Ryan E. Day
An organization can achieve great results when everyone is working together, looking at the same information generated from the same data, and using the same rules. Changes can be made that affect a...
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Blame it on Moore’s law. We live in a digital Pangaea, a world of borderless data driven by technology, and the speed and density with which data can be transmitted and handled. It’s a world in which...
Ryan E. Day
It’s no secret that manufacturing companies operate in an inherently unstable environment. Every operational weakness poses a risk to efficiency, quality, and ultimately, to profitability. All too...
Eric Weisbrod
For nearly a century, statistical process control (SPC) has been the cornerstone of quality management and process control. But traditional SPC can’t keep up as the pace of manufacturing accelerates...
Puerto Rico Manufacturing Extension
El-Com Systems Corp. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of El-COM Systems Solutions based in California. The local company has been in Puerto Rico since 2016 operating in Caguas. The company is dedicated...
Paul Laughlin
One of the most practical data visualization books for my clients is Storytelling With Data (Wiley, 2015). So, this is a longer-than-usual book review of this modern classic.
I say that because it...
Donald J. Wheeler
Setting the process aim is a key element in the short production runs that characterize the lean production of multiple products. Last month in part one we looked at how to use a target-centered XmR...
Gleb Tsipursky
So many companies are shifting their employees to working from home to address the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Yet they’re not considering the potential quality disasters that can occur as a...
Jason Chester
During the last several decades, many forward-thinking manufacturers have adopted factory automation for all that it promises—greater efficiency, consistency, productivity, and cost savings. In fact...
Donald J. Wheeler
Lean production of multiple products is built on the assumption that the process aim can be properly set for each short production run. This article will describe how to set the process aim so that...
Jay Arthur—The KnowWare Man
Story update 5/6/2020: The charts and some data have been updated to reflect the data available on the date this article was published.
During the Covid-19 stay-at-home order in Colorado, I've become...
Donald J. Wheeler
Each day we receive data that seek to quantify the Covid-19 pandemic. These daily values tell us how things have changed from yesterday, and give us the current totals, but they are difficult to...
William A. Levinson
The phrase “flatten the curve” means to slow the transmission of the coronavirus (Covid-19) in order to spread the total number of cases out over a longer period of time. This will avoid overwhelming...
Donald J. Wheeler
This article is an update to “Tracking Covid-19” that Al Pfadt, Kathryn Whyte, and I wrote last week. In that article we summarized what is known about Covid-19, what has already happened, and...
Donald J. Wheeler
Based on the professional literature available, there are some inconvenient truths about Covid-19 that are not always considered in the chorus of confusion that exists today. Here we summarize...
Donald J. Wheeler
Lean production is built on the explicit assumption that each step is operated predictably and capably. Predictable operation can only be achieved and maintained by using process behavior charts....
Peter Dizikes
Given the complexities of healthcare, do basic statistics used to rank hospitals really work well? A study co-authored by MIT economists indicates that some fundamental metrics do, in fact, provide...
Donald J. Wheeler
Short Run SPC, Part 1 and Part 2 showed how to use zed charts and difference charts to track the underlying process while making different products. This part will illustrate both the...
Davis Balestracci
Editor’s note: The following browsable offering from Davis Balestracci represents a good chunk of his knowledge base. If you’re looking for improvement ideas, motivation, or a swift kick in the pants...
Donald J. Wheeler
Lean production is built on the explicit assumption that each step is operated predictably and capably. Predictable operation can only be achieved and maintained by using process behavior charts. But...
