All Features
William A. Levinson
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the HEROES Act (Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act)1 which will, if approved by the Senate and president, require OSHA to develop a standard for workplace protection against Covid-19.
Under section 120302 the legislation says…
Chip Bell
One of my favorite movies is Stripes. Starring Saturday Night Live comedians Bill Murray and John Candy, the 1981 hit movie features a scene in which new Army recruits (including Murray and Candy) are in a “get-acquainted” circle with their basic training platoon sergeant. Each recruit tells the…
Ryan E. Day
Writing a press release is easy. Writing a great press release takes some thought. And great press releases can draw more potential customers into your sphere of influence. Fortunately, writing great marketing copy isn’t all that complicated. Include these three elements and you’re well on your way…
Denrie Caila Perez
A new report from Trend Micro Research illustrates how advanced hackers are using unconventional attack vectors against smart manufacturing environments. Smart manufacturing technology generally operates through proprietary systems, which use their own proprietary language. However, these systems…
Leigh Turner
Given the death, suffering, social disruption and economic devastation caused by Covid-19, there is an urgent need to quickly develop therapies to treat this disease and prevent the spread of the virus.
But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), charged with the task of evaluating and…
Tom Taormina
Each article in this series presents new tools for increasing return on investment (ROI), enhancing customer satisfaction, creating process excellence, and driving risk from an ISO 9001:2015-based quality management system (QMS). They will help implementers evolve quality management to overall…
Vanessa Bates Ramirez
Long before coronavirus appeared and shattered our preexisting “normal,” the future of work was a widely discussed and debated topic. We’ve watched automation slowly but surely expand its capabilities and take over more jobs, and we’ve wondered what artificial intelligence will eventually be…
NIST
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used state-of-the-art atomic clocks, advanced light detectors, and a measurement tool called a frequency comb to boost the stability of microwave signals a hundredfold. This marks a giant step toward better electronics to…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
What is quality intelligence, exactly? It’s more than marketing spin. More, even, than the sum of its many control charts. It’s not collecting data simply to further go/no-go actions. And it doesn’t mean turning the cognitive wheel entirely over to artificial intelligence, either—far from it.
We…
Jason Chester
For many manufacturing quality professionals, the thought of updating their statistical process control (SPC) solution is like getting an extra birthday. Many quality experts know that modernizing the way they collect, analyze, and use data is a critical need for their organizations, now more than…
Ryan E. Day
An organization can achieve great results when everyone is working together, looking at the same information generated from the same data, and using the same rules. Changes can be made that affect a company’s bottom line through operational improvements, product quality, and process optimization.…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Blame it on Moore’s law. We live in a digital Pangaea, a world of borderless data driven by technology, and the speed and density with which data can be transmitted and handled. It’s a world in which data-driven decisions cause daily fluctuations in markets and supply chains. Data come at us so…
Ryan E. Day
It’s no secret that manufacturing companies operate in an inherently unstable environment. Every operational weakness poses a risk to efficiency, quality, and ultimately, to profitability. All too often, it takes a crisis—like Covid-19 shutdowns—to reveal operational weaknesses that have been…
Eric Weisbrod
For nearly a century, statistical process control (SPC) has been the cornerstone of quality management and process control. But traditional SPC can’t keep up as the pace of manufacturing accelerates. Twenty-first century manufacturing lines produce multiple products and create thousands of data…
Steve Wise
Quality data are the heart and soul of statistical process control (SPC), the industry standard methodology for measuring and controlling quality in manufacturing processes. Asking manufacturers to give up data is like asking them to give up water. It’s just something that is necessary for their…
Mary Rowzee
During the first six months after the publication of its first edition in June 2019, the AIAG & VDA FMEA Handbook gained popularity in the global automotive industry. Both U.S. and European OEMs have started to require the AIAG VDA approach to failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) in their…
M. Tina Dacin, Laura Rees
A small business has been given the green light to reopen amid the Covid-19 pandemic. What does it need to consider for employees and customers?
Small-business owners are reorganizing physical space to account for continued distancing requirements, and rethinking supply chains to deliver products…
Mariah Hauck
The latest Thomas Industrial Survey revealed the ongoing impacts of Covid-19 on North American manufacturing. Unsurprisingly, 89 percent of the 1,000+ North American manufacturers surveyed reported being affected by Covid-19. Business impacts include decreased demand, staffing issues, and…
Sarah Simon
Throughout my career, I’ve enjoyed the thrill of several transitions between parallel (related but different) professional camps. In each case, there was some level of misalignment between professional villages, ranging from misunderstanding to distrust and even acrimony.
Three major transitions I…
Maggie Pavlick
Masks, gowns, and other personal protective equipment (PPE) are essential for protecting healthcare workers. However, the textiles and materials used to make such items can absorb and carry viruses and bacteria, inadvertently spreading the disease the wearer sought to contain.
When the coronavirus…
Ken Levine
Lean Six Sigma (LSS) professionals have an enormous opportunity to add value to organizations and to our communities during this coronavirus pandemic. We have the objective orientation, methods, and tools to help. Process improvement is currently more important than ever in this “new normal”…
Thomas Hellwig
The Covid-19 world is marked by a high degree of uncertainty and existential fear, a dearth of social interaction, the convergence of professional and personal space, a lack of physical activity, and an obsessive focus on hygiene and social distancing. For professionals, this amounts to a toxic…
Jim Benson
Stop asking, “Which tool should I use?” and start asking, “How can I work smarter?”
When I was a young coder, I asked my mother, “What will I be?” Will I be Jira, Will I be Asana? Here’s what she said to me....“Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. Your app is not a ticket to be free. Que…
Jessica Reiner
For more than 20 years, a class of man-made, potentially cancer-causing chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) has commonly been found in humans and the environment. These chemicals are used in a variety of industries and can be found in many consumer products, such as food…
jeffdewar
‘We shouldn’t be calling some jobs essential.”
That line got me into a lot of trouble the other day when chatting with friends about how the term “essential worker” degrades the stature of all the “nonessentials,” when, in fact, we all play an essential role in the millions of supply chains across…
