- Homepage
http://
-
What’s the Best Quality System?
In the September 2008 issue of Quality Progress, a group of collaborators and I published “Starting from Scratch” to help people figure out how to approach the often-nebulous problem of how to launch a new quality system. Making sense out of the acronym soup of quality systems can be daunting, even though you have to…
-
Extreme Measurement and the Trash Guy
“You can only manage what you measure.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve heard this statement so often that I’m not sure whether it’s a valuable heuristic or just a cliché. What I do know is that I (personally) tend to like measuring for two reasons: 1) I’m not good at remembering things that happened in the…
-
Shocks to the System: Financial Meltdown and a Fragile Supply Chain
Just-In-Time (JIT) practices are a cornerstone of the fast-paced, 21st century globalized economy. But as the October 2008 financial meltdown has so starkly indicated, when just a few of the assumptions on which a critical system is based change, all hell can break loose. What effect could the economic crisis have on businesses that rely…
-
How do I do a Lean Six Sigma (LSS) Project?
First, you should familiarize yourself with what a Lean Six Sigma project is all about. The Lean Six Sigma (LSS) projects I’ve done in the past have all used the Lean Six Sigma Quality Transformation Toolkit (LSSQTT), a structured problem-solving system that’s currently packaged as an Excel workbook (but has evolved in the past, and…
Quality and Innovation 