Alan Nicol

Business improvement and cultural change leader

Alan Nicol, the executive member of AlanNicolSolutions LLC, is an experienced business improvement and cultural change leader with a background in engineering and product development. His skills and experience include cultural change leadership, continuous improvement, business performance improvement, lean, Six Sigma, design for Six Sigma, product development, innovation methods, engineering design, systems engineering, engineering management, reliability engineering, value engineering, project and program management, system integration, total quality, and ISO 9001. He writes a blog, Business Wisdom Within.

Tue, 09/15/2015 - 13:18
At the Expense of All Else How an innocent decision can become a business-threatening mistake
Tue, 07/29/2014 - 09:11
I would never want to believe that a business, operated by intelligent and moral people, could sacrifice quality, and even ethics, to produce a product and complete a sale. Yet recently, I witnessed a business that was so desperate to make a few…
How to Make Customer Input Useful It’s all about translation
Mon, 07/14/2014 - 09:47
In our efforts to ask for and accept customer input, many have lost sight of an important part of the process: translation. With the advent of automated digital surveys, big data, and a plethora of voice of the customer (VOC) techniques, using…
Iceberg Ahead? Ramming Speed! What to do when your boss announces a suicide mission
Tue, 05/13/2014 - 10:33
Last week a friend shared with me a snippet from an employee meeting. All “lean transformation” activities were to stop in order to put every effort into catching up on late shipments. My friend’s comment, between many expressions of frustration…
When Is Waste Neither Pure Nor Necessary? When it’s smart
Thu, 04/10/2014 - 10:26
When we learn the ways of lean methodology, we’re taught that there are two types of waste: pure waste, which needs to be eliminated; and necessary waste, which does nothing to improve our performance or profits but must be produced anyway. I’ve…
The Problem-Solving Method for Lost Control Before the tool, there was the process
Tue, 03/18/2014 - 14:05
Not every process or problem will produce diagnostic data that we can use statistical or other mathematical tools to address. Sometimes we feel ill-equipped when we have a problem for which our neat and sophisticated tools won’t apply. What should…
Trusting Too Much in Data, Part 2 Why metrics make poor candidates for cause-and-effect correlations
Wed, 02/19/2014 - 11:31
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…
Trusting Too Much in Data, Part 1 Ten questions to ask for better analysis and decision making
Tue, 02/18/2014 - 09:33
Recently, I’ve run into posts, articles, and discussions concerning findings that employee morale doesn’t equate to productivity. They are an excellent example of how easily we can mislead ourselves with data. By way of background, apparently some…
A Headless Chicken Leading the Blind We can’t solve a problem if we can’t accept it for what it is
Wed, 01/15/2014 - 11:20
My wife coined the phrase “headless chicken leading the blind” last week to describe the phenomenon of her organization experiencing a bit of a crisis. It’s a common enough situation that we all feel familiar with it. Something goes wrong that…
Testing Is Informative, Not Curative Data can reveal bad components, but no amount of additional data can fix them
Tue, 12/03/2013 - 17:11
Here is a common scenario that has come across my path again just this week. It happens to all of us at some point. We conduct our routine incoming inspection or quality test of materials or components, and something fails the screen. Now what?…
Say Not 'Cost of Quality,' Rather Say 'Investment' Think of assessing and assuring quality as contributing to your success
Wed, 11/20/2013 - 10:35
I’ve heard a phase several times in recent months that bothers me. I’ve heard people say, “cost of quality.” Perhaps folks using this phrase have simply, inadvertently dropped an important word, but that consideration doesn’t lessen my concern.…