All Features
Chip Bell
Ever notice how some people always get the best table, the upgraded room, or the best cut of meat at the market? Great customer service is not an accident. Those who are served well follow a recipe that turns even a cold initial encounter into a warm one. Here are five tips for almost always…
Tim Waldo
If you are like many small and medium-sized manufacturers, finding good help has been a pain point for many years, and it has become even more difficult during the Covid-19 pandemic. The market forces driving that dynamic are not likely to change soon.
Your shop has had to become more adaptive and…
Phanish Puranam, Julien Clément
Covid-19 has dealt most businesses a heavy blow, but the pandemic has at least one under-acknowledged upside. By moving organizations from the office into the virtual space, the pandemic has cracked open a treasure trove of data that can be used to streamline and optimize how organizations operate…
Jeffrey Phillips
First, a slight diatribe. Why is it that company leaders think their people can do successful innovation when they don’t share a common language? In this article’s title I’ve used the word “disruptive,” and by this I mean innovation in the “third horizon”—incremental, breakthrough, and disruptive.…
M. Mitchell Waldrop, Knowable Magazine
If you were to contact a group of recycling professionals, as one recent survey did, and ask them to list all the ways that consumer product manufacturers drive them crazy, you’d probably hear a lot about “shrink sleeves”—those full-body, shrink-to-fit plastic labels found on beer cans, yogurt…
Ryan E. Day
If you are a quality engineer or maybe even the quality manager of a manufacturing company, investing in quality improvements may be a no-brainer. Defects are inherently undesirable, right? Well, yes, but at the level of plant manager, president, or CEO, decisions about where to allocate assets…
Ken Voytek
During the past few years, I have written more than a few blogs and papers looking at manufacturing productivity across the 50 states. I wanted to update some of these analyses to reflect more recent data, see what they tell us, and examine how states were performing when looking at the change in…
Peter Dizikes
The American workforce is at a crossroads. Digitization and automation have replaced millions of middle-class jobs, while wages have stagnated for many who remain employed. A lot of labor has become insecure, low-income freelance work.
Yet there is reason for optimism on behalf of workers, as…
Mark Schmit
As a kid I used to be confused by the so-called curse, “May you live in interesting times.” Wouldn’t interesting times be... good? Why would I not want to be interested? Then I got a little older, experienced a little more life, and I started to understand why “interesting times” could be a…
Natalie Weber
Unlike Covid-19, remote audits aren’t unprecedented. Remote audits didn’t start with the pandemic, although it has forced more companies to use them than previously. At MasterControl, we’ve been doing remote audits for years for our international customers. It saves time and expense, and it’s every…
Steven Stein
Recently there have been a number of articles whose authors discuss conducting assessments remotely because of the pandemic. This article will discuss my experience with an actual assessment conducted remotely, how the plan changed in response to the pandemic, lessons learned, and some of my…
Sanjay Mishra
As the weather cools, the number of infections of the Covid-19 pandemic are rising sharply. Hamstrung by pandemic fatigue, economic constraints, and political discord, public health officials have struggled to control the surging pandemic. But now, a rush of interim analyses from pharmaceutical…
Vision Engineering Ltd.
(Vision Engineering: New Milford, CT) -- Vision Engineering broadens its range of popular ‘LVC’ automated video measurement systems with the addition of LVC200 and higher specification “Plus” variants.
Ideal for measuring large components or multiple small components, quickly, easily, and…
Donald J. Wheeler
The first statistical test was a test for outliers. The problem of what to do about outliers has been around from the beginnings of data analysis. Part one will compare four tests for outliers. Next month part two will cover some additional tests for outliers.
Statisticians know how to analyze…
Joerg Niessing, Fred Geyer
A new digital era of business-to-business (B2B) sales and marketing is upon us. It’s driven by corporate customer demand for online access to their suppliers’ offerings and expertise. Taking advantage of this shift is challenging because it requires moving from deeply embedded B2B sales and…
Matt Martin
Morale has dipped during Covid-19. We’re separated from our friends, families, and colleagues but busier than ever. The majority of workers are reporting higher stress, greater anxiety, and emotional exhaustion. Employers have a responsibility to help workers get through this. Here are five ways to…
Knowledge at Wharton
Real-world, face-to-face communication—complete with eye contact, body language, and other important sources of information—is a rarity in business today, and the potential for failing to convey an intended message or giving the wrong impression has grown. Neuroscience research has uncovered…
Marposs
(Marposs: Auburn Hills, MI) -- Marposs, a world leader in measurement, inspection and test technologies, has announced Minimicromar3, an in- and post-process grinding gauge designed for small diameter measurement. This ultra-compact gauge is well-suited for the manufacturing of very small ground…
Craig Tomita
Are the days of standard industrial robots numbered? Absolutely not. In part one of this series, we looked at the unique attribute of cobots. In this article, we’ll see how industrial robots do what they’re designed to do extremely well—high speed, high repeatability, heavy payloads, and more.…
Liz Uram
If you work remotely either part-time or full-time, temporarily or permanently, you have probably discovered that you are a lot more productive when you are not in the office. The main reason for the increase in productivity is that people aren’t inviting you to “got a minute” meetings. These…
Nader Moayeri
I am part of a grassroots effort at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that is developing an exposure notification system for pandemics in general, though we hope it could be used in at least a limited fashion during the current Covid-19 pandemic. We are fortunate at NIST to…
Bryan Christiansen
Safety managers have a multitude of safety strategies to protect the health and safety of their workforce. Guidelines for personal protective equipment (PPE), lockout/tagout (LOTO) programs, fire exit signage—the list is endless. However, to get the most out of your employees and resources,…
Klaus Wertenbroch
From a customer perspective, the only thing more frustrating than being denied a product or service is when that denial comes without a satisfactory explanation. As humans, our ability to deal with disappointment depends on understanding why it happened. Without an acceptable rationale, we’re apt…
Sébastien Breteau
As commercialization strategies evolve amid Covid-19, and supply chains continue to trend toward diversification, the only way for businesses to control their destiny is to double down on quality standards. If cash is king, then quality is the king’s closest confidant since high quality protects…
Jessica Ellspermann
How you communicate a message is as important as the message itself. When it comes to internal communications, this certainly holds true. Company culture can give your organization a major strategic advantage in these changing times. But what your culture consists of—goals, values, and practices—…
