Insights & Articles
Field notes on quality leadership, crisis management and operational excellence — from the shop floor to the boardroom.
AI agents outpace governance because nobody wrote the control plan
AI agents fail the same way manufacturing processes do—but someone has to own the control plan. Here's why quality, not IT, should be in charge.
Your SPC charts are decoration. Here is what real process control looks like.
Statistical process control is one of the most powerful quality tools ever invented. In most factories, it has been reduced to a paperwork ritual. Here is the difference between SPC as decoration and SPC as process control — and how to get from one to the other.
What twenty years of 8D reports taught me about human nature
8D is supposed to be a problem-solving methodology. After reviewing thousands of reports across two decades, I have learned that it is actually a window into how organisations handle truth, blame, and accountability. The reports tell you more about the culture than the problem.
After ransomware, every part you ship is unverified
Ransomware in manufacturing isn't just an IT breach—it's a delayed quality crisis. When OT networks restart, traceability breaks and defective parts can ship undetected.
AI in operations is a quality intervention. Measure it like one.
If your AI deployment can't move a single quality metric—scrap rate, RFT, audit findings—it's not a deployment, it's a dashboard. Stop measuring engagement and start closing A3s.
What every new EV plant gets wrong in its first 90 days
Three EV plant announcements this week, none mentioning quality infrastructure. The first 90 days of quality sequencing decide whether you survive your first audit or surface in a recall.
Why I stopped using red on my dashboards
Red on a quality dashboard triggers fear, defensiveness, and information suppression. After twenty years of managing quality metrics, I found a better way to communicate bad news without shutting down the conversation.
Cybersecurity is a quality failure mode — and AS9100 is catching up
Aerospace quality systems assumed data integrity without inspecting the infrastructure carrying it. As AS9100 folds in cybersecurity expectations, plants face a quality gap they didn't know existed.
When the auditor finds the one thing you hoped nobody would find
Every quality professional has a moment — the moment the auditor opens the file, asks the question, or walks to the area you prayed they would skip. Here is what happens next, and why that moment is the most valuable one in your quality career.
"The PFMEA I inherited had 340 failure modes. None of them mattered."
A PFMEA with hundreds of failure modes looks thorough. It is usually a sign that nobody has thought about what actually matters. Here is how I rebuilt a meaningless document into a tool that prevents defects.
AI inspection tools are not replacing your inspectors — they are exposing them
After deploying AI vision inspection systems in three aerospace plants, here is what I learned: AI does not replace inspectors. It reveals which inspectors were actually inspecting and which were just watching parts go by.
Your factory VPN is the supplier you never audited
Remote vendor access causes plant breaches yet receives less scrutiny than a bracket supplier—bridging IT and quality gaps starts with auditing your VPN.
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