Quality8 min11 July 2026

From ring binders to rhythm: how quality work became simpler — if you dare to use it

Quality management in the 1990s recorded everything. Today you’re allowed to keep only what you act on — and that is a gift to any operation.

In the 90s, quality lived in ring binders: procedures for everything, records of everything — and far too rarely an action behind them. The article follows the journey of quality management from 1987 to today and shows, with three recognisable examples, how to turn records into actions that stick.

Management6 min28 June 2026

Lean doesn’t fail. Management does.

Lean works. It is documented in decades of research and on factory floors around the world. And yet we hear it again and again: “We tried Lean — it didn’t work for us.” That is a misdiagnosis, and it is expensive.

Management5 min27 June 2026

The problem isn’t the employees

When something goes wrong, we look for the person who did it wrong. That is the natural reaction, and the wrong one. W. Edwards Deming estimated that over 94% of all quality problems are due to the system, not the individuals. That calls for a different kind of leadership.

Practical knowledge on Lean and operations.

From ring binders to rhythm: how quality work became simpler — if you dare to use it

Lean doesn’t fail. Management does.

The problem isn’t the employees

More articles

Standard work: the foundation beneath every improvement

Standards aren’t control — they are freedom

The bottleneck decides everything: a practical introduction to the Theory of Constraints

Operational maturity: from firefighting to self-sustaining operations

Leadership behaviour and Lean culture: what the research shows

Skill Matrix: how to create flexibility in production

The SMED method: a step-by-step guide to reduced changeover time

Why Lean implementations often fail, and what the research says about the success factors

Daily Management: a practical guide to the Tier 1-3 structure

Cost of Quality: understanding the visible and invisible quality costs

Understanding hidden capacity loss: how to identify invisible bottlenecks

Quality systems that work: from paper to practice

OEE improvement: a systematic approach to prioritising the effort

Get new articles straight to your inbox