How is "criticality" used? The word “criticality” is often used out of context within manufacturing. I often hear someone say, “that is...

Revision versions are funny things. Revisions may exist in your engineered drawings, tracking incremental improvements, and enhancements....

I have heard the argument for years, that connecting an EBIT improvement with overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) improvement is...

Summertime brings beaches, vacations, warm air, and outages. Outages, for some of us, are the time of year when we shut down assets and...

WIthin all forms of manufacturing, outages exist. They are either planned or unplanned and they could exist at some periodic interval....

I’ve stopped saying a word. This word can either be used as a noun or a verb and its etymology dates to the 13th century. It is comprised...

Saturdays and Sundays are my days to slow down and write. I dedicate roughly two hours to reading, writing, and reflecting on the...

In a process flow optimization or value stream mapping project, the organization is seeking the ideal process steps that will maximize...

Tina Fey has been referenced as using an activity that gets you in the mindset of creativity and invigorated imagination for improv. It...

Using numbers and estimates to predict outcomes can either be a hobby or a profession. This data is the fingerprint of what has happened,...

To make a claim, I called the 800 number in the instruction manual of my coffee machine. A small fastener has broken, resulting in the...

Imagine watching an 800-meter race. The athletes start at the sound of the gun. They ramp up in speed hitting their targetted speed on...

Last week, the birds were chirping in my yard to signal spring was in the air. The season’s snow had melted and signaled the yard work in...

There are plenty of tools to conduct investigations within manufacturing. Some can be solved with a 5-why or an Ishikawa diagram. Others...

My zipper broke on my winter jacket the other day and I was able to contact the manufacturer, work through a claim, and have it repaired....

Regardless of whether you have production units that are reliable or unreliable, I would like to propose a different type of performance...

Before getting into the definition of operational empathy as a continuation of Part 1, I want to describe a mindset that we realized we...

In some form or another, supply chains appear to be a challenge in every market. Combined with the disruptions in supply chains,...

A decade ago, I was part of a team training Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) to a group of middle and upper management. The audience...

I have been told multiple times over my career, “Don’t send me a notification to approve something on a weekend.” Or do not send an...

We all fall on both sides of the fence when solving problems. We are either on the receiving end of problems to solve or we are the...

Are you interested in starting to measure effectiveness with Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) on a production unit? To start, I...

The new James Webb Space Telescope claims to have 344 single-points-of-failure (SPOF) or single components that could disrupt the...

In the COVID world that we live in, we have transitioned to a world that can have a Zoom or Teams meeting at any time. No more do we need...