Successful Six Sigma organizations create a culture of participation by giving their staff a compelling mission, then giving them the support, resources, and flexibility to achieve that mission—and seek other opportunities for improvement.

Pursuing the lofty goal of Zero Defects delivers undeniable benefits in the form of reduced waste and cost, happier customers, bigger sales, and higher revenue. But that implied level of perfection is not always realistic. Instead, establish a culture of continuous improvement.

In a lean manufacturing process, a poka-yoke method is employed to eliminate product defects by preventing, correcting, or drawing attention to human errors in real time. Industrial engineer Shigeo Shingo first applied the term poka-yoke (“mistake-proofing” in Japanese) to the Toyota Production System. 

Lean and agile are well recognized in the manufacturing sector and in the quality community. Like many quality methodologies, lean and agile work in tandem and separately, depending on an organization’s needs. Where do these methodologies meet and diverge, what are their driving principles, and how you can add them to your toolbox (or convince others to do so)?

In the previous article, we touched upon NDT 4.0 and provided a glimpse into what it is and how it is transforming industries around the globe. Now we will dive into a segment of NDT 4.0, automation, and look at some examples that highlight how it is changing companies for the better.

Pass/fail quality testing is the de facto standard for many manufacturers. But when you use only these basic tests, you miss out on some of the greatest opportunities for continuous improvement in your business. 

5S involves five terms that can help businesses organize their workplace operations.

In these days of tightened belts and lean manufacturing principles, manufacturers are pushed to perform better, offer higher quality, and lower prices--all at the same time.

Quite often in manufacturing, an inspection department is treated primarily as a necessary overhead expense required to assure compliance to customer specifications. Sometimes an inspection department may also be treated as a profit center for compliance to a variety of test protocols dictated by external agencies, or perhaps internal procedures to demonstrate traceability to certain quality standards. 

Garbage in, garbage out. It’s a term born in the early days of the computer and computer programming. The phrase, and its popular acronym, GIGO, are said to have been taken from the business strategies of LIFO and FIFO—last in, first out and first in, first out—as it pertains to inventory management.