All Features
Michelle Shemo
As a member of Minitab’s technical support team, I get the opportunity to work with many people using design of experiments (DOE).
People often will call after they’ve already chosen their design, run the experiment, and identified the important factors in their process. But now what? They have…
American National Standards Institute ANSI
(ANSI: Washington, D.C.) -- World Standards Day is celebrated annually around the world to increase awareness of the role that standards play in the global economy. The World Standards Day Paper Competition is co-sponsored by The Society for Standards Professionals (SES) and the U.S. Celebration…
Alexandra Brown
Why is it easier for many hospitals to justify investing in capital equipment, new buildings, and service lines rather than in quality improvement? There are three major reasons.
Many hospital systems don’t know their real costs
It’s been said that the first step in fixing a problem is realizing…
Thomas R. Cutler
Magline is a leading manufacturer of route distribution solutions. Back in 1947, the company was founded to “make things out of magnesium” because such products offered unrivaled strength and lightness. Magline’s first product was a modular magnesium hand truck that caught on rapidly. That was a…
Ryan E. Day
Have you heard the one about the robot that hops a train down to the brewery? It may not seem likely that robots, beer, and high-speed trains have much in common, but the industrial quest to coax more output from no more input (translate that to efficiency) can make for some unlikely bunkmates.…
Jim Benson
There are many techniques to visualize your work. Obviously, our most popular is Personal Kanban. The way the human brain is constructed, we’re very sensitive to the content of visual information, and we quickly assimilate it. Just walking down the street, we’re exposed to different buildings with…
Knowledge at Wharton
The future of retailing is in upheaval, and the country’s malls top the list of potential collateral damage. Tenants are pulling out as chains scale back and retailers continue to struggle with how to adapt to the rise of e-commerce and other changes in shopping behavior, and to better target a…
ECM Global Measurement Solutions
(ECM: Topsfield, MA) -- ECM Global Measurement Solutions (ECM) is a satisfied user of SpatialAnalyzer (SA) software from New River Kinematics (NRK). Ray Ryan, vice president of operations for ECM, will present a paper at the 2015 SA User Conference titled “Evolutionary Approach to Automation.”…
Society of Manufacturing Engineers
(SME: Dearborn, MI) -- With manufacturing a driving force of economic growth in the Northeast, as well as the United States, more than 12,000 business owners, engineers, designers, production managers and purchasing executives will gather May 12–14, 2015, at EASTEC, the East Coast’s premier…
Davis Balestracci
Good data collection requires eight questions to be addressed. The first four involve designing the collection.
Most of these issues were discussed in my last column. To summarize:1. Why collect the data? • Is there a clear objective for this collection?
2. What method(s) will be used for the…
Matthew E. May
The more strategy development work I do with organizations, the more I’m becoming aware of a prevalent pattern, one that I find counterproductive, even detrimental. It concerns the starting point for their strategy work: In nearly every case, they begin with convergent thinking, the polar opposite…
NIST
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- For the second year in a row, the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program (BPEP) has received the first place award in the government and military category of the Leadership 500 Excellence Awards, an annual recognition of the world’s best leadership development programs…
Larry Spears
If you’ve been in the life science industry for awhile, you know it never gets easier but instead more complicated year after year. For example, unique device identification (UDI) requirements, combination product rules, and updated electronic medical device reporting (eMDR) requirements add to…
Jack Dunigan
The concept of leading from behind appears in the news fairly often. The term has found expression via academia, in an idea put forth by Linda Hill of the Harvard Business School. She claims it originated from a reading of Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, in which he likened leaders to shepherds…
(9001Academy: Zagreb, Croatia) -- The experts at 9001Academy have produced a matrix to help address some of the questions and confusion stemming from the soon-to-be-released ISO 9001:2015 update to the ISO 9001:2008 quality management systems standard. The matrix can be downloaded in PDF form here…
Matthew Barsalou
I see a weakness in management models. It’s not the models themselves that are the problem, but rather their application in smaller organizations. Those of us with either business experience or a business-related degree can be expected to have an understanding of at least a few management models,…
Annette Franz
A couple weeks ago, I participated in a webinar with Kyle Antcliff of Intradiem. We talked about the employee experience, employee journey mapping, and solutions that drive or affect workforce efficiency. During the presentation, a lot of employee experience terms were used, and I attempted to…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- Voting has begun on the draft version of ISO 45001, which sets the requirements for an occupational health and safety management system.
ISO 45001 is currently at the committee draft stage of development, the first consultation phase. During this stage, the countries (ISO members…
Alan Nicol
There are a great many risk management tools available, in a variety of forms. Most of us are familiar with failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) for design risk management, or some other form of risk matrix for project risk planning.
But what do we use for real-time decision making? Our…
Rob Harrison
Organizations face multiple challenges when selecting a vendor and planning the implementation of enterprise quality management system (EQMS) software. The potential for failure (assuming that all the functional and nonfunctional, usability, deployment model, and support requirements are…
Bob Emiliani
In a recent article in the Dec. 28, 2014, issue of The Wall Street Journal, “Colleges Need a Business Productivity Audit,” authors Frank Mussano and Robert Iosue argue that colleges should be audited, as business are, “to identify unprofitable practices.”
Audits are the answer to structural…
(ZenQMS: Conshohocken, PA) -- Join ZenQMS and BioProcess Technology Consultants (BPTC) on April 15, 2015, for food, drinks, and learning at the CIC in Kendall Square from 4:30 p.m. until 6:30 p.m.
Taylor Burtis from BPTC will offer a presentation “What Works and What Doesn’t in QMS Document…
Kelly Kuchinski
Nestlé USA has officially announced its plans to replace the artificial flavors and colors in its chocolate candy products with natural ingredients. This decision will affect more than 250 chocolate bars across 10 brands. The first three modified candy bars—Baby Ruth, Butterfinger, and Crunch—will…
Society of Manufacturing Engineers
(SME: Dearborn, MI) -- Continuing to set the standard for operational excellence and an improved workforce, the Lean Certification Alliance has introduced customer-driven improvements to its Lean Certification program, a globally recognized standard for lean principles and practices.
Lean…
Larry Maggiano
Creating quality coordinate measuring machine (CMM) measurement programs takes time, and production cycles are often delayed while waiting for the measurement programs to be created. But software that works directly from model-based definitions can drastically decrease that time.
The move from 2D…
