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Lean Math With Mark Hamel
The time observation form, also known as a process study form, is a basic and often-used tool for lean practitioners. Note that here we are talking about applying the continuous time-observation method and not the work-sampling method.
The form, in combination with a stopwatch, serves multiple…
Rick Haynes
Measurement system analysis of uncertainty is one topic in lean Six Sigma training that is too often ignored or under-taught. I believe that it is under-taught because most instructors have never used or understood it. Therefore, this column will dive deep into what it is and why you should learn…
Umberto Tunesi
Stone Age men, so the story goes, got the wheel inspiration by observing trees rolling downhill. So they sliced trees and fit the rounds they got to their sleds, to move them faster and with less effort. In so doing, they also invented carts while expediting transportation.
But friction’s thermal…
Jerry Wilson
There are many reasons why organizations decide to register or certify themselves to the various standards and specifications in industry; all are important, but not all are vital. Standards registration in support of sales, marketing, and PR efforts certainly helps companies grow, for example.…
Kyle Toppazzini
How many of you have been through a lean Six Sigma (LSS) project or business transformation and there was no internal conflict between employees or among managers? My guess is very few. In any LSS project, company transformation, or change initiative there are going to be instances of love and war…
Tripp Babbitt
S
ometimes it’s necessary for a person to offer up views that seem to be an affront. Because these views often challenge the status quo, people’s reactions can be mixed. Some will consider the person a heretic for expressing them, and others will wonder why anyone would say such a thing. The…
ISO
Asset management is not a new practice. Managing assets to meet organizational or social objectives has existed since humans first began building infrastructures, whether private or public. The effort and resources involved inevitably generated the need to preserve and maintain such…
James Lamprecht
The words “risk” or “risks” have been sprinkled throughout the 2015 revision of ISO 9001, the quality management system standard from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
Although some “requirements” will be easy to satisfy using well-established process monitoring or…
Lean Math With Mark Hamel
Work content (Wc) represents total operator cycle time or, if multiple operators are involved, the sum of operator cycle times to perform a specific process(es) or subprocess(es). The scope of human work, including both value-added and nonvalue-added activities, may encompass a complete value…
Mona K. Draper
Maersk Line is the largest container shipping company in the world. At any given time, its 500 vessels transport approximately 3 percent of the world's gross national product (GNP). In 2007, I walked into Maersk as a lean Six Sigma consultant looking for business and walked out with a job.
I saw…
Carly Barry
To promote ethical and moral responsibility in shaping its graduates, the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology created a sustainability initiative to reduce its own environmental footprint.
As part of that team’s efforts, Six Sigma students at Rose-Hulman conducted a project to reduce food waste…
Arun Hariharan
During the past dozen years, companies I have worked with have, between them, completed more than 1,000 lean Six Sigma (LSS) projects. Based on this experience, I’ve found that improvement projects can be broadly categorized into three types: quality-improvement, revenue-enhancing, and cost-saving…
NIST
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new standard reference material (SRM), the first such measurement tool to enable hospitals to link important tissue density measurements made by CAT scans to international standards.
Computed tomography (CT…
Denise Robitaille
What’s Happening With ISO 9001? Stakeholders have offered suggestions for the upcoming revision
Committee Draft of ISO 9001 Is OutChanges include genuine improvement; some will make implementation more difficult
Denise Robitaille
Editor’s note: Denise Robitaille is a member of the U.S. TAG to ISO/TC 176, the committee responsible for updating the ISO 9000 family of standards. She will be reporting on the revision progress to ISO 9001, which will be completed in 2015. Read other articles in the series here.
The first…
Stacey Jarrett Wagner
Approximately half of the 704 employers participating in a survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education and American Public Media’s Marketplace said they have trouble finding qualified college graduates to fill their companies’ positions. Yet, 68 percent of the survey’s manufacturers said colleges…
Michael Ray Fincher
For me, a quality professional with 20 years experience in manufacturing—producing everything from garbage bags to luxury ski boats—my transition to the service industry was a shocking experience to say the least. It was not without challenges, I must confess.
When I was asked to join the…
Bruno Scibilia
All processes are affected by various sources of variations over time. Products that are designed based on optimal settings will, in reality, tend to drift away from their ideal settings during the manufacturing process.
Environmental fluctuations and process variability often cause major quality…
Bull Wranglers
There are more than 1,100 textbooks referring to “short-term process capability,” as distinct from “long term.” Surely 1,100 textbooks can’t be wrong? Let’s apply the first Bull Wrangler test. Does short- and long-term process capability make common sense?
What is capability?
According to ISO…
Akhilesh Gulati
Editor’s note: This article continues the series exploring structured innovation using the TRIZ methodology, a problem-solving, analysis, and forecasting tool derived from studying patterns of invention found in global patent data.
Belinda started the My Executive Council (MEC) meeting with the…
Kyle Toppazzini
One of the recurring sentiments I hear from business executives is that lean Six Sigma (LSS) simply takes too long to implement. Without senior management buy-in, implementing it is not only difficult, it’s also nearly impossible. What if there were an easier way that resulted in faster…
Greg Hutchins
In Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (Wiley, 1998), Peter Bernstein says the mastery of risk is the foundation of modern life and is what divides modern from ancient times. By consciously or unconsciously calculating probabilities, quality professionals make intelligent decisions…
Denise Robitaille
Editor’s note: Denise Robitaille is a member of the U.S. TAG to ISO/TC 176, the committee responsible for updating the ISO 9000 family of standards. She will be reporting on the revision progress to ISO 9001, which will be completed in 2015. Read other articles in the series here.
By now most…
Morgan Palmer
Editor’s note: Quality Digest hosted Morgan Palmer’s webinar, “Defining and Building a Risk Management Strategy for Quality and Compliance Management Systems” on Tuesday, April 30, at 2 p.m. Eastern/11 a.m. Pacific.
When we look at the dynamics of commerce, from any industry, we see an increasing…
Quality Digest
On March 28, 2013, the world lost a person whom many consider to be a major contributor to the world of industrial statistics: George E. P. Box. Relatively unknown outside the world of statistics, Box was certainly very well known by those who have studied or practiced industrial statistics.
His…