And why the difference between the two always compounds Every plant manager has watched it happen. A changeover gets rushed at the start of second shift. The operator swaps the change parts but doesn't verify something critical. Maybe it's a standard that's been written down, maybe it's not. The line runs for forty minutes before someone notices there's something wrong (bottles dented, labels crooked, wrong materials, wrong print, etc). Now there's a quality hold, a financial

Ever go into a meeting and see a Pareto Chart that is linear? Or maybe there is a slight rise at the top... but clearly it's not in accordance with the Pareto Principle? Pareto Principle: Also known as the 80/20 rule, it states that roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of causes—in ops, 80% of downtime might stem from 20% of factors. This one is essential for setting priorities in a leadership role. When leading change, the temptation is to pull the most easily accessible dat

Safety and Quality - Your Organizational Health Indicator Most plants approach safety and quality from a compliance perspective. They expect to achieve or fail in their results based on the level of accountability they can create around each fully independent compliance set, safety and quality. That's a good conventional approach and I do not want to undersell the value of process compliance. It's critical.   However, pure compliance won't fix these metrics. I think there is

I'm writing these articles to explain the meat-and-potatoes of turning a plant around. Parts 1-3 are not negotiable. There is no other way. You cannot coerce people into excellence. Great organizations are creative enterprises at every level. That requires you to earn the investment of a lot of people.  Even if you get people to work with you by keeping them out of the error states and behaving well, you won't survive the complexity of the task without using a well-structured

Process Control is a process. It is one of the most vital processes in any organization. It is also widely misunderstood. I would also argue that being good at Process Control is more important than being good at process design or Process Improvement. To illustrate this, allow me to lead with a case study. The Process Audit Database Case Study: Some years ago, I had a quality manager approach me with the need to show improvement on our key quality metric. This metric was base