Harish Jose
As our new year unfolds, I wanted to write an article to remind myself of three pieces of advice. They are from Epictetus (55–135 AD), Marcus Aurelius (121–180 AD), and George Pólya (1887–1985)....
Donald J. Wheeler
What can be done when a test is destructive? How do we characterize measurement error? How can we determine if a test method is adequate for a given product or application? How can we check for...
Kyle Pheland
Change is inevitable in every organization. Planned or not, forces inside and outside the enterprise can sometimes encumber a workforce and lead to nonvalue-added processes. Growing spurts, major...
Donald J. Wheeler
Who can be against apple pie, motherhood, or good measurements? This is why everyone stands up and salutes when we are told to maintain our measurement systems in good calibration. But what is good...
Davis Balestracci
Have you ever heard something like: “I’m committed to Dr. Deming’s approach [or Six Sigma or lean or TPS, it doesn’t matter], but executives don’t seem to listen anymore. All they do is keep...
James Kline
The United State Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that $60 billion is lost annually from workplace injuries and illness. Using the administration’s $afety Pays Program...
Joel Bradbury
Healthcare professionals have a long history of caring for their patients and improving the quality of their services. During the Crimean War (1853–1856), British nurse Florence Nightingale...
Bruce Hamilton
One of Shigeo Shingo’s popular status quo targets was engineers, whom he placed in three categories: table engineers, those who just sit around a table and talk about problems; catalog engineers,...
Jason Furness
Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from Manufacturing Money (Amazon Digital Services, 2015) by Jason Furness and Michael McLean. See the article on the Manufacturship blog.
I n martial arts, the...
Davis Balestracci
Client A came to me for a consultation and told me upfront his manager would allow him to run only 12 experiments. I asked for his objective. When I informed him that it would take more than 300...
GBMP
Ellis Medicine is a 438-bed community and teaching healthcare system serving New York’s capital region. With four main campuses, five additional service locations, more than 3,300 employees,...
Harish Jose
Kaizen is often translated as “continuous improvement” and identified as one of the core themes in lean. Today I’m pondering the question: Can kaizen ever be bad for an organization?
In order to...
Ryan E. Day
Sponsored Content
You might say what Henry Ford did for the automobile, GE, Siemens, and Mitsubishi have done for the gas and steam turbine industry. Naturally, the tools and technicians of both...
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
We recently had dinner with a wonderful friend and colleague, Michelle Guenther. During our meal, Michelle mentioned a conversation at work when she responded to a question with, “What I believe to...
Bruce Hamilton
The following is inspired by The Teachings of Don Juan (Washington Square Press, reprint 1985), an anthropological novel from the 1960s written by Carlos Castaneda, chronicling his travels with Don...
Bob Emiliani
To this day, lean management has yet to enter the mainstream in business. It remains solidly on the fringe, despite great efforts by many people over many decades.
You almost never hear of lean...
Harish Jose
Uncertainty is all around us. A lean leader’s main purpose is to develop people so they can tackle uncertainty. There are two ways to tackle uncertainty: One is genchi genbutsu (go and see, or...
Barbara A. Cleary
In a rapidly changing business environment, it’s sometimes hard just to keep up with everyday demands—never mind having time to develop new and better approaches to changing requirements, needs, or...
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
It’s hard these days to miss the passion of people who support Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, the steadfastness of the Tea Party, the outrage of the Occupy Wall Street group, and the frustration...
Peter J. Sherman
As organizations become successful and grow, uncertainty is generally the enemy. Thriving organizations seek to eliminate variation and increase efficiency. They identify best practices and...
