All Features
Paul Smith
Good leaders ask, “How do I tell better stories?” Great leaders ask, “Which stories do I need to tell?”
Does that mean how you tell a leadership story doesn’t matter? Of course not. But if you tell an irrelevant, unimportant, or self-serving story, it doesn’t matter how well you tell it. The story…
Nicholas P. Sullivan
People in the world’s developed nations live in a post-industrial era, working mainly in service or knowledge industries. Manufacturers increasingly rely on sensors, robots, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to replace human labor or make it more efficient. Farmers can monitor crop…
(Schreiner ProTech: Blauvelt, New York) -- Schreiner ProTech, a Germany-based global leader in developing and manufacturing innovative functional labels with value-added benefits for the automotive and engineering-based industries, has been selected by a leading vehicle control and display…
(Critical Manufacturing: Porto, Portugal) -- Following the overwhelming demand for advanced training and certification, Critical Manufacturing has released its 2022 Manufacturing Execution System (MES) training and certification dates for its partners. This program has proven to be a valuable tool…
(Siemens: Plano, TX) -- Siemens Digital Industries Software’s SynthAI service is delivering the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence to solve the challenge of training machine vision systems.
“We were looking for a quick and easy solution that will enable us to detect wire…
Harish Jose
T he dictum, “purpose of a system is what it does” (POSWID) is famous in cybernetics, attributed to the management cybernetician Stafford Beer.
Beer notes: “A good observer will impute the purpose of the system from its actions and thus from the resultant state.”
Hence the key aphorism and acronym…
Oliver Laasch
It’s been a tough few years for people who own or manage a business. Lockdowns shut down whole industrial sectors worldwide, turning profitable businesses into loss-making ones, while a lot of smaller businesses went under.
Many companies will now be hoping for a return to some type of normality…
NIST
Tiny biological computers made of DNA could revolutionize the way we diagnose and treat a slew of diseases, once the technology is fully fleshed out. However, a major stumbling block for these DNA-based devices, which can operate in both cells and liquid solutions, has been how short-lived they are…
Mike Kotzian
The pandemic both reduced the available workforce and accelerated online sales. Warehouse operations grew and had to handle increased volume with fewer employees. Prior to Covid-19, the answer to this problem was to hire more fork truck drivers. Now, companies have difficulty finding trained fork…
Quality Digest
(U.S. Department of Commerce: Washington) -- The U.S. Department of Commerce announced the appointment of 27 experts to the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee (NAIAC), which will advise the President and the National AI Initiative Office on a range of issues related to artificial…
Quality Digest
(HORIBA and Digital Surf: Palaiseau and Besançon, France) -- HORIBA Scientific, a world leader in Raman microscopy and nanoscopy, and Digital Surf, creator of the Mountains software platform for image and surface analysis in microscopy and metrology, have partnered to release GraphYX, a new…
Knowledge at Wharton
More than a half-million healthcare workers in the United States have quit their jobs in recent months, driven to the breaking point by the Covid-19 pandemic. But greater use of technology could help save jobs by reducing the kinds of inefficiency and stress that lead to burnout for many hospital…
Paul Laughlin
As I started reading The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect, by Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie (Basic Books, 2018), I was reminded how often analysts trot out the bromide “correlation is not causation.” It’s a well-known warning. Indeed, I often encourage those learning data…
(ASQ: Milwaukee, WI) -- ASQE has earned accreditation by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) National Accreditation Board against the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 17024. ASQ’s quality-based certifications are the only quality industry certifications to earn such…
(Evident: Waltham, MA) -- The LC35 microscope camera makes capturing quality brightfield images affordable. With a 3.5-megapixel CMOS sensor, and versatile exposure times and resolution modes, the camera provides quality brightfield images in a cost-effective package.
Value and performance…
(MIT Sloan: Cambridge, MA) -- A new study released by MIT Sloan Management Review argues that compensation systems that do not link sales target achievement to individual incentives bolster intrinsic motivation, satisfaction with pay, and ultimately, employee performance, while pay-for-performance…
Donald J. Wheeler
Students are told that they need to check their data for normality before doing virtually any data analysis. And today’s software encourages this by automatically providing normal probability plots and lack-of-fit statistics as part of the output. So it’s not surprising that many think this is the…
Richard S. Hawkes
Adapted from Navigate the Swirl by Richard Hawkes, CEO of Growth River
How many meetings have you been in that caused you to ask yourself, “Why am I here? What am I doing? What’s the purpose of this meeting? Are we accomplishing anything?” I call this “The Swirl.”
High activity, low focus.…
Quality Digest
(AMETEK: Peabody, MA) -- To provide customers in Europe with better support, TMC, an AMETEK business, opened its own warehouse facility in Weiterstadt, Germany. Moving from an external service provider, TMC opened a 250-sq.-meter warehouse at the end of 2021 and added an additional 75 sq. meters in…
(Omnex: Ann Arbor: MI) -- Omnex, a leader in the field of business and process management systems, has announced two informative webinars for May, 2022.
Webinar 1
“Best Practices in Implementing Automotive Cybersecurity (ISO 21434) and UNECE Regulations R155 and R156”
The latest technologies,…
(Exact Metrology: Cincinnati) -- Exact Metrology, a division of In-Place Machining Co. and a comprehensive 3D metrology service provider and hardware sales company, now offers the newest version of its Artec Micro scanner. This model distinguishes itself through its professional, ultra-high…
Quality Digest
This year’s World Conference on Quality and Improvement (WCQI) will be a hybrid event—online and in person—scheduled for May 15–18, 2022, in Anaheim, California. Themed as “The art and science of quality,” the conference will explore the symbiotic relationship between human and scientific aspects…
Bruce Hamilton
In 1985, about the time I was discovering there was a better way to produce products, The Natural, a film about an aging baseball player with extraordinary talent, was garnering multiple Academy Awards. This archetype concerning natural “God-given” abilities is common in Western culture—in sports…
Gleb Tsipursky
The biggest falsehood in business leadership and career advice may also be the most repeated: “Go with your gut.” Surely you’ve heard this advice often as a decision-maker, as well as some variations of that phrase, such as, “Trust your instincts,” “Be authentic,” “Listen to your heart,” or “Follow…
Kate Zabriskie
‘Kendra, I think you’re going to do wonderfully at this next task. You have a good eye for detail, and that’s exactly what’s required here.”
“Tom, you have a real knack with people, and I’d like you to take on a temporary role in account management. I think you will thrive based on what I’ve seen…