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Quality Digest
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) participated in a summit at the White House last week where representatives of government agencies, industry, and standards development organizations discussed the U.S. Government…
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
(ORNL: Oak Ridge, TN) -- The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has publicly released a new set of additive manufacturing data that industry and researchers can use to evaluate and improve the quality of 3D-printed components. The breadth of the datasets can significantly…
Quality Digest
(IDS: Stoneham, MA) -- As versatile as the IDS industrial camera families are, sometimes customer requirements are so particular that a customized development would be desirable. However, this often only makes sense for larger quantities.
For this reason, IDS has developed the uEye ACP series: Its…
Quality Digest
(ANCA: Melbourne, Australia; Wixom, MI) -- Renowned for launching industry-first tool and cutter grinding technologies, ANCA continues to innovate with the EPX-SF, guaranteeing productivity, quality, and profitability in edge preparation. The new stream finishing machine debuted at GrindingHub in…
Akhilesh Gulati
Maria took a moment to reflect on how much had changed in just over a year since she first explored ChatGPT with her informal innovation group. Back then it was more of a novelty, a fun challenge to see whether artificial intelligence could answer their mundane questions correctly. Sometimes it…
Mark Graban
In the world of continuous improvement and lean management, clear and respectful communication is crucial.
Let’s take a moment to examine two different approaches to communicating a simple instruction regarding the operation of a centrifuge, as seen in the images below—pictures I took in a…
Quality Digest
(CIMdata: Ann Arbor, MI) -- CIMdata Inc., a leading global PLM strategic management consulting and research firm, announces the publication of a new e-book, pSeven Enterprise Unleashes the Full Potential of Simulation for System Design Optimization. The e-book highlights the challenges industrial…
(Key Technology: Walla Walla, WA) – Key Technology has introduced optical sorters for processed protein products such as frozen chicken nuggets, chicken tenders, fish sticks, and plant-based meat alternatives. Automatically removing product defects and foreign material (FM), Key’s optical sorters,…
Megan Wallin-Kerth
As societal norms change with each passing generation, so do work trends and expectations. Today, employers are seeing a notable shift in the attitudes, values, and goals of the next generation of workers.
At TalentLMS, surveys capture these changes with targeted questions. A recent report found…
Harish Jose
Recently, I wrote about the process capability index and tolerance interval. Here, I’m writing about the relationship between the process capability index and sigma. The sigma number here relates to how many standard deviations the process window can hold.
A +/– 3 sigma contains 99.73% of the…
Quality Digest
(Hexagon: Stockholm) -- Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division has launched Digital Factory, a new digitalization solution designed to help manufacturers build highly accurate digital replicas of their factories. It enables manufacturers to optimize their floor plans and quickly pivot…
Mike Figliuolo
I hate the use of the word just in front of anyone’s title, as in, “He’s just an analyst,” or, “She’s just a cafeteria worker,” or, “I’m just an administrative assistant.”
No one is just anything. The word is demeaning and pejorative. We’re all people—we happen to have different responsibilities.…
John Tschohl
Are your employees empowered to make decisions on the spot in favor of the customer? Your single goal should be to have overly happy customers. Too many things go wrong each day. You want your employees to understand they are in customer service, and their No. 1 responsibility is to take care of…
David Chandler
(MIT: Cambridge, MA) -- As the name suggests, most electronic devices today work through the movement of electrons. But materials that can efficiently conduct protons—the nucleus of the hydrogen atom—could be key to many important technologies for combating global climate change.
Most proton-…
Quality Digest
(Morehouse: York, PA) -- Maintaining precise cable tension is crucial across various industries, including engineering, construction, aerospace, and manufacturing. Cable tensiometers serve as indispensable instruments for measuring and monitoring this cable tension. However, the calibration of…
Touradj Ebrahimi
For the last 30 years, the JPEG image format has been a staple for the internet’s billions of users. While the technologies used to display images have evolved tremendously during the past few decades, the JPEG format is still used everywhere. This is a great example of what can happen when a new…
Stanislav Shekshnia, Sergey Vorobiev
In the complex, uncertain, and fast-changing world we live in, success and even survival require intensive collaboration among individuals, organizations, and countries. The outcomes of such collaboration can be breathtaking: Consider the growth of Netflix and Amazon, the rebirth of Microsoft and…
Quality Digest
(CIMdata: Ann Arbor, MI) -- CIMdata Inc., a leading global PLM strategic management consulting and research firm, announces an upcoming free educational webinar, “AI & Machine Learning in the Digital Thread.” The one-hour webinar is scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024, at 11:00 a.m. Eastern.…
NIST
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced an open competition for a new Manufacturing USA institute focused on using artificial intelligence (AI) to increase the resilience of U.S. manufacturers. The notice of…
Quality Digest
(Southworth Products: Portland, ME) -- The performance requirements of lift tables in a production process are far greater than those of stand-alone lifts. To ensure maximum reliability and uptime in these production environments, Southworth has introduced a production-ready package for many of its…
Quality Digest
(Mitutoyo America: Aurora, IL) -- Mitutoyo America Corp., a leading manufacturer of precision metrology instruments and solutions, has released its SM1008S, the first noncontact line-laser sensor in the Mitutoyo surface-measure product line.
The surface-measure 1008S aims to disrupt the surface…
John Hilgendorf
Whether you’re an executive with limited energy or an hourly employee trying to minimize work, the bottleneck in your productivity isn’t time or money but mental effort. And in a digital age where all data can be stored electronically, the most valuable functions of software—especially those in…
Mike Figliuolo
Reading the news (or even your email) can be distressing to the point of despondency. It can also be fun. It’s especially fun when people say or write silly stuff, and the reporter or editor has to write [sic] after a misspelling or a stupid comment in the original transcript. Sic, usually placed…
Quality Digest
(NCMS: Ann Arbor, MI) -- The National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) announces the publication of a new technology brief focused on a new corrosion risk assessment tool to help combat the high cost of corrosion.
Corrosion is an insidious problem worldwide, costing industries and…
Daniel Marzullo
The “comfort zone” is that cozy space where everything feels familiar and stress-free. It’s where we stick to what we know, using the same old strategies that keep things steady but can also lead to feeling stuck.
In this zone, there’s not much motivation to push for new achievements, so progress…
