Category Archives: Quality tools

Management Blog Posts From October 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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

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

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

Building Adoption of Management Improvement Ideas in Your Organization

Continuation of How to Get a New Management Strategy, Tool or Concept Adopted Target something that actually provides a good story. It often helps if there have been failures in attempts to solve a problem in the past. That makes … Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Management, Popular, Quality tools, Systems thinking, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments