All Features
AJ Sweatt
Manufacturing in the United States isn’t healing as fast as we’d like or as quickly as we deserve. On that, most of us can agree. But it sure seems like we’re seeing a steady stream of misguided understanding among much of the economic and academic elite. They often seem to miss what a strong…
Akhilesh Gulati
Editor’s note: This article continues the series exploring structured innovation using the TRIZ methodology, a problem-solving, analysis, and forecasting tool derived from studying patterns of invention found in global patent data.
The monthly council meetings continued as different members shared…
Alex Orlov
Six Sigma evolved during the time of an economic boom. It was the mid-1980s, and companies had begun to feel the effects of stiffer competition. The theory of constraints (TOC) was losing its luster, while the customer began to play a key role for a product or service. Organizations were trying to…
LRQA Business Assurance
With ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 currently being revised by ISO technical committees, Mike James, the managing director of LRQA, and David Lawson, LRQA’s technical director, talked about the progress to date on both standards as well as what the revisions could mean for the market at large.
David,…
Mark Jones
As an enthusiast of LinkedIn’s group discussions, I have seen and contributed to a fair number of discussions on risk within project management. One thing that strikes me is how the understanding of risk differs depending on the context within a project, and how often these differences lead to…
Creaform Inc.
Recently, Creaform’s Metrology Services division was contacted by a French electric power-generation company to inspect a set of hydraulic penstocks, or water channels. The targeted installation was suspected to be deformed after its 50 years of operation. Pressure changes, corrosion, temperature…
Dawn Bailey
Arecent online story in TIME magazine, “A Better Return on Investment” profiled the U.S. Army’s Fort Stewart in Georgia, focusing on the base’s Baldrige journey. Baldrige staff and stakeholders that I’ve heard from have varying opinions of whether the article has a negative or neutral spin.…
CSGtech
Paul Sly, general manager of CSGtech, an Australasian supplier of seals and gaskets, stresses the importance of quality governance when sourcing from China.
A manufacturing component specialist, Sly says that even minute quality-control problems can have extensive consequences for manufacturers…
Tripp Babbitt
There is much to be learned from history. Lately, I’ve been researching Frederick Winslow Taylor and scientific management. Better known as Taylorism, scientific management was popular from the early 1900s to the 1930s. The lessons and future impact of his efforts still drives how we design and…
AJ Sweatt
Steve Bennish writes about business and economics for the Dayton Daily News. He’s also the author of the 89-page, self-published book, Scrappers: Dayton Ohio and America Turn to Scrap. It’s not an easy book to look at. It’s a sobering, disgusting, gut-wrenching thing to see—the photographic…
Laurel Nelson-Rowe
For far too many organizations, it’s never been harder to stay ahead, to achieve and sustain results, and to balance short- and long-term success. Organizational survival means doing more with less, standing out from competitors and unlocking value—all to win the global contest for customers,…
Keyence Corp.
(Keyence Corp. of America: Itasca, IL) -- Building on its extensive microscope lineup, Keyence Corp. has released a new multipurpose microscope. The VHX-700F allows users to leverage some of the advanced functions of the VHX Series, such as depth composition and 3D display, while offering the same…
Jack Dunigan
Editor’s note: This continues Jack Dunigan’s series about unsung heroes in the workplace, and the 16 traits they all share.
With nothing to do but wait while we stood patiently in line at the local post office, we happened to see that there was but one “If It Fits It Ships” box in the rack. For…
Michael Causey
The shell game called the federal budget added another nut recently as media reports revealed that during the last 20 years, approximately $1 billion in fees paid by patent applicants has been diverted from its proper use at the United States Patent Office (USPTO).
Critics argue that, as a self-…
Eston Martz
A while back my colleague Jim Frost wrote about applying statistics to decisions typically left to expert judgment; I was reminded of his post this week when I came across a new research study that takes a statistical technique commonly used in one discipline, and applies it in a new way.
The…
MIT News
It’s a dream of many hobbyists: turning their leisure pursuits into a lucrative business. That’s what happened for MIT graduate Limor Fried, whose pastime—tinkering with electronics—not only gave rise to a profitable company, but also positioned her as a leader of a technology revolution.
Since…
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The chemical secrets of a concrete Roman breakwater that has spent the last 2,000 years submerged in the Mediterranean Sea have been uncovered by an international team of researchers. The team has pinpointed why the best Roman concrete was superior to most modern concrete in durability, why its…
Mandy Mallott
You may not believe this, but economic development has something to learn from Iron Man. When Tony Stark and his “super suit” enter a combat zone, his technology scans the environment: inhabitants, structural deficiencies, assets, and potential pitfalls. This evaluation, although quick, provides…
Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence
(Hexagon Metrology: North Kingstown, RI) -- Hexagon Metrology has announced the launch of PC-DMIS 2013, a significant development release of the world’s most popular metrology software. PC-DMIS focuses on the collection, evaluation, management, and presentation of manufacturing data to reduce…
Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence
(Hexagon Metrology: North Kingstown, RI) -- Hexagon Metrology has introduced PC-DMIS Touch, a revolutionary measurement software for portable arm and DCC CMMs. Utilizing high-resolution multi-touch display technology, users physically interact with measurement sequences, feature variables, and…
Donald J. Wheeler
All data are historical. All analyses of data are historical. Yet all of the interesting questions about our data have to do with using the past to predict the future. In this article I shall look at the way this is commonly done and examine the assumptions behind this approach.
A few years ago a…
Jack Dunigan
Editor’s note: This continues Jack Dunigan’s series about unsung heroes in the workplace, and the 16 traits they all share.
I went through 26 employees. 26 employees hired and fired over the course of five years. In that time I was approached by the Job Corps people with candidates for work, by…
Bruce Hamilton
I’ve been doing a lot of speaking at conferences this spring, and I’m always warmly greeted as the “Toast Guy”: the person who produced and starred in the Toast Kaizen video.
Earlier this year, I spoke to a large gathering from a metropolitan healthcare system. When I jokingly asked them, “Who…
Davis Balestracci
When improvement initiatives don’t yield the results promised, it’s very tempting to have the knee-jerk reaction of blaming the workers for their poor attitudes and lack of work ethic. But what if one took a counterintuitive approach: looking within one’s business systems for the true causes for…
Davis Balestracci
How true are the following statements as you perceive things in your work environment?
1 = Not true at all 2 = True to a small extent 3 = True to some extent 4 = Mostly true 5 = Completely true
1. Employees in this organization are energetic and enthusiastic. 2. Employees are highly productive…
