Insights & Articles
Field notes on quality leadership, crisis management and operational excellence — from the shop floor to the boardroom.
Shadow AI isn't a governance gap. It's an uncalibrated input.
Shadow AI on the shop floor isn't just IP leaking out—it's unvetted LLM outputs contaminating controlled quality documents like 8D reports and PFMEAs, introducing uncalibrated inputs into traceable systems.
GM's 'recall of the century' passed every quality gate. That's exactly the problem.
GM's massive recall exposes how IATF 16949 certified processes become approval theatre—PFMEAs that green-light risks rather than assess them.
Toyota's quality playbook isn't broken. The world it was written for is.
Toyota saying "unless things change, we will not survive" should stop every quality director cold. Not because Toyota lacks tools — they wrote most of them — but because the admission came from the…
The AI divide is real. It just isn't about AI.
The real AI divide isn't technology—it's governance. Winners treat deployment like a product launch with defined failure modes; losers run endless pilots with no control plan.
The system is the product. Everything else is inventory.
A stock analyst's note on Chipotle reveals a hard truth: operational excellence isn't about what you make, but the system underneath—and manufacturing is losing the plot.
Your FMEA scored the risk as acceptable. The physics disagreed.
Two Ford recalls, two unrelated failures, one scoring methodology. When RPN math says 'acceptable' but physics says otherwise, the real failure mode is the process.
Your quality index measures perception. It missed 741,000 roll-away SUVs.
Initial quality awards measure showroom satisfaction, not the latent failure physics that drive recalls. A measurement problem boards are making capital decisions on.
Your documentation passed. Your process wasn't tested.
A flawless desk review proves your documentation is immaculate—not that anyone on the floor follows it. The real quality test happens at midnight, not in a binder.
Your IT and OT disagree on every shift. Your quality system trusts both.
When SCADA logs show thermal drift the QMS never saw, you don't have a tech gap—you have a governance failure poised to derail physical AI.
You can offshore the assembly. You can't offshore the APQP.
Vietnam's EV ambitions ignore the real cost: building quality systems from scratch. Labour rates attract, but APQP, IATF 16949, and talent gaps take 18+ months to close.
The remote audit doesn't see your quality system. It sees your camera angle.
Remote audits certify paperwork, not processes. The gap between what procedures say and what operators actually do is where nonconformances live—and webcams can't find it.
Prompt injection turns your AI agent into the insider nobody vetted
Twenty years ago I walked a new hire through a plant and told them: the most dangerous person on this floor isn't the one who breaks in through the loading bay. It's the one with a badge, a login,…
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