All Features
(ANSI: New York) -- The American National Standards Institute invites all members to submit a nomination for the 2009 ANSI board of directors. Nominations are for terms beginning on January 1, 2009.ANSI strives to ensure balance and diversity within its membership and is seeking board members who…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- A new ISO standard will help to ensure consistent communication about one of the most ubiquitous and versatile materials in the global economy: plastics. ISO 19712-1:2008, “Plastics—Decorative solid surfacing materials—Part 1: Classification and specifications,” will ensure that…
Mike Thelen
What’s an extremely difficult part of lean? Sustained improvement. Kaizen is best known and most often described as continual, incremental improvement. Kaikaku is perhaps best described as revolutionary improvement. Thus we have two ways to pursue sustained improvement, evolution and revolution.…
the National Committee for Quality Assurance
(NCQA: Washington) -- The National Committee for Quality Assurance recently reached a milestone when it recognized its 10,000th physician for high-quality care. NCQA’s voluntary physician recognition programs evaluate physicians and physician practices based on evidence-based measures of quality…
Colorized micrograph of a NIST chip combining four microrefrigerators (circled in red) with a superconducting sensor (large orange square in the middle). The self-cooling chip could be used for applications ranging from detailed X-ray analysis of semiconductors to detection of…
AIA
(Automated Imaging Association: Ann Arbor, Michigan) -- A new machine vision market study reports that machine vision and automated imaging continues to be a growth industry in North America. The 2008 study is based on 2007 actual results and is organized primarily around the major machine…
Carl Zeiss Microscopy
(Carl Zeiss MicroImaging: Thornwood, NY) --The David H. Murdock Research Institute (DHMRI) in Kannapolis, North Carolina, has chosen Carl Zeiss MicroImaging, to supply its light microscopy and biological imaging systems for the microscopy core facility, making it one of the most advanced…
William Tandler
Encoding the mating flange:
In Workshop No. 7, we used Smart GD&T processes to encode the operation, assembly, and other functions of a flange. In this workshop, we take a deeper look at the mating aspect of the game by encoding the mating flange. The additional steps, 7 through 9, are…
Novaces
William Lannes, professor emeritus of the University of New Orleans (NOVACES: New Orleans, Louisiana) -- NOVACES, a provider of lean Six Sigma consulting and training services, and the University of New Orleans have announced a seminar designed…
Thomas R. Cutler
Manufacturing firms intent on capturing and distilling rich streams of data will find them. Companies will often look at a capability maturity model (CMM) in rows and columns—a format common across many industries and many applications—in Excel. Most data dumped from a database end up in a grid,…
Sutherland Global Services
(Sutherland Global Services: Rochester, New York) -- Sutherland Global Services, a multinational business process outsourcing (BPO) provider, received top honors in the 2008 Six Sigma case study presentation contest held by the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) and the Quality Council of India…
Thomas R. Cutler
Manufacturing firms intent on capturing and distilling rich streams of data will find them. Companies will often look at a capability maturity model (CMM) in rows and columns—a format common across many industries and many applications—in Excel. Most data dumped from a database end up in a grid,…
LAI International Inc.
(LAI International Inc.: Scottsdale, Arizona) -- A lean manufacturing initiative conducted by LAI International Inc., a supplier of precision components and subassemblies for original equipment manufacturers, has reduced the cycle time on a critical aerospace product by 25 percent, according to…
Bill Kalmar
It seems that not a day goes by that some politician, government official, or CEO of a major company has to retract a misspoken remark or admit that a previous message was either exaggerated or wasn’t factual. Despite the seriousness of the transgression, we as a forgiving society, are prepared to…
Ron Sachs, Consolidated News Photos (NIST: Washington) -- Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez recently presented five U.S. organizations with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest honor for organizational innovation and performance excellence. This…
APICS--The Association for Operations Management
(APICS: Chicago, Illinois) -- The Association for Operations Management recently completed the relocation of the association’s corporate headquarters from Alexandria, Virginia, to Chicago to better serve its 43,000 members. Chicago’s labor force boasts a large number of operations management and…
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(ASQ: Milwaukee, Wisconsin) -- In the world of quality improvement, achieving certification is viewed as a major source of personal accomplishment as well as a stepping stone to job advancement and higher salary. This year, the American Society for Quality (ASQ) celebrates its 40th year of…
(CMS: Baltimore, Maryland) -- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is taking steps to encourage physicians and other eligible professionals to take part in the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI), a program designed to improve the quality of care provided to Medicare…
American College of Physicians ACP
(American College of Physicians: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) -- More than a dozen U.S. specialty health-care organizations joined the four major primary care physicians’ professional groups to endorse the seven-point Joint Principles of the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH).The PCMH offers…
(OHSU: Portland, Oregon) -- A recent study, “Telehealth and Healthcare Informatics,” by William Hersh, M.D., professor and chair of the department of medical informatics and clinical epidemiology at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), says a 40 percent hike in information…
Carolyn M. Clancy M.D.
If you’ve ever watched the popular “MythBusters” program on the Discovery Channel, you know that many supposed truths are based on old, incomplete, or simply incorrect information.The same can be said about beliefs about the quality of health care in America. How many times have you heard that more…
Douglas C. Fair
Never say “never”? I guess I overlooked that memo. In case you missed it, the last two columns were written about what you should never do with control limits. These three nevers, if avoided, will ensure that your control charts are useful, reliable tools.
The first two nevers of control limits are…
Society of Manufacturing Engineers
(SME: Dearborn, Michigan) -- The Society of Manufacturing Engineers will present the Montreal Manufacturing Technology Show, an industrial and educational showcase for manufacturing innovations and trends, at Place Bonaventure on May 12, 13, and 14, 2008.
The Montreal Manufacturing Technology…
(ANSI: Washington) -- The American National Standards Institute and the Certification and Accreditation Administration of the People’s Republic of China (CNCA) came together recently to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU), making a formal commitment to cooperation in conformity assessment…
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(ISO: Geneva) -- The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. (IEEE) have signed an agreement to increase their cooperation in developing international standards. The agreement initially focuses on the subjects of…
