Understanding Matt Tinaglia
Six Sigma Meets Middle-earth
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Today's global industry is comprised of companies all competing with each other for customers and resources. There are multiple tiers of supply and production, service and research. When a miner chips a piece of ore from the ground, that ore may pass through a dozen or more processing and manufacturing facilities before it reaches your hand in the form of a ballpoint pen, an eating utensil, or a metal coin.
What began as a row of laborers making pottery in ancient Roman shops has evolved into a complex network of corporate facilities scattered across the face of the Earth. Over the past 2,000 years, every generation has refined and improved its raw material extraction, processing, and product construction methods. Every passing century generates increased demand for productive capabilities and capacity. Since the early 1900s, the production trail from raw material to finished good has been evaluated, re-engineered, and retooled many times over. Today, it takes more resources to produce a ceramic mug than would have been required to operate an early city Circa 3,000 BCE. A large portion of our industry exists solely to help us build more industry. Nordson Corporation manufactures precision dispensing equipment for industrial applications that apply adhesives, sealants, and coatings used by other manufacturers around the world to produce and package their own products. Nordson is a manufacturer's manufacturer. They are one of many companies that contribute to our modern industrial infrastructure. 
Our friend Matt Tinaglia, whom many Xenite visitors may recognize as the editor of Parma Endorion: Essays on Middle-earth, 3rd edition and Understanding Middle-earth: Essays on |
J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, works as a Quality Engineer Supervisor for Nordson in a Georgia facility. Matt joined Nordson in 1997 as a field Applications Engineer, but when he moved into the Quality department in mid-2005, Matt found himself involved in an upgrading process for Nordson's manufacturing control and quality assurance initiatives.
Download Parma Endorion for free.
Nordson has investigated the increasingly popular Six Sigma quality control methodology, where inefficiencies are sought out and minimized prior to implementation of new application projects. That is, as a new product assembly process is designed (say, for creating a series of machines that apply sealants for a particular type of industry), Matt and his team of quality engineers collect and analyze production data. They are looking for the exceptions, the errors that result from the manufacturing process and devise ways to reduce or eliminate them. Their goal with Six Sigma is to keep defects to 3.4 per million or fewer. That is, out of every 1,000,000 products built in Nordson facilities, there can statistically be no more than 3.4 that are functionally non-conforming. Precision application equipment simply cannot possess many defects. There is little tolerance for defective processes and materials in high production environments. We've all seen television commercials that speak about the
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