All Features
Cognex Corp.
(Cognex Corp.: Natick, MA) -- Cognex Corp. has announced its next-generation OmniView 360° inspection system, now with color and five-megapixel, high-resolution cameras. OmniView allows detailed inspection and verification of unoriented wine and juice bottles, canned goods, pharmaceutical vials,…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
Pharmaceutical manufacturer Johnson & Johnson, which for decades has enjoyed a trusted reputation for soothing babies and overcoming head colds, is currently facing criminal investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit closed a…
NIST
The discoveries of superconductivity, the quantum Hall effect, and the fractional quantum Hall effect were all the result of measurements made at increasingly lower temperatures. Now, pushing the regime of the very cold into the very small, a team of researchers from the National Institute of…
Mike Richman
Yes, it happened again. According to a recent Associated Press story, drinking glasses produced in China, featuring comic and superhero characters, have been discovered to contain extremely high levels of lead. Excessive amounts of cadmium were revealed in the glasses as well.
This has been a…
Zwick Roell AG
(Zwick Roell: Ulm, Germany) -- Efficient, cost-effective materials testing is essential for today’s plastics and textile industries. Zwick’s roboTest F robotic testing system offers a compact solution for automated tensile tests on dimensionally unstable specimens. Operating the system is easy,…
PPT VISION Inc.
(PPT Vision: Bloomington, MN) -- PPT VISION Inc. announces the high-resolution IMPACT M-390 Smart Cameras, which deliver greater accuracy for high-precision machine vision applications. The cameras can be used as part of PPT VISION’s IMPACT M-Series Embedded Vision System—a single system with four…
Bruker Corp.
(Bruker Corp.: Tucson, AZ) -- At the Materials Research Society (MRS) fall 2010 meeting in late November, Bruker Corp. released AcuityXR, a novel optical surface profiler that combines Bruker hardware and software technology to enable select ContourGT noncontact, 3-D optical surface profilers to…
Baumer
(Baumer Ltd.: Southington, CT) -- With its DSRC strain ring series, Baumer Ltd. offers flexible solutions for measuring cyclical processes such as tension, compression, and torque. The strain rings offer a good repeatability of 0.1 percent of full scale (F.S.). based on its STRAIN…
TÜV SÜD America
(TÜV SÜD America: Plymouth, MI) -- TÜV SÜD America Inc.’s automotive electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) laboratory in Plymouth, Michigan, has received formal recognition from Ford Motor Co. to perform testing to the new EMC-CS-2009 engineering specification that addresses EMC requirements for…
Intertek
(Intertek: Oak Brook, IL) – As the promulgation of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act’s (CPSIA) Certification and Testing Rule (also known as the 15-Month Rule) quickly approaches, U.S. manufacturers and importers of record will be required to comply with more stringent protocols and…
Digital pen technology is an efficient data management solution that offers better operational visibility, enabling manufacturers to react quickly to the production process and respond to issues via immediate data access. Hyla Soft’s FactoryScribe is a lightweight web application built around…
Nikon Metrology Inc.
(Nikon Metrology: Brighton, MI) -- Process Sciences Inc. (PSI), a process engineering resource center, runs X-ray inspections to trace connectivity issues in electronic circuitry that otherwise remain hidden to the eye. Using intuitive, real-time X-ray imaging, PSI collaborates with original…
Productivity Press
(Productivity Press: Boca Raton, FL) -- What does the production line at a car manufacturer have to do with a doctor scrubbing in for brain surgery?
A lot, as it turns out.
For almost 10 years, Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle has adopted the essential principles of the Toyota…
Edgecombe Community College
(Edgecombe Community College: Tarboro, NC) -- Problem solving in manufacturing likely has been around since the first handmade tools were designed a couple million years ago.
But the phrase “problem solving” is relatively new, and so is its application in today’s world of business and industry…
Raissa Carey
Update: In a most recent contact with ASQ, the association said it would not initiate a grassroots campaign. “From what ASQ knows, the commission's proposal is dead and the Baldrige Program is safe for now. We will continue to be vigilant in the coming year to make sure that the president and…
Proceq SA
(Proceq SA: Schwerzenbach, Switzerland) -- Proseq, a global manufacturer of high-quality portable test equipment, has created new features for its Pundit Lab, which was originally developed during the 1970s as the world’s first portable, ultrasonic nondestructive indicating tester.
Pundit’s…
Numerical Algorithms Group
(NAG: Oxford, UK) -- When researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Sheffield decided to use the UK’s national academic supercomputer HECToR to study a problem in eggshell formation, they made use of NAG HPC software engineering expertise. The results they obtained may also…
Creaform Inc.
(Creaform: St. Georges Lévis, Québec) -- Last August, 3-D technology provider Creaform launched its Put Us to the Test 2010 challenge. Daring the world to submit high-difficulty engineering projects to its team of experts, the company promised thousands of dollars in engineering labor hours to…
GAO
(GAO Comm: Toronto) -- GAO Comm Inc. has released its Model 530 infrared thermometer designed for industrial, laboratory, food service, fire fighting, hobby, and home use. It is suitable for measuring surface temperatures in hazardous or hard-to-reach places or other situations in which noncontact…
Mike Martyn
For Starbucks, the world’s leading retailer, roaster, and brand of speciality coffee, 2008 was a tough year. Amid a struggling economy and increased competition from cheaper rivals, the company’s net income during the first three months of the year fell 28 percent compared to the same period in…
NIST
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program has announced that the 2011–2012 Criteria for Performance Excellence for businesses and nonprofit organizations are now available to download. The criteria serve as the standard for selecting the annual recipients of the…
100 Customer Service Tips by Larry Williams
If you’re like most people, you probably plan out a good portion of your day-to-day activities. Even in our off time, we generally make plans to go on vacation, to the movies, and out to dinner; it’s not often that we simply “wing it.” So why would you do so at work? Like the late actor Dennis…
American National Standards Institute ANSI
(ANSI: New York) -- In line with the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), China has formally notified the WTO of proposed revisions to Chinese legislation guiding the use of toxic and hazardous materials in electronic and electrical products. A public…
Pinpoint Laser Systems
(Pinpoint Laser Systems: Peabody, MA) -- Pinpoint Laser Systems has developed the Microgage Roll Alignment Kit to facilitate the alignment of rollers, idlers, take-up reels, shafts, and web-handling systems. This newest addition to the Pinpoint line is compact and easy to use in all industrial…
Titan Tool Supply
(Titan Tool Supply: Buffalo, NY) -- Titan Tool Supply Inc. introduces its new Micro-Video-Zoom Objective and Camera, featuring a CMOS camera for use in microscopy or to attach to a borescope for connecting to a desktop or laptop computer. The new low-cost unit is supplied with a 6-ft USB cable and…