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David Muil
Management systems are sometimes misunderstood as nothing more than a heavy administrative burden providing limited business benefit. In fact, many organizations with management systems in place haven’t effectively defined the processes they actually employ at all. Perhaps it’s because they think…
Donald J. Wheeler
Why bother to plot your data? A simple shortcut is available that will allow you to do your analysis without the data getting in the way. How do you accomplish this breakthrough? Read on.
This marvelous advance in analysis is known as the “data-free graph.” As usual we begin with a collection of…
Mike Micklewright
Editor’s note: This article discusses topics covered at greater length in episodes 19–23 of a new streaming video training series, Creating and Sustaining Lean Improvements—Integrating Principles, Culture, and Tools by the author and 360 Performance Circle, a sister company to Quality Digest.…
Matthew J. Savage
Lori, a software customer, phoned to ask if Cpk is the best statistic to use in a process that slits metal to exacting widths. As a PQ Systems technical support analyst, I too wondered what index would be best suited for her application, a highly specialized one. Perhaps Cpk, Ppk, Cpm, or some…
NIST
During the first six months in their special, new, four-bedroom home in suburban Maryland, the Nisters, a prototypical family of four, earned about $40 by exporting 328 kilowatt hours of electricity into the local grid, while meeting all of their varied energy needs.
Furthermore, these virtual…
MassMEP
MassMEP’s ISO 9001:2008 Collaborative was conceived as a way to make the certification process more accessible to small and medium-sized manufacturers. The project brings four to eight companies together in a collaborative setting to help share costs and ideas.
The program takes members through…
Bruno Scibilia
My main objective is to encourage greater use of statistical techniques in the service sector and present new ways to implement them.
In a previous blog, I presented an approach you can use to identify process steps that may be improved in the service sector (quartile analysis). here I’ll show…
ISO
How can governments increase efficiency, prevent errors, and improve customer service? Answer: ISO 9001.
ISO 9001 is by far the world's most established quality framework, currently being used by more than 1.5 million organizations in 191 countries. Those are some impressive numbers—and among the…
Matthew Barsalou
While reading a list of 5S activities, I thought, “Am I mistaken?” The activities on the list didn’t match what I thought they should be. I dug a little deeper and discovered there has been a lot of variation in the translation from Japanese to English for the methodology called 5S, which is often…
Lean Math With Mark Hamel
Triangle kanban, one of three types of signal kanban, is unique in that there is only a single kanban per part number or stock-keeping unit. Accordingly, kanban-sizing math has nothing to do with determining the number of kanban; that’s obviously fixed.
Instead, the math is focused on determining…
Dan Nelson
Editor's note: Dan Nelson will be a guest on Quality Digest LIVE Friday March 14, 2014, at 11 a.m. Pacific.
Bill Cosby once did a routine about a funny aspect of human nature: How we all seem to have a hard time believing the obvious.
So Cosby pulls some milk out of the fridge. He sniffs it. It’s…
Davis Balestracci
My last column, “Can We Please Stop the Guru Wars?” made the case that the various improvement approaches are all pretty much the same. To recap, there are seven sources of problems with a process. The first three sources help frame the situation.
They are: Source No. 1. Inadequate knowledge of…
Bruce Hamilton
Across a large swath of the United States, the winter has been especially cold, snowy, and dreary this year. So here’s a post with a link to a cheery video at the end, just to pick my spirits up—and maybe yours, too.
The English language can be confounding. For example, the word “turkey” is slang…
Jim Benson
How do you know when to clean up your kanban’s Done column? When it’s full.
When we showed our board to people in classes and on consulting engagements, the Done column showed that we were really, really productive. It was huge. It went on forever. Hundreds of completed tasks.
So, how do we clean…
Donald J. Wheeler
Students typically encounter many obstacles while learning statistics. In 44 years of teaching I have discovered some distinctions that help students overcome these obstacles. This article will remove some sources of confusion concerning the relationship between statistical process control (SPC)…
David Schwinn
I was reminded recently of the passing of Thomas Berry, one of the most eminent cultural historians of our time. His work and insight have been touchstones for me for the last 30 years.
For me, the story starts in 1993 when my wife, Carole, and I were invited to help the folks in the North Simcoe…
Jay Arthur—The KnowWare Man
Let’s face it: Everyone isn’t cut out to be a belted Six Sigma guru, but everyone should know how to use key tools in the right order to solve the problems facing businesses. And they can’t wait months or years to get results; the marketplace moves too quickly.
During the early 1990s, I attended…
Mark R. Hamel
Larry Loucka, a close friend and colleague, recently pointed me to a Feb. 16, 2014, article in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Now, before you roll your eyes and give me the WSJ-isn’t known-for-getting-the-lean-thing-right look, hear me out. What the journal published is really, really good stuff—…
Bob Emiliani
Let’s get rid of value stream maps. I can hear it now: “Why would you say such a thing? Value stream maps are great. We can’t see waste without them.”
Precisely.
Value stream maps have developed an outsized importance in relation to other types of basic information that one gathers when trying to…
Dan Nelson
On June 23, 2013, Simon Feary, executive director of the Chartered Quality Institute, delivered the welcome speech at the International Register of Certificated Auditors’ (IRCA) 12th annual forum held in Japan. Feary made several bold statements, including, “Something isn’t working when auditors…
Mike Micklewright
Editor’s note: Mike Micklewright will be a guest on Quality Digest Live, on Feb. 28, 2014, at 11 a.m. Pacific/2 p.m. Eastern. Micklewright will also present a webinar, “Sustaining Lean Improvements While Adding Spark to Your QMS,” on March 6, 2014, at 11 a.m. Pacific/2 p.m. Eastern.
Many years ago…
John Flaig
Engineers have used safety margins for centuries to protect their companies and customers from the consequences of product degradation and failure. Sometimes the safety margins are fairly obvious (e.g., maximum-load limits posted in elevators), and other times they’re not.
Design margins are…
Mark Rosenthal
Over the years, I’ve observed a number of efforts at various companies to implement A3 problem solving, an approach based on the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle that summarizes the problem and solution on a folded form, usually 11 in. × 17 in. I worked for some of those companies; I’ve observed…
Alan Nicol
In part one, we looked at the importance of understanding findings in order to make better decisions. To do this we and our decision-making leaders must become adept at data investigation and analysis so we can ask critical questions.
In part two I want to emphasize another truth that will prevent…
David Muil
The Boy Scouts of America have a timeless motto: “Be prepared.” These are words to live by. In the wilderness, if an individual has a pocket knife, a length of string, and some matches, he can deal with most emergencies that may arise. In business, however, a Swiss Army knife is going to do little…