The last two posts covered why certification is worth pursuing and why independence is what makes it real. Now we get into the standards themselves, and we're going to start with the shape of the thing before we start reading the words. The Standard Is a PDCA Loop If you've been around manufacturing or continuous improvement at all, you've seen Plan-Do-Check-Act. Plan what you're going to do, do it, check whether it worked, act on what you learned, repeat. Deming popularized

In last week’s article I discussed some of the benefits of obtaining compliance to either ISO 9001 or AS9100. This week I’ll discuss the difference between compliance and certification, and why independence and impartiality are important at every level. In subsequent articles we will review the clauses, how they benefit customer satisfaction, some examples of what it takes to be conforming to these requirements and how conformance can benefit operations. The idea to write

If you've spent any time around a machine shop or a manufacturing floor, you've probably heard someone grumble that a quality certification is just a binder full of paperwork nobody reads until an auditor shows up. That reputation isn't entirely undeserved. A lot of companies implement these standards badly, treating them as a compliance tax rather than a management tool. But when they're implemented well, ISO 9001 and AS9100 aren't paperwork. They're closer to a set of blue

Learn how Big W plans to deliver Porsche performance on a Volkswagen budget.

Take a look at a scandal where an online hero spent $500 buying spark plugs online, and discovered 1/3 were fake.

If you've worked with Titanium, you know that cold working it comes with some real restrictions. What if it didn't have to be that way? ​​ Ultrasonic-assisted forming has been studied since the 1950s , with industrial application in wire drawing and tube bending since the early 1970s. It's carried out by applying vibration to forming dies during deformation using frequencies in the kilohertz range and displacements in the micrometer range. A large body of research has do

I became a manager during a time of very significant change. The entire reason the role I was hired into existed was due to a combination of an increase in scope as well as an increase in customer expectations, and as such we had been resourced to significantly increase our staffing. My department was created as one department split into two, and my first order of business was to double my staffing. In addition to increasing expectations and increasing scope, our entire pr

I had the privilege of serving in 2/34th Infantry Brigade Combat Team in Afghanistan. We were the tip of the spear in implementation of the then new COIN counterinsurgency strategy, which was further symbolized by being the first brigade-sized element in all of the US Army to be issued the new OCP “multi-cam” uniforms, which later served as a template for the current field uniform that replaced the ACU. The COIN strategy focused on the population as the center of mass, and