by Jon M Quigley I sit in awe at the variety of things that can be built with Lego. One is bound only by one’s imagination. However the wonders of modularity are much more than kids play and business and engineering can learn considerable from these ideas. Even before I was playing Lego’s with my […]

Jon M. Quigley I keep ruminating on the article from the American Management Association on people leaving their previous employer (http://www.amanet.org/training/articles/How-Employers-Drive-Away-their-Employees.aspx?pcode=XCR). The findings of Leigh Branham in the above study are both discouraging and encouraging. Discouraging in that there is a problem with how we treat our people. Encouraging in the hope maybe we will […]

By Jon M Quigley In our previous blog post, we discussed PPAP and objectivity or the check the box mentality. What happens when we communicate in an overly optimistic way?  Below is an exchange between a supplier project management as well as the customer project management and a line manager responsible for verification. Chief Project […]

by: Jon M Quigley and Wally Stegall In the last blog post, we discussed how PPAP should be the quality system, although it is not in many cases.  One reason PPAP drops off the map after the start of production may have never been a concern during the design is the check box mentality.  Check […]

By Wally Stegall and Jon M. Quigley The Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) has developed the Production PART Approval Process (PPAP) standard as part of advanced product quality planning (APQP). The PPAP documentation; is thought by many as just a collection of documents and sign-off to allow a supplier to start manufacturing. That is not […]

by Jon M Quigley Design for manufacturing provides us with the ability to critique the design as it applies or impacts the manufacturing line. Have you ever wondered why the phrase “hits production” exists? It is because insufficient attention to the integration of the design and the manufacturing often result in trauma at the manufacturing […]

The sooner you move away from project management activities based upon hope, the sooner your organization makes a recovery to the efficient enterprise you desire. I have noticed a rash of project schedules wherein each task lays end to end as if the prediction of the; task start, progress, and completion times are known without […]

By Wally Stegall and Jon M Quigley: In today’s global economy the laws and regulations governing materials used in products is ever changing. One way to stay ahead or at least know where a product stands relative to laws and a regulation is to know the material content of the product from day one. If […]

Beware the “I know, I know” syndrome from an enthusiastic employee. The event occurs when the employee remembers a similar incident with a returned part, production line failure, or software issue. Unfortunately, reasoning from effects to causes is actually a logical fallacy called “affirming the consequent.” We cannot assume that a given effect has but […]

Our previous post discussed the power of the routine task. Part of the purpose of this approach is to achieve a state of wei-wu-wei or “effortless effort,” where our achievements seem to occur almost as if by magic. Objectives and targets begin to finish on or ahead of schedule, yet we don’t appear to really […]