All Features
Quality Digest
(ANSI: New York) -- What do cell phones, hot coffee, mp3 players, burritos, and toddlers have in common? Each contributes significantly to driver distraction, the leading cause of automobile accidents in the United States. With the demonstration of a new, totally unmanned vehicle at this week’s…
If you work in a project-based environment, you may feel like one of those juggling clowns at the circus, trying to keep your ball, your baton, and your flaming torch in the air at the same time, all while maneuvering your unicycle around the ring. Focus too much on one object and you risk dropping…
Quality Digest
(ISO: Geneva) -- A brochure recently published by ISO and IEC gives an overview of joint guides that provide advice for standards writers, consumer representatives, designers, product manufacturers, service providers, retail chains, testing laboratories, regulators, and others. “How ISO/IEC Guides…
Quality Digest
(NQF: Washington, D.C.) -- National Quality Forum is formally soliciting candidate measures for review and evaluation for potential inclusion in its set of NQF-endorsed voluntary consensus standards for health care information technology (HIT). Any organization or individual may submit…
Quality Digest
(CIGNA HealthCare: Bloomfield, Connecticut) -- In an effort to manage the high-volume data used in its health advocacy programs, CIGNA HealthCare is teaming up with Thomson Healthcare’s MedStat data services. By employing greater data management, the goal for CIGNA HealthCare is to engage…
Quality Digest
(WCBF: Las Vegas) -- WCBF will host the Seventh Annual Six Sigma and Process Improvement in Healthcare Summit in Las Vegas, April 1–4, 2008. The focus will be on lean, Six Sigma, and other process improvement methodologies within the health care system. The summit will feature nine presummit…
Quality Digest
(U.S. Senate: Washington, D.C.) -- The cost of poor quality in health care accounts for from 30 to 60 cents of every health care dollar. Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.) along with a bipartisan group of legislators have introduced a bill that would expedite the adoption of…
Quality Digest
(USGBC: Washington, D.C.) -- The U.S. Green Building Council and the Green Guide for Health Care have agreed to help green the health care industry by fostering best practices and ensuring that the health care industry has the tools and resources to build green. Green hospital buildings are…
The cost of poor quality in health care ranges from 30 to 60 cents of every health care dollar. Until recently, however, there have been few financial consequences for health care providers’ failure to address the underlying root causes. This article describes Medicare’s new policy of not…
Quality Digest
(Mercy Health System: Janesville, Wisconsin) -- Mercy Health System, a recipient of the 2007 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, is recognized for organizational excellence across its entire vertically integrated organization spanning three hospitals, 285 employed physicians and their…
William Tandler
Back in the 1940, when Stanley Parker, Mr. GD&T, decided it was time to create a set of tolerancing tools that realistically dealt with reality, two objectives were near the top of his list.
The first was to find a way to encode the fact that as bores get larger they may become ever more offset…
Fred Mason
Happy New Year! One resolution many people have made is to cut costs. One way to do that is to manufacture in China. Just transfer your current manufacturing processes, use China’s lower-cost labor, and increase profits. It’s not that easy. If you rush into it you may find costs actually go…
Quality Digest
The four images (taken with scanning laser confocal microscopy) show variations in surface roughness of an aluminum alloy as produced by increasing amounts of strain: A – 1 percent, B – 4 percent, C – 8 percent and D – 12 percent. Mark Stoudt, Joseph Hubbard and Stanley…
Anne Willimann
The Airbus A380 is the most modern, spacious, and capable civilian aircraft ever. The project was launched in December 2000, christened “The Flagship of the 21st Century,” and developed in close cooperation with air carriers, airports, and air traffic authorities.
The A380 incorporates the most…
Quality Digest
(ASTM International: West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania) -- Manual 56, Guide to Friction, Wear and Erosion Testing is now available from ASTM International. The manual, authored by Kenneth G. Budinski, is a resource for newcomers to tribology, which is the science and technology of interacting…
Quality Digest
Metryx Ltd., a supplier of mass metrology equipment to the semiconductor manufacturing industry, has announced that it has entered into a joint development program with Interuniversity MicroElectronics Center (IMEC ) of Belgium, a leading research institute. The program is designed to evaluate…
Quality Digest
(ANSI: New York) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently issued an updated list of consensus standards for use in evaluating medical devices before they are approved by the agency for market entry. The Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997 authorized the FDA to…
Quality Digest
(Standards Council of Canada: Ottawa) -- The Standards Council of Canada has announced that Jacques Régis has began his three-year term as president of the International Electrotechnical Commission. Régis, who becomes IEC’s 32nd president and the first-ever Canadian elected to lead the…
Denise Robitaille
There’s a great scene in The Agony and the Ecstasy where Pope Julius, played by Rex Harrison, reacts to the paint dribbles from Michelangelo’s perpetual work on the Sistine Chapel. He’s processing out of the chapel after Mass and Charlton Heston, in his role as the great artist, has unceremoniously…
Quality Digest
(ANSI: New York) -- The Japanese Industrial Standards Committee recently submitted a proposal to the International Organization for Standardization for a new field of technical activity on industrial furnaces and associated thermal processing equipment.This type of thermal equipment is used…
Quality Digest
(NQI: Toronto) -- Canada’s National Quality Institute will present “Improving Your Business Through Benchmarking Best Practices” on April 23–24, 2008 in Toronto.Participants in this workshop you may expect learn how to plan and conduct benchmarking as a strategic and operational tool to…
Richard Lepsinger
Companies frequently develop vision and mission statements about being No. 1 in their industry, the great service they provide to customers, and their rewarding work environment. More often than not, these statements are so far from reality that they become joke fodder for customers and…
Quality Digest
(ISO: Geneva) -- A suite of new ISO standards offers practical tools to address the challenge of effectively managing water resources so as to provide access to safe drinking water and sanitation for the world’s population. ISO recently published three standards providing guidelines for…
Bill Kalmar
In the last couple of months, two topics have become particularly vexing to me. First, how can we be environmentally responsible by purchasing E85 fuel when there are few service stations that provide this new elixir? Second—even more difficult to comprehend—why do companies eliminate products and…
Allen Huffman
With all the emphasis today on quality, and studies showing that quality is very important to the leaders of American business, why are so many organizations struggling to achieve and sustain quality systems? The answer is that managers have been inundated for 20 years with a parade of quality…
