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Quality Digest
Precision Wire Components LLC, a medical-component manufacturer, recently received registration to ISO 13485:2003. PWC manufactures guide wires for major medical-device makers, and has been registered to quality standards in the ISO 9000 series since 1997, one year after the company was founded.…
Quality Digest
Delphi Medical Systems, a subsidiary of Delphi Corp., recently signed an exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with WearAir Oxygen Inc., a Canadian medical-device company. Delphi anticipates using WearAir’s technology for its OEM customers and distributors for portable oxygen concentrators in the…
Quality Digest
Shared Services Healthcare Inc. recently recognized Standard Register with its Top Medical Surgical Vendor for 2005 award. Shared Services Healthcare, an affiliate of MedAssets, is a group-purchasing organization composed of health care institutions in the southeast United States. The recognition…
Quality Digest
Statit Software Inc. recently released Performance Indicator & Management Dashboard (piMD), a new approach to measurement and analysis for the heath care industry. Statit reports that a review of current software options for health care executives revealed a need for a system that would enable…
Quality Digest
George Rathbun, director of architecture in Pfizer’s Global Research and Development Informatics group, was recently named chief technology officer of SAFE-BioPharma Association. SAFE-BioPharma is the pharmaceutical-industry–sponsored organization that’s developing and managing a secure digital-…
Quality Digest
Automotive-industry groups around the world will be able collaborate and communicate more easily with a recently released strategic memorandum of understanding. The Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) and Standards for Technology in Automotive Retail (STAR) jointly signed the memorandum with…
Quality Digest
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has decided that standards for certain electronic prescriptions will be developed only by organizations accredited by the American National Standards Institute. The requirement is one of three…
Quality Digest
The International Organization for Standardization recently formed a technical committee that will develop standards for the nanotechnology industry. The first meeting of ISO/TC 229 was held in Britain in November. The British Standards Institution provides the chair and secretariat of the new…
Quality Digest
A new standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization aims to help avoid security threats to international trade. ISO/PAS 28000:2005, the specification for security-management systems for the supply chain, outlines the requirements to establish, implement and maintain…
Denise Robitaille
Time is arguably one of the most precious and least quantified resources that organizations possess. It’s a uniquely intangible, yet indispensable, feature of any process or activity. Things occur over a span of time. It’s an indisputable characteristic of our universe and is so self-evident that…
Quality Digest
S. Joe Bhatia was recently appointed president and CEO of the American National Standards Institute. Bhatia is the former executive vice president and chief operating officer of Underwriters Laboratories Inc.’s international group. He was elected at a special meeting of the ANSI board of directors…
Quality Digest
An upcoming seminar will allow attendees to see and hear famed quality expert W. Edwards Deming present his quality theories. “Quality, Productivity and Competitive Position,” a four-day Deming video seminar for advanced students, will include large-screen footage from Deming’s archives of him…
Quality Digest
The 60th anniversary World Conference on Quality and Improvement, one of the largest gatherings of quality professionals, will be held May 1–3 at the Midwest Airlines Center in Milwaukee. The event will feature dozens of networking sessions and breakout groups with topics such as “The Impact of Six…
Quality Digest
Gemba Research, a lean consulting firm, is offering on-site tours of some of Japan’s best lean manufacturing operations. Japan Kaikaku Experience offers a behind-the-scene look at world-class manufacturing operations in a variety of industries. Kaikaku means “in revolution,” or “major change” in…
Quality Digest
Congressional negotiators have agreed to support $1.5 million in funding for a new nonprofit category of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The money is part of more than $7 million in total funding for the Baldrige National Quality Program, which is administered by the U.S. Commerce…
Quality Digest
The American Health Quality Association has thrown its support behind the creation of a comprehensive system to measure and report on the performance of health care organizations and practitioners. The Institute of Medicine, a health care trade group, recently proposed creating the new system,…
"Es ris!" (“It’s snapped!”) This apocalyptic line from Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) referred to the thread of fate or destiny that the three Norns, or Fates, had woven since the dawn of time. This ill omen portended the opera’s inevitable tragic conclusion. This year’s…
Peter Dickin
The use of probes on machine tools to assist in setting up jobs is well established. Recent developments in machining and inspection software mean that this equipment can now be used in a wider range of applications that are aimed at increasing overall equipment effectiveness, which consequently…
Quality Digest
ENDEVCO Corp. recently partnered with Cambridge Vibration Maintenance Service to provide calibration and repair services in the United Kingdom. Endevco, a designer and manufacturer of dynamic instrumentation for vibration, shock and pressure measurement, has many U.K.-based clients in the aerospace…
Quality Digest
Gagemaker recently introduced its CERTIFI gage-calibration program, a client-server solution that helps customers manage and control gage-calibration processes and documents. CERTIFI automates crucial activities for the calibration, tracking and reporting of measurement information in a…
Quality Digest
Intertek Systems Certification recently became one of the first registration bodies accredited to AS9120 in North America. The standard includes the requirements of ISO 9001 and defines additional quality requirements for aerospace-industry distributors. Many major aerospace manufacturers require…
Quality Digest
Metrologists recently used Leica Geosystem’s new T-Scan to examine a historic artifact from a ship that sank during the Civil War. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recovered the anchor from the USS Monitor from the underwater Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, east of Cape…
Quality Digest
The New Jersey Technical Council recently awarded Gregory H. Olsen, chairman of Sensors Unlimited Inc., its John H. Martinson Technology Support Award. Olsen, the world’s third private space explorer and the first space tourist since the Columbia shuttle exploded mid-flight, recently returned from…
Quality Digest
SixNet Intelligence is the fastest-growing solution for the operational-excellence marketplace, according to recent market research. The results were released by Six Sigma Qualtec, which surveyed corporate performance improvement initiatives and the users of home-grown technology systems. The…
Quality Digest
Karen Reynolds is the new vice president of operations at StraightSource, a provider of recruitment-process outsourcing. Reynolds is a Master Black Belt and most recently was vice president of enterprise effectiveness for L3 Communications. Prior to that position, she held a series of leadership…
