Category Archives: Quality tools

Dr. Deming in 1980 on Product Quality in Japan and the USA

Posted on December 5, 2011 by John Hunter

I posted an interesting document to the Curious Cat Management Library: it includes Dr. Deming’s comments as part of a discussion organized by the Government Accounting Office in 1980 on Quality in Japan and the United States. The document provides … Continue reading →

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Management Blog Posts From October 2006

Posted on October 25, 2011 by John Hunter

I have selected a few posts from the Curious Cat Management Blog back in October 2006 for those of you who were not reading this blog then. Why Pay Taxes or be Honest – “I don’t think acting illegally, immorally, … Continue reading →

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Not Ambiguous Sign

Posted on August 18, 2011 by John Hunter

I like the series of posts by Jon Miller on Ambiguous signs (another example). Here is a sign that got my attention recently and they succeeded in keeping me away (which I think was their intention). The area is near … Continue reading →

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Visual Management with Brown M&Ms

Posted on August 15, 2011 by John Hunter

When you hear about rock musicians having a clause in their contract that they must have a bowl of M&Ms in their dressing room with all the brown M&Ms removed you could be excused for thinking: what will these crazy … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Quality tools | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Good Execution Can Make Management Tools Like Time and Motion Studies Useful

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Guest Post

In my experience most management concepts are applied poorly. Many of the concepts may also be bad. For example, performance appraisals are both done poorly and a bad idea. The solution is not to do performance appraisal righter: for what … Continue reading →

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One factor at a time (OFAT) Versus Factorial Designs

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Guest Post

Guest post by Bradley Jones Almost a hundred years ago R. A. Fisher‘s boss published an article espousing OFAT (one factor at a time). Fisher responded with an article of his own laying out his justification for factorial design. I … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Design of Experiments, Popular, Quality tools, Science, Six sigma, Statistics | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Factorial Designed Experiment Aim

Posted on April 25, 2011 by John Hunter

Multivariate experiments are a very powerful management tool to learn and improve performance. Experiments in general, and designed factorial experiments in particular, are dramatically underused by managers. A question on LinkedIn asks? When doing a DOE we select factors with … Continue reading →

Posted in Design of Experiments, Management, Manufacturing, Process improvement, Quality tools, quote, Science, Six sigma, Statistics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Why Lean is Different

Posted on April 12, 2011 by John Hunter

[the broken link to the embedded video was removed] Short webcast by Michael Ballé discusses what makes lean manufacturing different: going to where the work is done, standardize processes (from the gemba view), practice respect for people and continually improve. … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Process improvement, Psychology, Quality tools, Respect, webcast | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Assigning Story Points to Bug Fixes

Posted on January 27, 2011 by John Hunter

Agile software development has teams estimate the effort to deliver requests from the product owner. The estimates are done in points (in order to abstract away from hours – as estimates have plenty of variation in how long they will … Continue reading →

Posted in IT, Quality tools, Software Development, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Annual Management Blog Review: Software, Manufacturing and Leadership

Posted on January 9, 2011 by John Hunter

In my contribution to the 3rd annual management blog roundup I will take a look at 3 blogs: Dennis Stevens, How to implement “Lean Thinking” in a Business and the Three Star Leadership Blog. This year 14 management bloggers contributed … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Lean thinking, Management, Quality tools, Software Development, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments