To borrow a theme from Kevin Meyer, here’s some “fun with statistics,” or at least this kind of thing is fun to me, being a big proponent of Statistical Process Control (SPC) and the methods taught by Deming and Wheeler…
Put Buyers First? What a Concept – New York Times I’m a huge fan of Amazon (AMZN), having first ordered a “required pre-reading” book from them in March 1997, before I went to grad school. I’ve hardly had anything go…
Best wishes to everyone for Christmas and the holiday season. I’m probably not going to post again until December 29 unless there’s something really pressing or interesting in the Lean world. It’s time to get my book finished up and…
PEPCON disaster – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In some Saturday afternoon background TV watching, my ears perked up when I heard about this story on the History Channel, from 1988. A factory, in Nevada (just outside of Las Vegas) had…
by Dan Markovitz Whew! Just in case you panicked at the thought of not having access to email on your upcoming flight to Slippery Rock, JetBlue has come to the rescue with in-flight internet access. You’ll never again have to…
My ears always perk up when I hear the word “suggestions.” Again, it was in a football context. But unlike the ASU Sun Devil example, it was the other way around. As my new team (the Cowboys) was still losing…
Boeing Scrambles to Repair Problems With New Plane – WSJ.com Interesting article in today’s WSJ about the ongoing problems in bringing the new 787 “Dreamliner” to market. Sounds like a nightmare of a process. Look at the waste highlighted in…
Business Week Article I have a number of “Toyota is struggling” articles in the backlog to work through. Maybe I’ll dump the rest of those later in a single post. This was a good article from BusinessWeek (actually a weekly…
Here are some follow-up articles, quotes, and data following up on the news from the other day that Dennis Quaid’s twins were impacted by a medication error at L.A.’s Cedar-Sinai hospital. SEE MORE POSTS ABOUT THIS CASE This article points…
Let me try to lighten the mood after my earlier outrage over the medical mistake in L.A. (there are updates, though, see below). I don’t like to leave a negative post on top of the blog as we go into…
Whistleblower says defects hidden at Toyota-GM Calif. plant Ironically enough, while on the topic of not counting defects (the TSA), this disturbing story was in the Detroit News today. A 23-year employee, a quality inspector, has filed a lawsuit claiming…
by Dan Markovitz Without realizing it, James B. Stewart, the SmartMoney columnist for the Wall Street Journal, touched on the value and power of hansei (reflection) in yesterday’s piece (available for free here). Commenting on the recent ouster of Merrill…
