Failures

Understanding the prerequisite to a failure

A quote I remember a mentor of mine said years ago was, if you find yourself bored, just wait 5 more minutes, something will blow up. Of...

Looking back, I guess it was a sightless turn

I was talking to a friend lately about the melancholy moments in a professional career that became influential turns when looking back....

Cheers... to the last outage.

WIthin all forms of manufacturing, outages exist. They are either planned or unplanned and they could exist at some periodic interval....

When Does Your Analysis Reach a Point of Diminishing Return?

We all fall on both sides of the fence when solving problems. We are either on the receiving end of problems to solve or we are the...

Rethink our view towards single-points-of-failure.

The new James Webb Space Telescope claims to have 344 single-points-of-failure (SPOF) or single components that could disrupt the...

Using algorithms for spares management. Easy, right?

Academic references exist for inventory optimization to reflect current reliability and current market conditions. Within manufacturing,...

Standing Out by Embracing Your Business Failings? Absolutely.

It is always something to admire when people own their mistakes or missed attempts or utter flops. In the manufacturing industry, I find...

Reflections on the Use of the Word "Failure": I blame Manufacturing.

Maybe I’ve spent too much time in manufacturing because “failure” is one of my default words. I have tried to incorporate fiasco,...

How I figured out that reflecting on failures made for good business.

Seth Godin calls it “shipping.” Having the courage to reflect, write, and ship. It is taking time to build the habit to do good things...