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Quality Digest
The American Health Quality Association recently released new standards for its member quality-improvement organizations. The AHQA’s board of directors approved the policy in December, and already more than a third of all QIO boards—in states home to more than half of the nation’s…
Quality Digest
State Farm Insurance recently awarded the Minnesota Council for Quality a grant to support a quality-assessment program in the state’s K-12 schools.State Farm Insurance recently awarded the Minnesota Council for Quality a grant to support a quality-assessment program in the state’s K-12…
Quality Digest
California Manufacturing Technology Consulting will launch its first-ever Six Sigma Green Belt Consortium on March 14 at the Pacific Palms Resort in Industry Hills, California. The program is open to any company willing to commit its people for the full 12-week training-and-certification…
Quality Digest
ASI DataMyte Trading Co., ASI DataMyte Inc.’s China-based branch, has announced its merger with Ameshen Instruments Ltd. Ameshen is ASI DataMyte Trading Co.’s longtime distributor. ASI DataMyte has moved its new Shanghai office to larger offices to provide additional space for growth…
Praveen Gupta
Corporations have been implementing improvement programs as far back as I can remember, at least since my first job at Motorola in 1981. I’ve noticed that more and more organizations—whether it’s Motorola, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Delphi or smaller, privately-held companies—measure…
Quality Digest
Advanced Integrated Technologies Group Inc. recently became the newest member of Decisioneering Inc.’s Six Sigma Partner Program. As a Six Sigma Partner, AIT Group will begin using Decisioneering’s Crystal Ball software in its Six Sigma, design for Six Sigma and lean Six Sigma…
Quality Digest
LASON India, a worldwide provider of business-process outsourcing and a leading Indian Six Sigma practitioner, will add 1,600 new jobs to support significant business growth. LASON India was formed in 1992 and currently employs 6,600 people. It recently moved into new headquarters in…
Quality Digest
The Defense Contract Management Agency recently awarded Sypris Electronics an “outstanding” rating for its efforts in support of small businesses.Companies that work with the Department of Defense and the DCMA are required to submit Small Business Subcontracting Plans that include a list…
Quality Digest
American Society for Quality’s 2006 Six Sigma Conference will be held Feb. 6-7 in Palm Springs. The event will feature a Superbowl party, a Black Belt certification exam, dozens of educational sessions and the ASQ Golf Classic. It’ll be held at the Hyatt Grand Champions Resort and Spa.…
Quality Digest
The U.S. Navy recently contracted a small Connecticut business to provide upward of $96 million worth of Six Sigma, theory of constraints and lean training within the Naval Aviation Enterprise (NAE). The training is part of the NAE’s Enterprise AIRSpeed program, an enterprise level,…
Quality Digest
As China’s automotive suppliers rush to meet the demands of the world’s fastest-growing automotive market, an overcapacity problem already may be brewing, according to a new study written by Economist Corporate Network and released by the Automotive Industry Action Group and IBM Business…
Quality Digest
A recently released book reminds readers that the key to keeping any business in high gear is to ensure that its customers are satisfied. Becoming a Customer-Focused Organization (Paton Press, 2006), by Craig Cochran, includes many insights into creating and maintaining satisfied customers…
Quality Digest
Cognex Corp. recently announced a series of machine-vision seminars for manufacturing professionals. The half-day events are complimentary and will demonstrate how vision sensors perform automated inspection tasks in the automotive, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, consumer packaged goods…
Quality Digest
Canada’s National Quality Institute will host its 8th annual Networking Dinner on April 20 in Toronto. The dinner has grown to become one of Canada’s premier business-networking events, and upward of 300 senior business executives and CEOs are expected to attend. It’ll feature comments from…
Quality Digest
Nearly 2,700 students from all over the world attended the eighth-annual International Convention on Student’s Quality Control Circles in India in December 2005. The event, which was organized by the World Council for Total Quality and Excellence in Education (WCTQEE), was held at the City…
Quality Digest
Quality, meet RFID; RFID, meet quality. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) will be an ever larger force in the quality industry, according to a newly released report. Many retail operations (chief among them Wal-Mart) mandate the use of RFID tags to reduce out-of-stocks and maintain…
Craig Cochran
Internal auditing is one of the most routine improvement tools available to organizations. In fact, it’s so ordinary that auditors sometimes forget the underlying principles of auditing. Auditors must be periodically reminded of these underlying truths or the entire audit process can begin to…
Quality Digest
A pharmaceutical researcher at Vanderbilt University Medical Center recently received an award from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. Brian F. McBride, a research fellow in Vanderbilt’s Division of Clinical Pharmacology, was recognized for a research paper that showed that a…
Quality Digest
Six leading technology companies recently agreed to participate in a new program that will help create SAFE-BioPharma–enabled business applications, infrastructure, services and identity credentials for the pharmaceutical and health care industries. SAFE-BioPharma has developed and licensed a…
Quality Digest
Molecular Devices Corp. has released SoftMax Pro 5 GxP, data-acquisition and -analysis software that includes CFR Part 11 compliance features for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. The software was developed specifically for customers who are required to comply with multiple…
Quality Digest
Endocare Inc. has agreed to sell its wholly owned stock in Timm Medical Technologies Inc. to Plethora Solutions Holdings PLC. Plethora Solutions Holdings, a U.K.-based specialty pharmaceutical company that develops products for the treatment of urological diseases, will pay $8.1 million in…
Quality Digest
DataLabs recently released DataLabs Clinical, an electronic clinical-data–management platform that allows biopharmaceutical and research organizations to streamline their data-management processes and reduce the time and cost of clinical trials. The software unifies the functionality of paper-based…
Quality Digest
CeTaQ Americas recently started offering machine-capability analysis testing for lasers used in medical and biomedical device manufacturing. The test methodology measures the width of laser cuts as well as beam size and consistency, comparing the actual result with the programmed patter and…
Quality Digest
The Center for Professional Innovation and Education will host two upcoming conferences on effective document management for the pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device industries. The conferences will be held Jan. 31–Feb. 1 in Malvern, Pennsylvania; and May 11–12 in Ireland. They’ll…
Del Williams
After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, vulnerability to a growing number of potential disasters and disruptions has U.S. manufacturing executives turning to sophisticated third party logistics (3PL) providers to safeguard their brands at the end of the supply chain. "Major quake in California. Avian…
