Robert Fangmeyer
In August 1987, Congress created the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, a public-private partnership that spawned a global movement. This small program was given a great big purpose...
Chad Kymal
In 2014, the International Automotive Task Force (IATF) reported that the automotive industry wouldn’t upgrade the ISO/TS 16949 standard to ISO 9001:2015, much to the dismay of Tier One suppliers....
Gwendolyn Galsworth
Does lean have a clearly delineated limit? When a company starts out on that path, should it expect an endpoint, a completion, an arrival? Is it a forever commitment, or is it a bounded outcome...
Mark Whitworth
Quality is, for every organization and across all industries, a key competitive differentiator. This is especially true in the highly competitive automotive industry, where cost pressures have...
Evan Miller
Sponsored Content
The CIO for a multiplant packaging company was in an uncomfortable spot. Bringing six newly acquired plants under the corporate umbrella was going smoothly, but he saw that at...
Ruth P. Stevens
A
s the document and imaging industry evolves, imaging workflows become more sophisticated, and products increase in complexity. But with innovation, the industry has faced a new problem: customer...
Jesse Lyn Stoner
Has your team’s performance fallen off lately? Was it once exciting to be part of the team, and lately you find you’re not having fun?
Perhaps your team has succumbed to team drift. In my Harvard...
William A. Levinson
Masaaki Imai, author of Gemba Kaizen (McGraw-Hill Education, 1997), introduced the concept of the value-adding “bang,” the exact moment at which a process adds value for the customer. He meant the...
Adam Day
There was a time, not long ago, when employers could rely on new hires to possess rudimentary knowledge of basic assembly methods, schematic diagrams, and the proper use of hand tools. These skills...
Mark Graban
Given all of the problems that exist in our American healthcare system, it’s encouraging that most healthcare organizations are endorsing or practicing some form of process improvement or...
Michelle LaBrosse
Having more independence requires taking on more responsibility: It’s a lesson teenagers hear again and again from their parents, and yet it rarely seems to result in teenagers actually bearing the...
Tim Lozier
Recently, there has been a shift in the way quality is led and implemented in organizations. The updated ISO 9001 standard urges leaders to incorporate quality in all levels of business, from...
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
I carefully filled the cake cone from the frozen custard machine, pushing it up at just the right moment to create a perfect ball. Then as I shut off the machine, I pulled the cone away with a...
Harish Jose
There is a concept in lean known as a “monument.” It refers to a large machine, piece of equipment, or something similar that can’t be changed right away, and so you have to plan your processes...
Davis Balestracci
Today I want to concentrate on the foundation of what is most commonly taught as design of experiments (DOE)—factorial designs.
Elsewhere I’ve mentioned three of C.M. Hendrix’s “ways to mess up an...
Jonathan Jacobi
When I first entered the safety profession, older, more experienced professionals recommended that I consider OSHA as a potential employer. The innuendo I sensed in this advice was that if I worked...
Erika Darics
Poking fun at corporate jargon is a current trend. Newspapers and online publications get a kick out of compiling extensive lists of the most egregious examples, and the overarching narrative...
Chris Outram
Day in, day out, business leaders are reminded that digital disruption is coming for their customers, for their talent, and for their bottom lines. CEOs of traditional companies consistently rate...
Loic Sadoulet
It’s a tragic irony that the day before the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil well disaster, executives from BP and the rig’s operators, Transocean, visited the platform on a “management tour” that...
Dan Jacob
A few years ago, I was working with a high-tech company that had built market leadership around world-class product quality, then lost it. Several years prior, the company had gone through a cost-...
