People in education often like to implement “programs.” In fact, we call this syndrome “program-itis” because it leads to inflammation of the budget. As with many corporation, we see people who want to improve a situation decide to follow “best practices” without verifying that these are, in fact, best practices. They can only be best […]

The Pareto chart (not to be directly confused with the Pareto probability distribution function) is a simple approach to revealing significance in data. Before we plot our chart, we need to complete some initial work: Gather the data in a natural format (count, floating point [decimal], dollars, etc.) Sort the data from high to low […]

We have been on a bit a tear (or rant) about FMEAs. We suggest the FMEA documentation is part of the core of a design process. The ultimate approach we have seen is that of Michael Anleitner (The Power of Deduction: Failure Modes and Effects Analysis for Design, Quality Press, 2010), which uses functional analysis […]

There is only one way to describe this scenario and that is via a story.  Consider the organization that is coming to the end of the project.  The product is a complicated subassembly that goes into a larger system and has numerous interactions and incarnations of the design.  They are late in the delivery of […]

Risks can have origins in communications and are not the sole province of the stakeholders and sponsors of the project. Sometimes the organization damages itself via the structure.  We are all familiar with the functional organization, often referred to as a line organization or stove pipe organization in which we group the company by discipline. […]

This blog post is born out of a response to the Named Risk post from Ed Arnold on www.LinkedIn.com.   He left the reply below: In my experience, a lot of time/effort is wasted when project owners change. The knowledge gets lost, even if they leave their spreadsheets and power points behind. The answer: a collaborative […]

We addressed the issue of the modular FMEA in a previous blog. We also suggest that the FMEA in its various guises is also a great place to capture lessons learned. In the medical, aerospace, automotive, and food industries, some kind of FMEA is a required document. Since we already must create these documents, why […]

We have heard executive complain when an employee they put through external training left the company to pursue a better-paying job somewhere else. Our question has always been “Why didn’t you take care of your investment?” Training employees is an investment of time and money in much the same way as tilling and seeding the […]

Over the years, we have heard executive level individuals cry out for cultural change in their organizations without understanding the ramifications of what they are saying. With cultural transformation as usually touted, we are talking about massive levels of upheaval. The upheaval approach can be counterproductive if it does little more than produce a culture […]