All Features

Adam Zewe
With a more efficient method for artificial pollination, farmers in the future could grow fruits and vegetables inside multilevel warehouses, boosting yields while mitigating some of agriculture’s harmful effects on the environment.
To help make this idea a reality, MIT researchers are developing…

Wayne Labs
A September 2024 Gallup poll revealed that nearly 30% of U.S. adults have little to no confidence in the safety of U.S. foods at the grocery store. Considering recent recalls, is it any wonder? What good is a quality control program if it doesn’t include food safety?
Boar’s Head’s Jarratt,…
Quality Digest
(Novelis: Atlanta) -- Aluminum has traditionally been reserved for luxury and high-performance vehicles. However, advancements in material science, recycling capabilities, and design innovation have transformed aluminum into a cost-effective and sustainable choice for all vehicle categories, from…
Quality Digest
(InventHelp: Pittsburgh) -- “I’m a plumbing manager and I needed a better way to find the exact center of the pipe, as well as to determine the length of pipes,” said an inventor from Royse City, Texas, “so I invented the OFFSET MASTER. My design would streamline the measurement process.”
The…
(MIT: Cambridge, MA) -- Materials like car tires, human tissues, and spider webs are diverse in composition, but all contain networks of interconnected strands. A long-standing question about the durability of these materials asks: What is the energy required to fracture these diverse networks? A…

Gleb Tsipursky
The pandemic forced leaders to reconcile with the need for effective hybrid and remote team management strategies, including performance evaluations. Research has shown the benefits of moving away from large-scale quarterly or annual performance reviews. Instead, successful organizations favor…
Quality Digest
(RobotLAB: Southlake, TX) -- Contrary to common concerns about robots taking over jobs that people need, Elad Inbar, CEO of RobotLAB, says there’s plenty of room for both, particularly in the services sector where there’s a growing demand for workers but a diminishing workforce.
“People can focus…

Cindy Mielke
Businesses today have more options than ever before regarding where and how they recruit new talent. Thanks to new technologies and a general shift in working cultures, organizations can now access a much wider talent pool when hiring full-time remote employees.
However, with this added hiring…

S. Heather Duncan
Idaho National Laboratory (INL) uses a software algorithm that Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) developed to check for flaws in additively manufactured components. This is part of the process of identifying promising metals and alloys for 3D printing the next generation of nuclear reactors. …
Quality Digest
(Han’s Robot: Shenzhen, China) -- Han’s Robot, a leader in collaborative robotics, reflects on 2024, a year in which it won widespread accolades and recognition. These achievements highlight the company’s commitment to innovation, excellence, and customer satisfaction.
In July 2024, Han’s Robot’s…

Derek Deasy, Enoch Li
Having a coach these days is almost a given, an essential part of any senior executive’s career portfolio. But while some leaders swear by their coaches, others just can’t seem to find the “right one.” What causes these wildly different experiences?
While there are multiple approaches and…

NIST
Without us realizing it, metrology and its associated standards and services play a big role in our daily lives. We buy groceries that are weighed or measured. Prepackaged products are weighed or measured during production. Medicine at the pharmacy is measured to make sure it contains the right…
Quality Digest
(Divergent: Brea, CA) -- Driven by a mission to develop and provide adaptive, high-performance, scalable hardware for the automotive, aerospace, and defense industries, Divergent Technologies hopes to reinvent data-driven manufacturing in high-complexity environments.
To deliver on its ambitious…
Quality Digest
(GARDCO: Columbia, MD) -- Paul N. Gardner USA (GARDCO), worldwide distributors, producers, and designers of quality physical and inspection instruments for paint, coatings, and related industries, announces its new coatmaster Flex noncontact wet film thickness gauge.
The coatmaster Flex is an…

Sabine Terrasi
It creates a warm and inviting atmosphere. Its natural grain and color tones have a lively effect and add character to a room. We are talking about classic wood flooring—usually laminate, and optionally with a click system for easy installation.
Scheucher Holzindustrie GmbH, from Mettersdorf,…

Angie Basiouny
Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli is routinely asked to predict the future of work. His expert answer is always the same: “The future looks like the past.”
He’s not trying to be cryptic. It’s just that the big changes ushered in by the pandemic five years ago are still unfolding—remote…
Quality Digest
(CEESI: Nunn, CO) -- Colorado Engineering Experiment Station Inc. (CEESI) is extending the abstract submission deadline for the 2025 CEESI Gas Ultrasonic Meter User’s Conference. If you have presentations that discuss new technical developments, deployment of new technology, case studies,…
Christopher Chidzik
(AMT: McLean, VA) -- Shipments of cutting tools, as measured by the Cutting Tool Market Report compiled in a collaboration between the Association For Manufacturing Technology (AMT) and the U.S. Cutting Tool Institute (USCTI), totaled $183.1 million in November 2024. Orders decreased 13.8% from…

Christine Schaefer
In a recent blog, I provided many reasons to apply to be a 2025 Baldrige examiner. The benefits of serving in this volunteer role were conveyed by three highly experienced Baldrige examiners with career expertise from the business, K-12 education, and healthcare sectors. Each served as an…

Stephanie Ojeda
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s inspections and subsequent actions all come down to product quality. Quality system failures result in noncompliances that FDA inspectors target during their inspections. If there is any doubt that a manufacturer’s product is safe and effective, it is the…
Quality Digest
(Siemens: Plano, TX) -- Last January at CES 2025, one of the world’s most influential tech events, Siemens showcased its vision for a future where data, AI, and software-defined automation converge to empower customers to take bold leaps in industrial innovation.
“Industrial AI is a game-changer…
Quality Digest
(CIMdata: Ann Arbor, MI) -- CIMdata Inc., a leading global PLM (product life cycle management) strategic consulting and research firm, announces an upcoming free educational webinar, “Recovery for a Stalled PLM Initiative—Part 2.” The hour-long webinar will take place Feb. 13, 2025, 11:00 a.m.…

Akhilesh Gulati
Paul was sitting in his office staring at production numbers from the past quarter. Despite having a great team, strong customer demand, and state-of-the-art equipment, the factory’s performance wasn’t meeting expectations. There was a bottleneck in the assembly line—a critical chokepoint that was…
Quality Digest
(RS: Corby, UK) -- RS, a global product and service solutions provider for industrial customers, offers an expansive selection of digitalization and integration solutions engineered to boost efficiency and productivity in the process manufacturing industry.
In addition to pervasive industrial…

Anne Trafton
For many industrial processes, the typical way to separate gases, liquids, or ions is with heat, using slight differences in boiling points to purify mixtures. These thermal processes account for roughly 10% of the energy use in the United States.
MIT chemical engineer Zachary Smith wants to…