Feb 11 2022
Scientific Thinking and Manufacturing Improvement
“Scientific thinking” appears more and more in discussions of Lean, Kaizen, or TPS. What is it? Well, it’s the way scientists think. In reality, however, talk to actual scientists about PDCA, DMAIC, the 8D, A3 thinking, Why-Why analysis, TRIZ, or even statistical design of experiments, and their eyes glaze over. Most will have no idea what these methods are. This is true for physicists, chemists, biologists, or even economists. If you elaborate, they will dismiss these tools as trivial or devoid of any connection with their work.
Improving how things are made does make the world a better place but it’s not science. By growing a body of knowledge that is our greatest asset as a species, scientists make another contribution, that we should recognize as different.
Feb 23 2022
Standards, China, and the Industrial Revolution
[Featured image: a Han dynasty bronze ruler]
As a general principle, in manufacturing, you need to do the work the same way every time if you want the output to be consistent. In some cases, like extracting metals from ores, you need to tweak processes to produce consistent output from raw materials of varying compositions. Then the tweaks themselves must be executed consistently so that the response to a particular variation in ore content is always the same.
Standards are an area where China had a 2,000-year headstart but neither the scientific nor the industrial revolutions occurred there.
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By Michel Baudin • Technology • 1 • Tags: interchangeable parts, Part standardization, Quality, Standards