Industry Week magazine did a great cover story on OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) in the February Issue. A couple of key take-aways:Adapt OEE to your business situationUse the OEE data to drill in and drive improvementsDon't optimize OEE at the expense of the businessThese ideas point to why GainSeeker Suite is getting so much traction [...]
CIO Magazine recently published a great blog post called "To Hell with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut". Based on separate research published by Accenture and Aberdeen, the post says that nearly half (40%) of major corporate decisions are based on 'gut' and not on data. The number one reason? Sixty-one percent of [...]
Dr. Neil Polhemus, CTO at StatPoint Technologies (and publisher of StatGraphics) contributed a great article in the current issue of Quality Magazine about selecting statistical software for Six Sigma. In it he lists four criteria for selecting the right statistical package:How strong a background in statistics does the typical operator have?What types of data are [...]
Yesterday the ASQ (American Society for Quality) issued their Quarterly Quality Report for December 2008. If you haven't read it already, I encourage you to take a look. Based on a survey of only 47 persons, you have to wonder about how far you can take the conclusions, but I found the findings helpful. Over [...]
A recent study by the Aberdeen Group found that Best-in-Class manufacturers substantially out-perform laggards. Duh... Of course Best-in-Class have higher yields, throughput, and profits, and are more likely to deliver product on time. What we wanted to know was why...
Are you on Twitter yet? I signed up a couple weeks ago and I can't decide: Is this the biggest boondoggle on the face of the planet, or have we reached the promised land? The more I dive into it, the more overwhelmed I feel and the more opportunities I see. So much to see, [...]
I'm now a guest blogger at MyBusinessMusings.com. Late last week I wrote my first post about what it means to be data driven. Check it out.
I was showing a colleague the Data Cost / Value Matrix and describing the four aspects of data value. I was explaining the fourth aspect of data value: Data Visibility and Transparency when he made a comment that got me thinking: "For my customers, transparency isn't the key issue. The biggest issue is that they are drowning in data they can't use. If you can make the data they already have more usable then you're providing value.... "
Corporate had mandated that they get this information out to the workforce, and they were manually updating white boards with markers at the end of each shift. It was a time consuming, error-ridden process. Here is a picture we took from inside the plant showing the shop floor data collection station, with the large flat panel display suspended from the ceiling. . . .
There is an old story about Dr. W. Edwards Deming from back in the mid 1980s when he was working with the big three auto There There is an old story about Dr. W. Edwards Deming from back in the mid 1980s when he was working with the big three auto companies. I don't know if it is true, but the story goes that someone asked him: "Dr. Deming - fifty years from now, which companies will still be practicing your 14 points?" He was reported to have growled: ...
