Insights & Articles
Field notes on quality leadership, crisis management and operational excellence — from the shop floor to the boardroom.
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.
The real reason your OEE number is wrong
Every factory tracks OEE. Most are lying to themselves. After auditing OEE calculations across two decades of plants, here is why your number is almost certainly higher than your reality — and what to do about it.
Lean tools without lean thinking is just organised waste
5S boards, kanban cards, value stream maps, gemba walks — every factory has them. Most factories use them wrong. Here is what happens when you deploy lean tools without understanding lean principles, and how to fix it.
Stop calling it a quality problem. It is a leadership problem.
Every "quality problem" I have investigated in twenty years traces back to a leadership decision that prioritised short-term results over long-term system health. The defect is a symptom. The cause is in the boardroom.
When you certify belts, you get belts — not practitioners
Certifications prove you read the textbook, not that you can solve problems on a production line. Two decades of quality outcomes make that clear.
Production additive manufacturing doesn't need more data. It needs a control plan.
The AM industry spent a decade perfecting builds but forgot verification. Most producers shipping into aerospace lack proper PFMEAs and inspection routings.
The supplier development programme that actually worked
After years of failed supplier development initiatives, I built one that delivered measurable results in six months. No consultants, no frameworks, no jargon — just a disciplined approach that treated suppliers like partners, not vendors.
The recall I prevented by ignoring the procedure
The quality procedure said to ship the parts. My instinct said something was wrong. I broke the rules and held the shipment. What happened next changed how I think about procedures, judgement, and the real purpose of a quality system.
"I shut down a production line for three days. Here is what it cost."
Stopping a production line is the hardest decision a quality leader makes. I made it at an automotive plant and tracked every euro of the cost — and every euro it saved. The math will surprise you.
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