All Features
Mike Richman
The June 30, 2017, episode of QDL offered a wrinkle in time, of sorts: not only orbiting debris and medieval medicine, but moments in the here and now such as our interview with Keith Bevan of the Coordinate Metrology Society and the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, and an on-the-go version of…
Mike Richman
If there was one key takeaway from Hexagon’s impressive and impressively large user conference, styled “HxGN Live,” which took place earlier this month, it’s that finding actionable information, not merely acquiring mountains of data, is the key to developing a truly smart factory. “It’s always…
Erin Connelly
For a long time, medieval medicine has been dismissed as irrelevant. This time period is popularly referred to as the “Dark Ages,” which erroneously suggests that it was unenlightened by science or reason. However, some medievalists and scientists are now looking back to history for clues to…
Harry Hertz
The title to this column probably has you thinking about some life-changing transition or a big vacation to refresh, or maybe a new exercise regimen. If that is the case, I am sorry to disappoint you.
I’m actually about those renewal reminders for annual donations you make to a charity or to…
NETL
Contrary to that old cooking adage, “a watched pot never boils,” keeping a careful eye on things—in the kitchen or in the laboratory—can be essential to making a useable (or edible) final product.
Take chocolate, for instance, that foundational block of the food pyramid. An important part of…
Intertek
Sponsored Content
As widely useful and broadly applicable as it may be, the ISO 9001 standard covering general requirements for quality management systems (QMS) cannot address all stakeholder needs in every sector. Component functions and operations of discrete industries often require additional…
Kevin Meyer
Before you can improve something, you must first have a very clear understanding of what its current state is. Don’t assume you know what it is. Go to the gemba, be it the factory floor, the shipping and receiving area, your office, or even take a minute to focus on yourself, and observe what is…
Intertek
Sponsored Content
For organizations within the aerospace sector, certification to the AS9100 family of standards—including AS9110 for aerospace maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) organizations; and AS9120 for aerospace warehouse and distribution operations—is a necessity for doing business.…
Intertek
Sponsored Content
Organizations that build, supply, design, or maintain products, parts, or services for the aerospace industry generally must be certified to the AS9100 family of standards (including AS9110, which is specifically for aerospace maintenance, repair, and overhaul [MRO] organizations…
Douglas C. Fair
Plant-floor quality issues tend to focus on a company’s technical resources. When products fall out of spec, alarms sound and all hands are immediately on deck to fix things. Despite large technology investments to monitor and adjust production processes, manufacturers are still bedeviled by…
Mark Lee Hunter, Luk Van Wassenhove, Maria Besiou
The digital revolution is transforming the relationship between consumers and companies. Nearly all business functions are feeling the effects, but conventional marketing sits squarely on the fault lines of disruption. Brand-authorized messages increasingly can’t compete with online customer…
NIST
Printing 3D metal objects is a booming industry, with the market for products and services worth more than an estimated $2.3 billion in 2015—a nearly fivefold growth since 2010. For this type of manufacturing, a metal part is built up successively, layer by layer, over minutes or hours. Sometimes…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
I n our June 23, 2017, episode of QDL we look at STEM education, personal kanban, and common mistakes when using SPC.
“ASME Supports STEM Opportunities Act of 2017”
Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) has introduced H.R. 2653, which promises to increase engagement of women and minorities…
NIST
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- It’s no surprise that tiny precision objects, such as the parts inside your smartphone, must be measured with laser technology in order to fit together and work properly. But some of the largest structures people depend on every day—including airplane wings and bridge…
Matthew Barsalou, Robert Perkin
As you drive east on I-70 coming from the Rockies, there is a point where you seem to have stopped descending, but a sign says, “Trucks: Don’t be fooled. Four more miles of steep grades and sharp curves.” The message is that it would be premature to relax at this point, and vigilant driving is…
Michael Ray Fincher
To meet the 2018 deadline for becoming certified to ISO 9001:2015, organizations are scrambling to overhaul their quality management systems. One major revision to ISO 9001 is the requirement to identify, evaluate, and address risks. Unfortunately, a tool most appropriate for these actions has…
Liri Andersson
Ten years ago, when we would ask senior executives or company directors what “digital” meant to them, their response would usually be something related to social media. Today, it might be apps, big data, 3D printing, the cloud, or another current example of digital technology. All such answers are…
Christopher Martin
Many of us are familiar with the concept of the Ohno Circle, innovated by Taiichi Ohno at Toyota during the 1940s. While familiarity with the technique and the goals it sets to accomplish is one thing, how many of us have actually participated? The surprising answer is… probably all of us, in a…
Roger Lehman, Julius Koh
Lucy felt hollow and dissatisfied. She was a star performer and had just helped her team clinch a large government deal that they had been working on for months. At the celebration that evening, Lucy was forced to put on a smile and a dynamic front. She had good relationships with her team members…
Robert A. Brown
Lean thinking has taken its rightful place in the effort to improve efficiency in manufacturing. However, it isn’t fulfilling its potential in many areas, most notably with knowledge workers. This is due to a fundamental flaw in how lean is presented and utilized. With a better constructed…
Steve Daum
I have daily conversations with manufacturer plant managers, quality managers, engineers, supervisors, and plant production workers about challenges when using statistical process control (SPC). Of the mistakes I witness in the application of SPC, I’d like to share the five most prevalent; they…
Phanish Puranam, Sunkee Lee
When organizations change how they compensate employees they are embarking on a social experiment, whether decision-makers know it or not. The trouble is the vast majority of these experiments are conducted unscientifically, yielding results that can be misleading or inconclusive.
The popularity…
Automated Precision Inc.
(Automated Precision Inc.: Rockville, MD) -- Automated Precision Inc. (API) has introduced the new OT2 Core wireless laser tracker that utilizes wireless and controller-free laser tracker technology.
“The OT2 Core is API’s response to the voice of our customers who want to have the high…
William A. Levinson
‘We’ve always done it that way” explains why many suboptimal and even obsolete methods are taken for granted. The range chart for statistical process control (SPC) is, for example, somewhat inferior to the sample standard deviation chart, and it is almost certainly a holdover from when all…
Bonnie Stone
18:37:21
In part one of “New Spin on the ‘Stand in a Circle’ Exercise,” I described how Taiichi Ohno, the creator of the Toyota Production System, used the “Stand in a Circle” exercise to help managers identify waste in their operations.
During this exercise Ohno would take a manager or student…
