About APLOMET

APLOMET was created in August 1985 by Duke Okes as a private training/consulting firm focused on quality management.

During the next 38 years he served Fortune 500 companies, family-owned businesses, nonprofit organizations, and start-ups in the manufacturing, healthcare, education, government and service sectors in the US. Canada, Mexico, Caribbean, Europe and Asia.  He also delivered public workshops in partnership with many educational and professional training organizations.

He retired in December 2023 but still speaks and writes on quality related topics.  He has also returned to some of his earlier loves (such as reading science fiction and detective-like books), studying subjects he had bypassed earlier in life but has remained curious about, as well as continuing looking to the future.

 

 

 

 

Musings: My Blog

Coronavirus and Root Cause Analysis

Since COVID-19 is nearly all you see/hear these days I thought I might as well do my part.  Started thinking about how the response to it is related to problems organizations face when trying to do root cause analysis.  Here are some thoughts: When a problem occurs...

A Process for Lack of Quality

If your organization screws up so often that you actually advertise that you will (sort of) fix it, you have a serious problem. See Domino's "Delivery Insurance"  They're promoting it like it's a great feature (as compared to fixing potholes).

Who Else Should They Listen To???

I loved (that's a joke) BMW's comments in this article about the big grille: https://www.autoblog.com/2019/12/17/bmw-defends-big-grille/ I'm thinking that yes, people who buy the vehicles probably are ok with the grille.  But what about all the people who DON"T buy a...

Great Keynote by Human Error Guru

Sidney Dekker is thought of as one of the top gurus relative to human error.  Here's a worthwhile video of one of his presentations.  Although it's safety-focused, it's just as applicable to quality errors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E-YN6hD1WU

(Trying to) Understand Human Behavior

Here's a lecture that provides a great view of why human behavior is so complex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bnSY4L3V8s Unfortunately he doesn't take it further with recommendations on how to move people from the Us to the Them view.

Normality in SPC

I've never been one to worry too much about normality of data.  Here's a tremendous article explaining why it isn't particularly important for control charts. https://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/statistics-column/normality-myth-090819.html

Interesting Perspective on Risk-Based Auditing

Although likely intended for financial auditors, a lot of the advice is also relevant for quality auditors. https://internalaudit360.com/conducting-risk-assessments-the-total-quality-auditing-way/

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