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5S stands for Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu, and Shitsuke. And, by the way, despite being called 5S many people say there’s a 6th – Safety. Well, I’m glad to have cleared that up! Perhaps I had better explain… You have probably deduced that 5S is another Japanese-inspired approach to quality improvement; in this case it’s [...]         The quality guru W. Edwards Deming once said “you can not inspect quality into the product; it is already there.” There is a great deal of emphasis within the quality management profession on Quality Assurance (preventive techniques) rather than Quality Control (corrective techniques). Inspection, in most cases, is seen as Quality Control; in other words [...] I’m not going to join the ‘let’s knock Toyota’ brigade, don’t worry. Enough people are filling that role already. In fact, I drive a Toyota (an older model) and I’ve been very happy with it, and one of my clients has got one too and is equally happy. My point is how easy it is [...] Of all the quality ‘gurus’ I find the late Philip Crosby one of the most readable. In his book ‘Quality is Free’ (Mentor 1980, ISBN 978-0451625854), which I can thoroughly recommend, he advocates the use of a simple tool to show where you are in the quality management spectrum; he calls it the Quality Management [...] ‘Lean’ means fat-free or thin or containing little waste, doesn’t it? (Appropriate for just after Christmas…) The answer is yes, and it’s one of the most recent trends in quality and management that started on the factory floor with Lean Manufacturing and has spread to other areas such as Lean Six Sigma and Lean Software [...] Zero Defects is the approach to quality that was developed and promoted by the guru Philip B. Crosby in his book ‘Quality Is Free’. Forget Six Sigma – this is ‘Infinite Sigma’! It’s a way of thinking about quality that doesn’t tolerate errors or defects and continually strives to improve processes and prevent errors so [...] I have written in many blogs about different ways of securing Continuous Improvement; Six Sigma, Plan-Do-Check-Act, 8D, Kaizen, and so on. The trouble is, people become too religious about their favourite technique and apply it in far more circumstances than it’s really meant for. One of my favourite quotes is “if all you have is [...] If your children keep asking “why?” over and over again it can become irritating quite quickly, often resulting in “because I say so!”. You may be surprised to learn that, in the grown-up world, asking “why?” several times in succession is actually a valid technique for Root Cause Analysis, in other words, looking at a [...] A few people have asked me recently about ‘8D’, and I mentioned it in a previous blog without really explaining what I was on about, so I thought it was time to elaborate. 8D looks a bit like one of those smiley emoticons used in text messages, but it’s actually a structured, team-based approach to [...] Quality is all about meeting requirements, even the ones that you don’t know about yet. Recently I have been working with some entrepreneurs and start-ups who have tremendous drive and enthusiasm and some great product ideas but are not very experienced in placing products on the market. They asked for help with what I call [...] |
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. |
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