All Features
Taylor Brown
It’s easy to think of quality as a niche responsibility, requiring only the involvement of those working in quality-based roles. But involving your entire medical device organization—and even suppliers and manufacturers—in the quality process can lead to better products, greater efficiency, and…
Anne Trafton
This story was originally published by MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL).
In some ways, learning to program a computer is similar to learning a new language. It requires learning new symbols and terms, which must be organized correctly to instruct the computer what to…
Ryan E. Day
‘For sale: 3 bd, 2 ba, 1,407 sq ft home in Riverhead, NY,” the groundbreaking listing on Zillow reads. “Own a piece of history! This is the world’s first 3D-printed home for sale [on the open market]. The future begins with this historic property!” Perhaps the exclamation marks are warranted.…
Ashley Y. Metcalf
Lean supply chains are designed based on several key principles. First, the general philosophy of lean is to reduce or eliminate nonvalue-added waste. The concept of reducing waste is always beneficial to organizations. We should continuously strive to reduce things like wasted time, wasted effort…
Quality Digest
(Siemens : Plano, TX) -- Siemens Digital Industries Software announces Teamcenter Quality software, a new suite of solutions that provide a closed-loop approach for quality management, from design to manufacturing on the shop floor and back again. Teamcenter Quality helps keep product development,…
Quality Digest
Eight years ago Quality Digest published the article, “Suit Up, Show Up, Give Up: Are e-marketing techniques killing trade shows?” The premise was that electronic marketing was slowly diminishing the need for in-person events. However, until recently inertia has kept these sprawling shows alive as…
Liz Uram
Have you ever dreaded having a conversation with an employee who wasn’t meeting performance expectations? Maybe you avoided it, hoping it would improve on its own? If so, you are not alone.
Most managers would agree that one of their least favorite tasks is talking to an employee about poor…
Gregg Profozich
The manufacturing world, across industry sectors, has witnessed significant improvements in productivity and competitiveness during the past couple of decades as a result of continuous improvement (CI) methodologies. Two of these methodologies that are recognized as having broad applicability are…
Henrik Bresman
Right now it seems far away, but a post-Covid world is coming. Is it closer to us than the start of the pandemic? We can’t say with any certainty, but we must think about how we will work in the future. The sudden changes of early 2020 showed us how we are capable of extraordinary transformations…
Quality Digest
(NewTek: Pennsauken, NJ) -- NewTek Sensor Solutions offers the RV series of rotary position sensors that measure and provide feedback on the rotary displacement of rotating elements in industrial benchtop and test and measurement applications. While featuring a full 360° mechanical range, these…
Adam Conner-Simons
This story was originally published by MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL).
Scatterplots. You may not know them by name, but if you spend more than 10 minutes online, you’ll find them everywhere.
They’re popular in news articles, in the data science community, and…
Knowledge at Wharton
A new study finds that productivity has remained stable or even increased for many companies that shifted to remote work during the coronavirus pandemic. However, innovation has taken a hit as both leaders and employees feel more distant from each other.
Businesses tend to spend less money and…
(University of Rochester: Rochester, NY) -- Researchers in Rochester are developing an optical chip on a disposable card that can detect exposure to multiple viruses within a minute—including the coronavirus that causes Covid-19—from a single drop of blood.
Led by University of Rochester Medical…
Gregg Profozich
In the first article of this series, we saw that Lean and Six Sigma are complementary continuous improvement methodologies that reduce the overall waste and variability in production processes, respectively. Although these two methodologies use different approaches and tools to drive improvements…
Jill Neimark
If you’ve ever stayed in a relationship too long or stuck with a project that was going nowhere, you’re not alone. Humans are generally reluctant to give up on something they’ve already committed time and effort to. It’s called the “sunk costs” phenomenon, where the more resources we sink into an…
Catherine Cooksey
New employees at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are often surprised to learn that our agency is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. How could this be? On the surface it seems that the missions of the two organizations couldn’t be more different. The Department of…
Clare Naden
Never have we been more acutely aware of the importance of reliability when it comes to laboratory testing. As the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted, the development of accurate diagnostic tests plays an important role in outbreak management.
Whether a laboratory develops its own test…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- ISO/IEC/IEEE 16085—“Systems and software engineering—Life cycle processes—Risk management” provides a universally applicable standard for practitioners responsible for managing risks associated with systems and software during their life cycle. It has recently been revised to align…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- ISO/IEC/IEEE 16085—“Systems and software engineering—Life cycle processes—Risk management” provides a universally applicable standard for practitioners responsible for managing risks associated with systems and software during their life cycle. It has recently been revised to align…
Vanessa Bates Ramirez
China’s star has been steadily rising for decades. Besides slashing extreme poverty rates from 88 percent to under 2 percent in just 30 years, the country has become a global powerhouse in manufacturing and technology. Its pace of growth may slow due to an aging population, but China is nonetheless…
Marlene Chism
New leaders often don’t realize that saying “yes” to leadership requires stepping out of the comfort zone. Avoidance is no longer a strategy.
As a leader, it’s up to you to navigate through the cultural politics, make difficult decisions, and resolve conflict between employees or co-workers.…
Nate Burke
Businesses are constantly looking for ways to improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations. And this will only become a more important focus as we continue to navigate the complex and volatile Covid-stricken commercial climate.
Fortunately, e-commerce is thriving. Unlike…
Renita Kalhorn
Steffen Heilmann is a firm believer in empowering his people and giving them opportunities to grow. During his early weeks as CTO at Aroundhome, he and his staff were heading into an important negotiation with their data center provider to take over responsibility of a mission-critical database.…
Bob Holmes, Knowable Magazine
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
It’s been a long year, but a vaccine against Covid-19 has started to roll out across the United States. There won’t be enough to vaccinate everyone right away, so public health officials will need to figure out how to manage the slow ramp-up…
Freedom
(Freedom: Cincinnati) -- Autocam Medical, a global contract manufacturer of high-precision CNC-machined surgical and medical components and devices, has ramped up its industrial internet of things (IIoT) footprint using Freedom’s Smart Manufacturing Platform. With the goal of improving productivity…
