Imagine an industrial facility with dozens of video cameras that continually record and store video of plant operations … for weeks, if not months. If the cameras are strategically placed, they will capture a visual record of nearly everything that happens in the facility. When […]
Industry has embraced continuous improvement for at least a century. Arguably, it started with Frederick Taylor and evolved to Six Sigma and beyond. There were many advances, and a few fads, in between. Still, Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) is a common refrain: But that’s hampered when […]
A New World of High Resolution Cameras We see footage from convenience store security cameras … usually in a police report or plea for citizen help … and the videos are colorless, grainy and lack detail to see the action clearly. It’s hard to imagine […]
Typical manufacturing and business operations involve a huge range of independent activities. One of the key differences between the various activities is the way in which they unfold over time … their speed and timing. Sad to say, our traditional operations management tools do a […]
In previous blog articles, I advocated using video monitoring technology in standard production operations. In writing these notes, I often wondered why this hasn’t happened already? The opportunity and benefits seem obvious and the costs are reasonable. I never found a definitive answer, but I […]
Factories need time machines! It would be really cool if a quality manager could go back in time and watch how (ultimately) defective units were made … their actual journey through production. It might help the maintenance engineer to watch a (later broken) machine as it started […]
