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Quality Digest
Although there will be no professional hockey season this year, standards-developing organizations are hard at work developing rules that protect hockey players from injury. U.S. hockey rules require players to wear hockey helmets that meet international standards. Three new standards under…
Denise Robitaille
Perhaps one of the hardest persisting sells for the average quality professional is the challenge of effectively communicating the benefits of preventive action to senior management. The sales pitch is twofold: 1) defining the concept and 2) providing concrete examples that are applicable to the…
Quality Digest
The International Organization for Standardization will publish a new food safety management systems standard in September. ISO 22000 is intended to ensure that there are no weak links in food supply chains. The new standard can be applied to organizations ranging from feed producers, food…
Quality Digest
The American National Standards Institute recently submitted an application for accreditation for a proposed U.S. Technical Advisory Group to the International Organization for Standardization’s new technical committee on nanotechnology. The ISO technical committee, TC 229-Nanotechnologies, was…
Quality Digest
The International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission recently published a new version of ISO/IEC 17025, the influential standard for testing and calibration laboratories. ISO/IEC 17025:2005 was released, among other reasons, to ensure compatibility…
Quality Digest
Paper manufacturers may now improve productivity and paper-roll quality with the new WindPro winder control solution from Rockwell Automation. The solution includes advanced visualization hardware and software to provide real-time control and monitoring in one location. Manufacturers can view the…
Quality Digest
STAT-A-MATRIX and Uniworld Consulting Ltd. have joined forces to form SAM Asia, a consulting company that will specialize in Asian training, licensing and consulting needs. SAM Asia will have offices in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and Korea, with consultants throughout China and other Southeast Asian…
Joseph A. DeFeo
The challenges leaders face now are greater, increasingly complex and more difficult than ever before. Their response will decide the success or failure of their organizations in the future. The task is to achieve improved and sustainable results in the face of accelerating and unprecedented…
Quality Digest
There will be two conferences in September featuring the 2004 Baldrige Award winners, offering quality professionals an opportunity to learn valuable tips in performance improvement. They will be held Sept. 1 in Orlando, Florida, and Sept. 28 in Minneapolis, respectively. Both conferences will…
Quality Digest
Frost & Sullivan selected Celestica, a provider of innovative electronics manufacturing services, for its 2005 Electronics Manufacturing Services Company of the Year Award. The award acknowledges Celestica’s successful market diversification, year-over-year revenue growth, technology leadership…
Quality Digest
Chad Kymal, founder and CEO of Omnex Inc., will receive the American Society for Quality’s automotive division’s Quality Professional of the Year Award at an upcoming banquet. The award recognizes the contributions of individuals in the automotive industry that have made significant contributions…
Quality Digest
Community Blood Centers of South Florida Inc. recently implemented a quality effort that uses Pilgrim Software Inc.’s SmartCAPA software. The blood center provides more than 75 percent of the blood used in transfusions in Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties, and operates 18 donor…
Quality Digest
Minitab Inc. recently released MINITAB 14.2, the latest update of its award-winning statistical analysis software. The updated version includes new statistical capabilities, including chi-square goodness-of-fit tests for single categorical variable and Poisson distribution; enhanced quality tools,…
Quality Digest
New curriculum from MoreSteam.com focuses on the use of Six Sigma in the financial services industry. Six Sigma and e-learning are increasingly popular vehicles for process improvement. With this in mind, MoreSteam.com developed the financial services package in response to demand for industry-…
Quality Digest
Quality Technology Co. recently introduced its Corporate Performance Improvement framework, a multifaceted approach to business management. The framework comprises four elements: business scorecard, Six Sigma, innovation and management systems. The integrated approach to improving corporate…
“Jim, how do we know that your project made any improvement?” asked the Six Sigma champion. The Black Belt candidate looked confused. “Um, the sponsor said he was happy with the outcome,” he offered. The members of the certification board looked skeptically at one another: “But the only metrics…
Quality Digest
Reliance Industries Ltd. received the Silver Award for the Six Sigma project it performed at the American Society for Quality’s Team Excellence Competition on May 18. The competition was held at ASQ’s World Conference on Quality & Improvement. Reliance Industries’ Color Control Team tackled the…
Quality Digest
Pyzdek Consulting Inc. has announced a Six Sigma Black Belt training course designed for busy professionals. PCI President Thomas Pyzdek will lead the first TravelFree Training class. TravelFree Training will be delivered on the Web by live instructors to small groups of students in a classroom-…
Quality Digest
The second annual Crystal Ball User Conference will be held June 13–15 in Denver. The event will be hosted by Decisioneering Inc. and will feature two days of technical tracks and a third day for workshops. Risk-modeling professionals and simulation experts will present more than 30 case studies,…
Quality Digest
Three teams earned awards for their cost-cutting prowess at the American Society for Quality’s World Conference on Quality & Improvement on May 18. Baxter Healthcare’s Value Stream Team earned the top prize, the Gold Award, in the conference’s International Team…
Quality Digest
CNC Software Inc.’s educational division recently launched a new competition to find innovative student manufacturing projects. The Innovator of the Future competition requires student participants to produce a part that meets certain size requirements with CNC Software’s Mastercam CAD/CAM software…
Quality Digest
The American Customer Satisfaction Index fell in the first quarter of 2005, an indication that there might be further economic slowdown on the horizon. The ACSI for the first quarter of 2005 stands at 73.0, down 0.8 percent from last quarter. The factors driving this decline are falling inflation-…
Quality Digest
EMS Consulting Group Inc. will host a public lean manufacturing certificate program in San Diego this fall. The program includes six course modules designed to provide participants with targeted managerial and technical competencies in lean manufacturing. Participants will learn how to apply value…
Quality Digest
A new agreement between the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and health care quality improvement organizations focuses on reducing nursing assistant turnover rates in more than 2,000 nursing homes. Nurse aide turnover averages 71 percent per year, according to the American Health…
Quality Digest
Caterpillar Inc. and StatSoft Inc. have joined forces to release PROCEED, a turnkey software solution designed for manufacturing companies’ efforts to model, optimize and simulate complex processes. PROCEED is based on the integration of Caterpillar’s patent-pending…
