All Features
Scott Berkun
The great surprise for people with good ideas is the gap between how an idea feels in their minds and how it feels when they try to put the idea to work.
When a good idea comes together, it feels fantastic. Good ideas often come with a wave of euphoria, a literal dopamine high, and we’re joyously…
Sal Lucido
Policies and procedures tell your employees, partners, vendors, and customers how your system operates. With changing regulations and expectations, a static library is not enough. Policies are dynamic and require a system to manage their creation, documentation, distribution, and management. Here’s…
Jeffrey Phillips
I have been thinking a lot about why innovation fails. Not about why supposedly innovative new products fail, because there are multiple reasons for that. A product could be too early or too late in the market window, or it could simply have the wrong pricing or distribution. A new product may lack…
Steven Brand
By 2025, nearly 25 percent of the U.S. population is expected to be 60 years of age or older. With this demographic preparing to exit the workforce and enter retirement, what can be done to retain their knowledge and pass it down to the next generation of employees? After all, a good portion of the…
Bruce Bolger
Grace Swanson, vice president of human capital at Accumold, a leading micro-molding plastics injection company located just outside Des Moines, Iowa, knows the field of standards well. Her company has certifications in ISO 9001 for quality management, ISO 14001 for environmental management, and ISO…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
In our April 13, 2018, episode of QDL, we talked about anti-hacker robots, data privacy, and new product introduction.
“HoneyBot Lures in Digital Troublemakers”
MIT nerds come up with a tasty target for IoT hackers. But this one fights back.
“We Don’t Care About Data Privacy”
Privacy, schmivacy.…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
Too much of a good thing brings out its downside. Ever had too much team time? It makes you long for a solo vacation on a desert island.
One of the best portrayals of “too much of a good thing” was in Black Mirror’s Nose Dive (Season 3). In what initially looks like a utopian culture where everyone…
Marin Hedin
Limiting first-year medical residents to 16-hour work shifts, compared to “flexing” them to allow for some longer shifts, generally makes residents more satisfied with their training and work-life balance. It also makes their training directors more dissatisfied with curtailed educational…
NIST
You can’t see well without lenses that can focus, whether those lenses are in your eye or the microscope you peer through. An innovative way to focus beams of neutrons might allow scientists to probe the interiors of opaque objects at a size range they were blind to previously, allowing them to…
Ryan E. Day
Invented in 1987 and commercially available since 1991, laser trackers have long been a mainstay of the aerospace industry. Automotive manufacturers have also adopted laser trackers for quality control (QC) and design. The fact is, any industry dealing with large-scale measurements—from small…
Douglas C. Fair
Here’s a quick rundown of what we covered in part one of our list of top 10 mistakes to avoid when using statistical process control (SPC): training everyone, charting everything, segregating control charts from manufacturing, “pinching” the SPC coordinator, and using SPC because it’s a “good thing…
Jack Dunigan
This is the next secret in our series, “The Secrets to Success You Don’t Know That You Already Know ” at The Practical Leader. Here we’re going to talk about Secret No. 4: Don’t Set Goals.
You’ve probably heard of that famous Yale research study, the one in 1953 that said of the graduating class,…
Nikon Metrology Inc., Metrologic Group
(Nikon Metrology: Brighton, MI) -- The Nikon Laser Radar combined with Metrologic Group’s software suite, Silma X4 i-Robot and Metrolog X4 i-Robot, provide a highly flexible and accurate 3D metrology solution, designed for shop-floor CMM quality measurements in short time cycles. This single,…
Douglas C. Fair
As you think about your organization’s manufacturing quality efforts—what you’ve overcome and what you hope to accomplish in the future—there is something you need to know.
You: What? Who? Me?
Me: Yes, you. No matter how long you’ve been playing this game (and I know many of you have been playing…
Shawn Faircloth
The cost of ineffective corrective action can be astronomical when you consider the monetary and reputational impact of delayed problem-solving. On a small scale, repeat problems—even minor errors—send a message to customers that you just don’t care to get it right.
And when poor problem-solving…
Knowledge at Wharton
America’s healthcare system has been on the examining table lately: from the tortuous battle over the Affordable Care Act, to Senator Bernie Sanders’ bill to allow low-cost prescription drugs in from Canada, to the intriguing announcement in January that Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
On April 10, 2018, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress regarding the unauthorized sharing of 87 million Facebook users’ personal data, vacuumed up by data research company Cambridge Analytica. There were pointed questions regarding Facebook’s lack of transparency…
Mike Figliuolo
A few years ago, I was very lucky to be reminded of what it’s like to be a team member instead of being a team leader. It was fun, refreshing, and insightful. Too many times as leaders, we forget what it’s like to be led instead of doing the leading.
I tried to achieve some balance in my life by…
Martin Gordon
On March 15, 2018, a 950-ton partially assembled pedestrian bridge at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami suddenly collapsed onto the busy highway below, killing six people and seriously injuring nine. Forensic engineers are taking center stage in the ongoing investigation to find out…
Richard Harpster
The AIAG-VDA FMEA Handbook committee and everyone who responded to the request for comment on the proposed AIAG-VDA failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) manual must be applauded for their efforts. Harmonizing the VDA and AIAG FMEA methods is not an easy task. According to industry sources,…
Martin J. Smith
If you want to make sure your new Whirlpool refrigerator really is meeting the efficiency standards of Energy Star compliance, as the manufacturer claims, is it better to test that claim by relying on regulators at the U.S. Department of Energy—or one of Whirlpool’s competitors?
A new study co-…
Frank Defesche
Your company leadership team just issued a corporate goal (aka mandate) of reducing defects to fewer than five per million units made. This goal is coupled with a need to reduce manufacturing costs by 10 percent while meeting new good manufacturing practices (GMP) or ISO standards. Oh, and you have…
Mike Richman
During this past Friday’s episode of QDL, we presented two great interviews, both revolving around standards and certification, plus a piece about analytics, and a lively off-script about the responsibilities of media companies like Facebook when it comes to protecting user data. Here’s a closer…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
The six core questions you see below are a window to help us understand why we struggle at work. Why? Because the answers to them are missing! The remedy is to first notice that—to notice the motion caused by those deficits. Then remove the motion by implementing visual answers. Imbed the answers…
Georgia Tech News Center
It’s small enough to fit inside a shoebox, yet this robot on four wheels has a big mission: keeping factories and other large facilities safe from hackers.
Meet the HoneyBot. Developed by a team of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the diminutive device is designed to lure in…
