All Features
Robert Allen, Kathleen Bellemare
Training is extremely important to the future of manufacturing in the United States, yet in many states it has fallen by the wayside. At Connecticut Spring & Stamping (CSS), the situation had become so desperate that to meet its capacity and continue to grow, the company has had to replace…
Kevin E. O’Connor
Team leaders have a perennial dilemma: How can we educate, engage, and develop our group in a substantial way that helps the team become better? “Team-building” is often seen as the fun add-on to a meeting devoted to science, sales figures, and quarterly goals.
A ropes course, horseback riding, a…
TÜV Rheinland of North America
The inspection team at TÜV Rheinland Industrial Solutions (TRIS) in North America is accustomed to using computed radiography to assess structural integrity of welds and castings for pipes, tanks, pressure vessels, and bridges. Occasionally the team gets to apply “industrial” radiography on…
(Quality Digest: Chico, CA) -- Innovation professionals now have a resource and organization whose vision is to prepare professionals and companies to use innovation science and methodologies to address global challenges. Quality Digest contributor H. James Harrington has been actively involved in…
Miriam Boudreaux
Have you ever been through an audit to an ISO standard? If you have, then you probably know about a set of questions that are frequently asked during audits against various ISO standards. No one can predict all of the questions that an auditor will ask, but you can bet that that following five…
William A. Levinson
An article in the April 2013 edition of Quality Progress titled “Back to Work” reports that Yahoo! now requires employees who previously telecommuted to report to a Yahoo! office, or even relocate so they will be able to do so.
“To become the absolute best place to work, communication and…
Morgan Palmer
Editor’s note: Quality Digest hosted Morgan Palmer’s webinar, “Defining and Building a Risk Management Strategy for Quality and Compliance Management Systems” on Tuesday, April 30, at 2 p.m. Eastern/11 a.m. Pacific.
When we look at the dynamics of commerce, from any industry, we see an increasing…
UC Berkeley NewsCenter
Overworked and stressed out? Look on the bright side. Some stress is good for you.
“You always think about stress as a really bad thing, but it’s not,” says Daniela Kaufer, associate professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley. “Some amounts of stress are good to…
CMSC
(CMSC: San Diego, CA) --The Coordinate Metrology Society (CMS), the preeminent membership association for measurement professionals, has announced the launch of the industry’s first Level-One Certification for Portable 3D Metrology. The first examinations will be held at the 29th annual Coordinate…
Umberto Tunesi
There’s something not really in tune with the meaning we commonly give to the word “partnership.” That is, the commonly understood definition that partners must be balanced, on the same level, rather than one above or below the other.
Partnership is certainly not what Phaedrus was alluding to in…
(Quality Digest: Chico, CA) -- Quality Digest syndicated columnist Robert Wilson's books are on their way to libraries in need as part of the effort to restock facilities destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. The Annoying Ghost Kid has been shipped after being vetted by Indie Authors for Hurricane Sandy…
Jim Frost
In statistics, we use a variety of intervals to characterize the results. The most well-known of these are confidence intervals. However, confidence intervals are not always appropriate. Here we’ll take a look at the different types of intervals, their characteristics, and when you should use…
Stanford News Service
Homes and buildings chilled without air conditioners. Car interiors that don’t heat up in the summer sun. Tapping the frigid expanses of outer space to cool the planet. Science fiction, you say? Well, maybe not any more.
A team of researchers at Stanford has designed an entirely new form of…
Jack Dunigan
Editor’s note: This continues Jack Dunigan’s series about unsung heroes in the workplace, and the 16 traits they all share.
A fellow woodworking business owner has a unique and clever way of qualifying applicants for jobs. He brings them into the shop and offers to pay them for one week. During…
Lean Math With Mark Hamel
Container capacity (Cc) is one of the four basic variables within the generic kanban sizing calculation. However, Cc is often not treated as a variable but more as a constant, predetermined quantity, especially if the lean practitioner seeks to use existing supplier packaging, reusable dunnage, or…
TÜV Rheinland of North America
(TÜV Rheinland: Boxborough, MA) -- TÜV Rheinland of North America is offering certification services in functional safety (FS) and hazardous locations (HazLoc). The new business line will address the growing need for the services.
TÜV Rheinland of North America’s HazLoc/Functional Safety team is…
NIST
Given recent events--the Boston Marathon bombings and the huge fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas--the editors thought it would be interesting to highlight the recent efforts by NIST and others to improve the communications technology used by emergency responders, a huge problem during the…
NIST
When responding to fires in high-rise buildings, firefighting crews of five or six members—instead of three or four—are significantly faster in putting out fires and completing search-and-rescue operations, according to a multiphase study carried out by the National Institute of Standards and…
Michael Causey
The latest batch of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspection letters noting objectionable conditions, aka 483s, has a decidedly international flair: Italy, Japan, and Canada had the pleasure of hosting FDA inspectors in recent months. Three firms were found wanting by the agency in a number…
MIT News
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First responders, including firefighters and police officers, must often take action in potentially lethal situations. Bounce Imaging seeks to decrease the danger for these individuals with a throwable ball that can automatically detect potential dangers in advance. As the ball…
Matthew E. May
Innovation is at or near the center of nearly everyone’s radar screen. If you’re not looking for it in your work, you’re looking for it in your personal life, because stirring in each of us is the desire to employ our ingenuity. Thus, the potential to innovate is alive and well in everyone.…
Plex Systems Inc.
(Plex Systems: Troy, MI) -- Plex Systems Inc., provider of Plex Online, the cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for manufacturers, announces the upcoming videocast, “Technology in Automotive Manufacturing: Driving the Industry’s Future,” to be held on April 25, 2013, at 2 p.m. Eastern…
Alan Nicol
The lean tool known as 5S was conceived and developed in a manufacturing environment. It is a very effective tool at eliminating some of the most senseless and aggravating sources of wasted time and energy. Most commonly, it stops the wasted effort of searching for stuff that we need right now.…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
The Coordinate Metrology Society’s (CMS) efforts to deliver an industry-recognized certification to the profession of portable 3D metrology is now a reality.
This endeavor began with a vision and a request from industry to leverage the resources of the CMS membership to create such a program in…
Akhilesh Gulati
Editor’s note: This article continues the series exploring structured innovation using the TRIZ methodology, a problem-solving, analysis, and forecasting tool derived from studying patterns of invention found in global patent data.
Coffee cups filled, the council members sat down, interested to…
