself each day to hear something different. Sometimes this is about education, liberals, conservatives, tree-huggers, or many other opinions and topics that counter my perspective. For me, this develops new perspectives on problems and issues that service organizations face, even if…
Michele DeMeo
A surgical technician prepares her back table for the next laparoscopic surgery. Instruments are removed from their containers and packages, and placed neatly on the back table. Chemical indicators show that sets and instruments are sterilized; the patient is prepped. The surgeon begins the…
Donald J. Wheeler
During the past 20 years it has become fashionable to condemn measurement processes that are less than perfect. Yet the reality is that we must always use imperfect data. Given this fact of life, how can we ever know if a measured item is or is not within the specifications? Put another way, how…
Stewart Anderson
I am often struck by a remark of W. Edwards Deming that the aim of a system must include plans for the future. As Deming wrote in The New Economics (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1994), “A system must have an aim. Without an aim, there is no system. The aim of the system must be clear to…
Stewart Anderson
I am often struck by a remark of W. Edwards Deming that the aim of a system must include plans for the future. As Deming wrote in The New Economics, “A system must have an aim. Without an aim, there is no system. The aim of the system must be clear to everyone in the system. The aim must include…
Raissa Carey
It took Gutzon Borglum 14 years to complete the carving of Mount Rushmore, one of the world’s most iconic monuments. Sixty-nine years later, thanks to ground-breaking 3-D laser scanning technology, the granite sculpture of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and…
(Academy Leadership Publishing: King of Prussia, PA) -- When news headlines trumpet story after story about fiscal mismanagement, unchecked greed, massive bankruptcies, and rampant downsizing, it’s hard to believe there’s any good news about the business world. Indeed, it’s almost impossible not…
In the classic Aesop fable, “The Fox and the Grapes,” a fox desires some grapes hanging high overhead. When he is unable to come up with a way to reach them, he convinces himself that the grapes are probably sour and therefore not desirable anyway. “Sour grapes” has become an idiomatic expression…
