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Quality Digest
The National Committee for Quality Assurance recently praised the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services for launching a new pay-for-quality pilot project designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach in large medical groups. The 10 large medical groups participating in the program…
Quality Digest
ValueCurve Technologies Inc. recently released version 2.0 of its ValueDriver4 project performance management suite. The software provides a standardized process for justifying ERP, Six Sigma, new software development, and research and development projects to management. It includes project risk…
Tom Pyzdek
The headlines screamed, “Local Hospital Leads the State in C-Sections!” The gist of the story was that this hospital had more cesarean section births than any other hospital in the state. Indeed, it had led the entire Southwestern region for five years running. It’s well-established that C-…
Quality Digest
The Canadian Parliament will provide nearly $1 million to train companies in the rural Northumberland region in quality improvement skills. The skills development support will be funded by the Eastern Ontario Development Fund, a $10 million initiative designed to support economic renewal in eastern…
Quality Digest
Corporation Bank of India recently completed a Six Sigma project to make its business processes and operations more efficient. Wipro Infotech facilitated the project, which started in June 2004. Along with improving its internal processes, the project installed a culture of continual improvement at…
Quality Digest
The U.S. Navy plans to expand training of its Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) sector in Six Sigma, kaizen, lean and theory of constraints. The training program will take place at Depot North Island, in California. NAVAIR has already trained 18 teams in more than two years and now plans to train…
Quality Digest
PowerSteering CEO David Boghossian and Pitney Bowes Vice President of Six Sigma Nancy Tan recently addressed a Six Sigma summit in Miami. Titled “Using Six Sigma to Assess and Overcome Gaps in Performance,” the discussion focused on using the methodology to improve internal processes and customer…
Quality Digest
SBTI recently named Debby Sollenberger as its vice president of business development. Sollenberger has significant experience with Six Sigma. She is a Master Black Belt who led Six Sigma initiatives at GE’s aircraft engines sector and has trained more than 6,000 employees, 900 Black Belts and 60…
Quality Digest
A recently published survey shows that quality has a high profile in the Chinese population. The survey, conducted by the Shanghai Association for Quality and the Shanghai Academy of Quality Management, found that the Public Quality Awareness Index in China is 3.7, which means most people believe…
Quality Digest
A new study shows that most health care providers support the idea of improving the quality of their services, but few have adopted initiatives to do it. The study, performed by health care quality organization URAC, sought to discover how medical management organizations have responded to a 2001…
Quality Digest
More than 20,000 people are expected to attend the WESTEC 2005 exposition and conference, which will be held April 4–7 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The event is one of the 200 largest trade shows in North America, attracting large numbers of domestic and international manufacturers…
Quality Digest
Former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans recently appointed four prominent industry leaders to the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award panel of judges.The new judges are Lloyd Barker, Alcoa Inc. director of corporate quality; David C. Branch, Branch-Smith Resources Ltd. chairman and CEO;…
Quality Digest
Leica Geosystems, an advanced metrology supplier, recently received the prestigious Imaging Solution of the Year award from Advanced Imaging magazine. The award was in recognition of Leica’s innovative LR200 noncontact scanner, which was used by Leica, MAGLEV Inc. and MetricVision to produce a…
Quality Digest
The American Society for Quality has teamed with two health care quality organizations to sponsor a conference examining the role of quality in health care. ASQ has joined with the American Hospital Association and the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management to develop the conference, which…
Quality Digest
FeinFocus recently opened a new office in Shanghai to provide sales and technical support to the growing Asian market. The new office will operate as part of the newly expanded COMET China office, to offer a complete X-ray solution combining the conventional X-ray expertise of COMET with the…
Quality Digest
IQS Inc. recently released a new JAVA-based supplier managed capability that gives suppliers direct access to the corrective action requests they have been assigned. The new capability is designed to enhance collaboration, communication and accuracy. It allows users to login to specified portions…
Quality Digest
Metris USA recently opened its new Michigan Technology Center, the latest phase in the metrology company’s $2 million expansion. The new center houses two coordinate measuring machines and other items for customer demonstrations. The company plans to use the facility for training and education for…
Quality Digest
The increased adoption of wireless technology in routine business operations has driven down costs and increased customer satisfaction, according to a new opinion poll of manufacturing companies.The phenomenon is being fueled by the availability of push-to-talk service, wireless local area networks…
Quality Digest
Endevco has opened a European customer service center in an effort to expand its global customer care. The new office, located in Germany, will be the center of European operations for the company and will service its existing offices in the U.K., France and Spain. A major focus of the center will…
Test and measurement equipment (T&ME) must be periodically calibrated to ensure it’s operating within its specified parameters. Of course, the uncertainty of the system used to calibrate the equipment shouldn’t add appreciable error to this process.Test and measurement equipment (T&ME) must…
Quality Digest
Instron, a provider of testing equipment designed to evaluate properties of materials and components, has recently been accredited to issue calibration certificates according to KOLAS regulations. The Korea Laboratory Accreditation Scheme issued the accreditation. “KOLAS accreditation allows us to…
Quality Digest
Sypris Test & Measurement recently consolidated its calibration laboratory in Annapolis Junction, Maryland, with its new facility in Sayreville, New Jersey. The New Jersey lab, which is A2LA-accredited, has the unique capability to do fiber optic calibrations and RF calibrations to 26.5 GHz,…
Quality Digest
The American Society for Nondestructive Testing recently awarded Mark Tierney a certificate for NDT Level III in radiography.Tierney, who is manager of NDT services at Laboratory Testing Inc., is also NDT Level III certified in visual & optical, magnetic particle, liquid penetrant and…
Quality Digest
Shortwave infrared (SWIR) imaging is quietly earning a growing place in industrial machine vision for quality inspection. SWIR imagers, sometimes also referred to as NIR imagers, can see objects and events that vision and thermal cameras cannot. Moreover, they’re’ smaller and lighter than all…
Denise Robitaille
Occasionally, when I’m waiting for a flight, the small talk with fellow travelers will meander into discussions about the purpose of our respective trips. When I tell them that I’m on my way to conduct an audit, they immediately jump to the conclusion that I’m a certified public accountant (CPA)…
