It can be surprisingly difficult for businesses to get accurate answers to questions about their own data. Often, the data live in different systems or aren’t easily accessible to employees without specific technical skills. Some data may be in Salesforce but not in the company’s content management system—and vice versa. However, an employee might need all of those data to get the full picture…

There are always good reasons to attend the American Society for Quality’s World Conference on Quality and Improvement (WCQI). The sessions are substantive, the networking is genuine, and the exhibit hall gives you a concentrated look at where the tools and technologies of our profession are heading. After four decades covering this industry, we still come back every year. But 2026 has a…

In high-volume manufacturing, inspection often struggles to keep pace with production. That challenge becomes even greater when the material itself is naturally variable and the defects aren’t always easy to define consistently. In one high-volume manufacturing environment producing about 20,000 unassembled parts per day, that was exactly the problem: Quality teams were expected to identify…