|
||||||
|
My favourite interview question for manufacturing and design engineers goes like this: “If your customer complains there are loose screws rattling round in the bottom of the equipment you have just delivered, what are you going to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again?” After they have answered, I say “suppose you do all [...]         A month ago I told the story of the water pipes and my front garden http://www.qualityandproducts.com/2009/06/23/be-sceptical-about-product-lifetime-claims/. I explained that, rather than replace the whole faulty pipe, my water company insisted on fixing only the specific bit that had burst, thereby condemning themselves to an eternity of replacing the pipe 50mm at a time. Eventually my [...] About 4 years ago a Cambridge start-up called SplashPower was developing universal wireless chargers for mobile phones, MP3 players, PDAs and the like. To charge your device you simply laid it on a flat charging pad that looked a bit like a mouse mat. Built into the pad was a clever array of inductive coils [...] This is a really good website brought to us by the Electronics Weekly team – http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/engineering-design-problems/ It’s a combination of some weird and wacky product ideas with other products that have a perfectly sound concept but have been implemented really badly. It’s a great reference point and a cautionary tale for entrepreneurs who have just [...] For a bit of fun – we seem to be into the summer holiday ‘silly season’ after all – I put the main page of this blog into the ‘Wordle’** engine; here’s the result: **Wordle generates “word clouds” from text; greater prominence is given to words that appear more frequently. Thanks to the always-interesting Nick [...] In an earlier blog I tried to dispel some urban myths about the ISO 9001 quality standard, especially for those who approach the subject with trepidation! This piece is aimed more at those who are familiar with the well-established 2000 version of ISO 9001 and want to know how the latest revision, ISO 9001:2008, will [...] So Google are launching a new computer Operating System – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8139711.stm Great news! Competition in this area has got to be a good thing. Not only does it give us more choice but it keeps the current incumbents, Windows and Linux, on their toes. (Apple is a special case, of course, and has many lessons [...] I’ve just seen a classic case of bad customer service at a company that I’ve been working with; it could have come from a text-book on how not to do it. My client had ordered some equipment from a well known IT product manufacturer with a very short name. It was due for delivery today [...] It surprises me how easy-to-use some web designs can be, yet how unusable comparable sites can be even when their designers are supposedly world class. Here’s a quick example from the world of weather forecasting. First the good: http://www.xcweather.co.uk/ - just hover your mouse over points on the map; double click on a point and see [...] |
Welcome to my blog, which I hope you'll find to be an interesting mixture of real-world experience, ideas, comments and observations.
Tom Gaskell
I've worked in industry as a consultant, manager and quality trouble-shooter for most of my career.
After spending 14 years in a multi-national consulting organisation and 10 years working in telecomms design and manufacturing start-ups, I set up the Cambridge (UK)-based quality, manufacturing and business consultancy Primilis (http://www.primilis.com) in 2006. |
|||||
|
Copyright © 2012 Quality and Product Insights - All Rights Reserved |
||||||
