All Features
William A. Levinson
The famous football coach Vince Lombardi purportedly said, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” (According to Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, in a 1962 interview Lombardi said, “Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.”)
In light of numerous corporate disasters related to…
Kate Zabriskie
‘I understand your frustration.” Really? My bank account is overdrawn. I’ve bounced two checks, and it’s because you made a mistake. Unless you’re also having fees charged to your account, I’m not feeling it.
“We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.” That’s what I was told after…
James Morton Turner
Panasonic’s new $4 billion battery factory in De Soto, Kansas, is designed to be a model of sustainability—it’s an all-electric factory with no smokestack. When finished, it will cover the size of 48 football fields, employ 4,000 people, and produce enough advanced batteries to supply half a…
Quality Digest
(Creaform: Lévis, Québec) -- Creaform, a business of AMETEK and worldwide provider of automated and portable 3D measurement solutions, has released MetraSCAN BLACK+, MetraSCAN BLACK+|Elite, and HandyPROBE Next+, the latest versions of its suite of optical CMM 3D scanners and probes.
Leveraging new…
Quality Digest
(RLS: St. Louis) -- Rapid Locking System (RLS), a leading provider of press-to-connect fittings for the HVAC/R industry, celebrated the grand opening of its training center and cutting-edge mobile showroom in St. Louis on April 18, 2024. The company held a ribbon-cutting ceremony along with press-…
Harish Jose
In this article, I’m looking at the relationship between capability index (Cpk or Ppk) and tolerance intervals. The capability index is tied to the specification limits, and tying this to the tolerance interval enables us to use the confidence/reliability statement allowed by the tolerance interval…
Harry Hertz
Who cares about succession planning? As an organization or an aspiring senior leader, you must care. Proper succession planning by an organization and its senior leaders is one of the keys to organizational resilience and long-term success. I know this from many Baldrige Award-winning organizations…
Quality Digest
(Morehouse Instrument Co.: York, PA) -- A trio of metrology industry veterans with more than 100 years of experience has co-authored a guidebook, Decision Rule Guidance, 1st Edition 2024, available for download.
The book, co-authored by Henry Zumbrun of Morehouse Instrument Co., Greg Cenker of…
Quality Digest
(KonnectAi: Montreal) -- KonnectAi, a leader in AI visual inspection systems and a flagship technology offering from Electrical Components International (ECI), announces its collaboration with Google Cloud, officially launching its AI-powered quality inspection platform for manufacturers. KonnectAi…
Donald J. Wheeler
One hundred years ago this month, Walter Shewhart wrote a memo that contained the first process behavior chart. In recognition of this centennial, this column reviews four different applications of the techniques that grew out of that memo.
The first principle for interpreting data is that no data…
Lauren Hinkel
Across the country, hundreds of thousands of drivers deliver packages and parcels to customers and companies each day, with many click-to-door times averaging only a few days. Coordinating a supply chain feat of this magnitude in a predictable and timely way is a longstanding problem of operations…
Quality Digest
(Emergent Vision Technologies: Port Coquitlam, British Columbia) -- Emergent Vision Technologies, a pioneer in high-speed GigE Vision cameras and zero copy and zero-loss vision technologies, announced a further expansion of its powerful eCapture Pro software to include two new intuitive image…
Quality Digest
(InnovMetric: Québec City) -- InnovMetric, an independent software development company empowering manufacturers to digitally transform their 3D measurement processes, announced the launch of PolyWorks 2024. This enterprise solution sets up a digital thread that lowers the cost of scaling up the use…
Quality Digest
(Pudu Robotics: Shenzhen, China) -- Pudu Robotics, a global leader in service robotics, has launch its first robot designed expressly for industrial applications: the PUDU T300.
Manufacturers worldwide are struggling to adapt to changing market demands and production variability. As a result,…
Bruce Hamilton
Deming Prize recipient Ryuji Fukuda introduced a document to my company in 1989 referred to as the “X-Type Matrix for Objective Management.” Relatively unknown at the time, it’s since become a popular format for strategy deployment.
Named for the X format that connects strategic (3–5 years)…
Tara Fortier
Recently, you’ve probably seen the word quantum used everywhere—in computing, in names for tech companies, and maybe even for explanations of love and consciousness.
So what is quantum? What is quantum technology? And is it worth all the hype?
First of all, what is quantum?
Quantum, often called…
Quality Digest
(Accendo Reliability: Los Gatos, CA) -- Accendo Reliability has announced its upcoming webinar, “Greed, Fear, Failure in Product Development.”
Date: May 7, 2024, 9 a.m. PacificSpeaker: Greg Hutchins, managing director of quality and engineeringTopic: “Greed, Fear, Failure in Product Development”…
Quality Digest
(Teledyne: Richmond, British Columbia) -- Teledyne FLIR IIS has announced its Bumblebee X series, an advanced stereo vision solution built for its stereo vision portfolio.
Bumblebee X and Spinnaker 3D software offer a comprehensive solution with onboard processing to build successful systems for…
Quality Digest
(AMT: McLean, VA) -- Orders of manufacturing technology, measured by the U.S. Manufacturing Technology Orders Report published by AMT—The Association for Manufacturing Technology, totaled $343.3 million in February 2024. This was a 2.1% increase from January 2024 but a 26.5% decline from February…
Quality Digest
(Omnex: Ann Arbor, MI) -- Omnex has announced its latest webinar, “Reverse FMEA, a Method to Confirm Risk.”
Date and time: May 9, 2024, 11 a.m. Eastern Speaker: Michael Down
Reverse failure mode and effects analysis (RFMEA) is performed after production launch for risk management and detection. It…
William A. Levinson
The current alleged quality problems with the Boeing 737 underscore the importance of zero tolerance for poor quality. No manufacturing or quality professional should ever compromise on this issue. Most importantly, the potential consequences to customers but also to the organization are simply not…
Mike Figliuolo
I’m fortunate enough to travel to some great places to serve my clients. During those travels, I can’t help but have many customer service interactions from which to draw lessons.
Here, I’ll share how barbecue, airplanes, and coffee can teach you a few things to do (or not do) to create a better…
Roy Arguelles
In today’s marketplace, where products and services proliferate and competition intensifies, businesses are realizing that they must offer more than just commodities to thrive. Enter the experience economy—a paradigm shift where companies are no longer just selling goods or services but crafting…
Quality Digest
(Advanced Illumination: Rochester, VT) -- Advanced Illumination, the originators of LED lighting for machine vision, is releasing a new class of LED lighting controllers aimed at revolutionizing machine vision system building by simplifying camera, light, and I/O accessory interconnectivity. This…
Brenda Martin
With a career of more than 40 years in the manufacturing industry, I look back now and see that I was greatly influenced by my father, who worked for an engineering firm. He shared his vast mechanical know-how with me. The two of us worked on many projects together, including rebuilding my car’s…
