Michelle: So, I know you recently wrote an article for Quality. Can you tell us a little bit more about the article and how you decide to write about this topic?

Travis: The article itself is really a technical deep dive, if you would, into process capability studies. I decided to present this topic for a number of reasons. If I take a step back and just look at the industry, we're moving into a world where we're moving towards AI and industry 4.0. And while those are really awesome tools and they're going to be needed in the future, we can't lose track of the fundamentals.

And something like understanding the true meaning behind capability studies and how to select one study over the other. To me, that's one of the fundamentals of quality. And so, I just try to keep that in the forefront of everyone's mind while they're thinking about all this cool AI stuff and this new technology coming because it will be important. When you think specifically about capability studies, as you'll read in the article, the details matter.

And selecting the right study, doing all the proper planning ahead of time is really what's going to deliver the successful result, which results in good quality. And we're constantly having to balance this short-term versus long-term mindset, whether it's on cost, whether it's on efficiencies. Again, selecting the type of capability study is one of these things that can have a lot of long-term impacts if you take a short-term decision.

And just kind of laying the groundwork for that was really important for me. Definitely think there's so many factors to play into it and things to understand, whether it's customer requests or other things like that. It's not a quick decision. Once you're touching on the topic of customer. Think about how many just focus on the automotive industry. How many new OEMs, car manufacturers are there today than there was 10 or 20 years ago.

Everyone's got their own set of requirements. So, understanding that customer requirement and how it varies from one customer to the next, also very important. And quality is a lot based on perception. Something as simple as picking the wrong capability study could ruin your perception with a brand-new customer. It's these little details that matter.