Manufacturers are used to operating in challenging circumstances – whether financial, economic, political or competitive. And it's a good thing since the coming years seem likely to be as uncertain as those following the global economic crash. But manufacturing will have an excellent opportunity to thrive because, like many sectors,
Your customers are more demanding than ever before. Improving field quality and your customer's experience of your product is essential to staying competitive. However, truly understanding customer experience can be a daunting task. These recommendations have been refined and proven in dozens of manufacturers as simple ways to rapidly improve field quality performance. 1. Think big; start small.
By now, we have all heard about the Internet of Things (IoT), or the Industrial Internet. Across industries, organizations are attempting to instrument and measure all critical business systems and assets in an effort to drive improved production and service delivery. It is estimated that by 2020, companies will spend
Profitable growth is at the forefront of manufacturing executives’ minds¹. The math is simple: increase revenue and decrease costs. Easy, right? Unfortunately, getting there isn't that simple. The good news is that analytics can help. The better news is that there’s a new place for manufacturers to discover analytic best
Do you hear voices? I sure hope so. I’m not talking about the ones associated with psychiatric disorders or medical conditions, but the voices of quality. To compare the two for a just a moment, the medical description from HealthGrades explains that auditory hallucinations can be pleasant or threatening and
This is a follow up to last week’s blog on understanding your customers’ perceptions of quality. As the world’s largest manufacturer of PCs and tablets, Lenovo is always looking for areas to reduce costs while increasing quality and customer satisfaction. Six months ago, Lenovo implemented the Lenovo Early Detection (LED) system
People are talking about your products. But more importantly, they’re listening. Facebook, Twitter, review sites, and product forums are just a few of the sources that a savvy customer checks when making a buying decision. This reality has fundamentally changed the definition of quality. It’s no longer sufficient to conform
Well okay maybe you can't hear us, but at least you can read what we have to say. Although, I'm not ruling out an occasional video or podcast entry. One of the best kept secrets at SAS is the incredible domain expertise that comes to work here everyday, ready to
Companies have become obsessed with product quality – and for good reason. Customer dynamics, their willingness to expose product quality issues socially on the web, and the ease with which they can jump to competitive products make quality a more important differentiator than ever before. Over the past 15 years,
Staying competitive in a big data world means working fast and making decisions even faster. You need to assess conditions, approve access, stop transactions and reroute activities quickly so you can seize opportunities or prevent problems. With increasing data volumes from the Internet of Things (Cisco predicts that fifty billion
Recently, I had the opportunity to talk with James Haight of Blue Hill Research regarding the Internet of Things and how it is and will impact manufacturers. We also dipped our toes into other topics, including text analytics and the interesting combination of all these trends. The conversation was captured
By now, we have all heard about the Internet of Things (IoT), or the Industrial Internet. Across industries, organizations are attempting to instrument and measure all critical business systems and assets in an effort to drive improved production and service delivery. It is estimated that by 2020, companies will spend
While managing quality within the four walls of your own operation is all well and good and totally necessary, both the market and your bottom line are demanding a more holistic, quality lifecycle approach, and in support of that aim there is a treasure trove of downstream data waiting to be
After decades of trying to "manage" and "control" quality, manufacturers continue to struggle with consistently achieving quality excellence. To conquer the realities of today's marketplace and achieve quality excellence, manufacturers need to adopt an analytic approach to quality. The basic objective of manufacturers hasn't changed since the beginning - produce
Modern manufacturing has come a long way in employing rigorous quality initiatives, but when a defective toy, electronic – or even a baby diaper – does slip past the quality initiatives, the current customer sentiment climate can make the situation go from bad to worse very quickly. It isn’t easy
