All Features
Anthony Tarantino
This article is an extract from Smart Manufacturing, the Lean Six Sigma Way, Wiley, available May 2022
The U.S. and EU economies are facing a major labor shortage in manufacturing. A pre-Covid survey projected the need for more than four million new manufacturing jobs by 2030, but with a shortfall…
Gary Steinberg
Disruptions in the global supply chain have led to a new dynamic for many small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs)—the need to be more strategic about “second sourcing” and reshoring. The biggest increase is in what’s referred to as second sourcing, which adds redundancies such as a second…
Duxin Sun
It takes 10 to 15 years and around $1 billion to develop one successful drug. Despite these significant investments in time and money, 90 percent of drug candidates in clinical trials fail. Whether because they don’t adequately treat the condition they’re meant to target or the side effects are too…
(CMS: Weatherford, TX) -- The Coordinate Metrology Society (CMS) is accepting nominations for individuals willing to be considered for its all-volunteer board of directors. Members of the board will be asked to serve a three-year term
Founded in 1984, the CMS is a large membership of users,…
Ryan E. Day
Business is changing at a faster rate than ever before, forcing companies to find ways to adapt and pivot. Keeping the entire organization aligned with current goals can be a daunting task, but surviving and thriving depends on it.
One popular method to ensure enterprisewide alignment of assets is…
David Chandler
Scintillators are materials that emit light when bombarded with high-energy particles or X-rays. In medical or dental X-ray systems, they convert incoming X-ray radiation into visible light that can then be captured using film or photosensors. They’re also used for night-vision systems and for…
John D. Patterson
A record number of employees have or plan to quit. Already hobbled by the pandemic, businesses are now looking for new ways to balance investment in talent attraction, professional development, and finding tools to increase productivity. With more people reconsidering their careers, many companies…
Violetta Njunina
According to the CDC, approximately one out of six Americans are diagnosed with foodborne diseases each year. Out of this, about 128,000 are hospitalized, and as many as 3,000 lose their lives.
These sorry statistics show why food safety is paramount and why more effort should be put into reducing…
(Siemens Digital Industries Software: Plano, TX) -- Siemens Digital Industries Software has collaborated with NVIDIA to improve computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. Part of the Xcelerator portfolio of software and services, Simcenter STAR-CCM+ 2022.1 software brings CUDA-enabled GPU…
Scott A. Hindle
In 2010, new to the world of statistical process control (SPC), I was intrigued by Don Wheeler’s statement that “No data have meaning apart from their context” (from his book, Understanding Variation—The Key to Managing Chaos, SPC Press, 2000, available on Amazon). For a while, I didn’t really get…
Scott Trevino
The pandemic promises ongoing challenges for healthcare providers in 2022 as they cope with nursing shortages and cybersecurity threats amid shifts previously underway for the industry. How they manage their clinical assets, however, can present opportunities to overcome those challenges while…
(IAF: Chelsea, Quebec, Canada) -- The International Accreditation Forum (IAF) has announced that it is conducting extended market research to evaluate market support for a fully-populated management systems certificate database. Before IAF members vote on whether or not to mandate that accredited…
V R Vijay Anand
As the world moves toward a new, post-pandemic normal, industries must leverage digital transformation at an accelerated pace. This is already happening. According to IBM, 67 percent of manufacturers have accelerated digital projects since Covid-19.
Although improved operational efficiency is…
Tristan Mobbs
All too often the topic of fixing dirty data is neglected in the plethora of online media covering artificial intelligence (AI), data science, and analytics. This is wrong for many reasons.
To highlight just one, confidence in the quality of data is the vital foundation of all analysis. This topic…
Bruce Hamilton
Every February, there are welcome reminders that spring is on the way. The first for me is a witch hazel bush in my front yard that defies subfreezing weather to produce fragrant yellow flowers. Then, a few weeks later, crocuses and winter aconites will emerge from the snow. The cycle continues…
Maggie Overfelt
Machine learning has the potential to drastically improve efficiency and the quality of care in hospitals by tackling hard-to-predict problems like ICU occupancy or which patients are likely to be readmitted.
Yet, a big barrier to any technology working optimally is getting full buy-in from its…
NIST
Inside every cellphone lies a tiny mechanical heart, beating several billion times a second. These micromechanical resonators play an essential role in cellphone communication. Buffeted by the cacophony of radio frequencies in the airwaves, the resonators select just the right frequencies for…
(ForTest: Modena, Italy) -- At the beginning of 2000, ForTest understood the importance of process traceability to optimize production efficiency and reduce waste due to nonconformities, anticipating what is now called Industry 4.0.
ForTest instruments give added value in their use at the end of…
Donald J. Wheeler
Last month we looked at analyzing observational data. Here we will consider experimental data and discover a weakness in the way they are obtained that can contribute to the problem of nonreproducible results.
Background
The discipline of statistics grew up in agricultural and biomedical research…
Andrew Moreo, Imran Rahman, Lisa Cain, Trishna Mistry
About 3.5 million people have at least temporarily left the U.S. workforce since March 2020. More than one-third of them—1.2 million—are in the leisure and hospitality industry.
This has created huge problems for restaurants, hotels, and other leisure and hospitality businesses that have struggled…
(Meller Optics: Providence, RI) -- Custom-fabricated sapphire prisms that are ideally suited for use in instruments that measure moving liquids and slurries in real-time have been introduced by Meller Optics of Providence, Rhode Island.
Meller sapphire prisms feature Mohs 9 hardness to provide the…
Atul Minocha
Do you ever feel like you’re spending money like crazy on marketing and getting little or nothing in return? If so, you might be tempted to pull the plug on marketing altogether. That would be a big mistake.
An effective marketing strategy can mean the difference between your organization’s success…
Sankesh Abbhi
Life science organizations play a vital role in healthcare’s technology revolution, with a key focus on identifying the right opportunities to scale digital transformation. Currently, life sciences leaders are leaning into areas such as automation, which was discussed at length at ArisGlobal’s…
Chris Hubble
There’s a misconception that the most successful business leaders are born with their leadership credentials imprinted in their DNA. Surely because they’re more successful than their peers, it stands to reason they’re extremely sharp or even smarter than their non-CEO cohorts. But in truth, what…
Quality Digest
(NVision: Southlake, TX) -- Some U.S. global technology companies specializing in consumer electronics, computers, and online services are bringing a portion of their manufacturing back to the United States following rapid certification of American-made product packaging by NVison, an engineering…
