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-...
Bruce Hamilton
I wrote a piece a little more than five years ago about a variety reduction program (VRP), an amazing but little-known product-design optimization tool. At the time I referred to VRP as an idea...
Knowledge at Wharton
I t wasn’t that long ago that GM ran commercials advertising that its Oldsmobile division didn’t just produce cars for your grandfather, but also for everyone else. It was an attempt to...
Naphtali Hoff
“Honest feedback is hard to take, especially from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.”
—Franklin P. Jones
I once found myself needing to find new employment. The situation that I...
Ken Voytek
In a recent post, I examined the differences in productivity across small and large manufacturing firms, and noted that there were differences across manufacturers in terms of size. But it’s also...
Annette Franz
A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post about emotionally unavailable customers. Hat tip to James Lawther for inspiring me to actually flip the tables here and think about emotionally challenged...
Steve Melito
How competitive is American manufacturing? By the year 2020, the United States is projected to take the top spot in the Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index (GMCI), a multiyear research...
Michelle LaBrosse
Ihave studied systems dynamics modeling for three decades. What I’ve experienced first-hand is that when you establish several key core values, you can create an entire self-replicating system for...
William A. Levinson
ISO 9001:2015, Clause 4.2—“Understanding the needs and expectations of interested parties” requires the organization to determine the “requirements of these interested parties that are relevant to...
Todd Hohn
More than 313 million global work-related accidents occur each year, according to the International Labour Organization, with a high percentage of those accidents resulting in significant time away...
Debby Newslow
Standard operating procedures, or SOPs, are critical to quality assurance. Frequently, in an operation with many associates, each one does his or her job as well as possible (because no one wants...
Johns Hopkins University
More than one-third of Americans say they don’t have enough time in their day to get things done, and the majority of Americans who report not having enough spare time also say they battle stress,...
Giles Hutchins
Each generation experiences significant change due to innovations, disruptions, and shifting perspectives. These transform our ways of operating and organizing in business and beyond. Yet, it seems...
Manuel Sosa
Back in 2004, I was saddled with a two-hour commute to work almost every day. Fortunately, I had something with me to make the experience more bearable: my new third-generation iPod. Many of you...
Barry Plunkett
For top executives to add value to their organizations, those in the C suite must learn how to recruit, train, nurture, maintain, and retain exceptional employees who understand customers. If an...
Davis Balestracci
In my last column I explained how many situations have an inherent response surface, which is the “truth.” However, any experimental result represents this true response, which is unfortunately...
Jason Furness
Here’s a “tales from the real world” extract from our book, Manufacturing Money (Amazon Digital, 2015). It offers an example of the “five focusing steps” to improvement, with a particular focus on...
