I have to profess before I go too far into this blog, that I am a great fan of book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by the great Douglas Adams.  I remember watching this on public television on the olden days, the special effects were not so grand but everything else about the program was […]

By Wally Stegall and Jon M Quigley Collecting and Reporting Material One approach to collecting and reporting material content is the International Material Data System (IMDS).  IMDS is a computer-based material data system used and funded primarily by automotive OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturer of cars, trucks, heavy vehicles, agricultural equipment, construction equipment, industrial equipment, military […]

A discussion of risk would not be completed without a discussion of probability and severity.  When we are looking at risky event, we are in essence establishing or assessing the probability of some undesired event coming to fruition.  However, even our desired events, for example the completion of a task on the critical path at […]

Survival of the fittest is not just a biological concern.  Our business must constantly adapt to external stimuli and find better, quicker ways of performing our work.  One way to accomplish this growth is through actions sometimes referred to as project post mortem, or an after action report.  We have a plethora of tools of […]

Check lists are a time honored way of keeping track of breaking down an objective and monitoring progress.  There are a number of benefits to using check lists.  Check lists should not be confused with a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).  A WBS is a form of a check list of all of the tasks required […]

My work experience informs me that the loss of slack is a big risk to projects. Without this wiggle room, we reduce our probability of success. Projects scheduled out to the last available date just do not work. The reality is these are not manufacturing or routine tasks and jobs. Even the rather routine tasks […]

By Kim Robertson and  Jon M Quigley When you think of product design and development what comes first to mind? Is it an understanding of our business objectives (scope) followed by functional decomposition of requirements and allocating them to various systems and subsystems to achieve that objective? Is it design to manufacture with designers, facility […]

We have mapped how long it takes to prepare the vehicle for testing using the histogram. We have used the Ishikawa diagram to generate ideas we wish to investigate as causing the time to be longer than we would like it to be. Our next step is to see if the ideas suggested in the […]

In our previous post, we have learned the distribution of vehicle preparation time via the visual representation known as the histogram.  This does not tell us what causes for the distribution.  If we wish to alter this distribution, we will also need to know the causes and take some action to alter.  Enter the Ishikawa […]

We would like to revisit our blog post May 2013 and tell the complete story over the course of a few blogs.  I realized the importance of showing the use of the variety of tools after giving an ITMPI webinar based upon our book Total Quality Management for Project Management.  At the end of the […]