Data collection is an essential part of your daily routine in manufacturing. It’s the engine that drives your quality improvement efforts, whether they are continuous improvement, Six Sigma, Lean, statistical process control (SPC), or anything else. From the data you collect you can discover things about your operation that you might never know from walking … Continued

Welcome back to the blog series written specifically for you, the quality professional. In the first blog of this series, we talked about how you can apply your statistical process control (SPC) analysis holistically across your plant and your enterprise to truly enjoy the great benefits that SPC can provide. And in blog two we discussed data collection–specifically, how shop floor … Continued

It has been just over 100 years since Henry Ford introduced the modern assembly line and forever changed the course of manufacturing. The combination of interchangeable parts and time-efficient processes created a system that eventually sold 15 million Model T Fords and made the automobile one of the centerpieces of American culture. Over a century … Continued

How do manufacturing organizations confirm that supplier products comply with critical quality standards? For the most part, manufacturers rely on inspectors to check incoming materials. Those results are compared with the company’s own quality standards and supplier-generated documents such as Certificates of Analysis (COAs). Based on results, inspectors either accept or reject a shipment. However, most … Continued

No matter what line of business you are in—from retail to hospitality to technology to finance—it’s imperative to prevent business problems before they occur. That can mean something as simple as avoiding the loss of one of your customers to poor customer service or as critical as preventing a botched manufacturing job on one of … Continued