All Features
Michael Fagan
Technology is supposed to help us, but sometimes it feels like for every step forward, we take two steps back. Like many people (and despite my resistance), my family has accumulated a few internet of things (IoT) devices in our home. Our motivation for acquiring them has been to streamline our…
Martin Abel
Imagine that your boss Ethan calls you into his office. He expresses disappointment in your recent performance and lack of commitment. How would you react? Accept the feedback and put in more effort? Would you pout in your office and start looking for a new job?
Now, would your reaction be…
Formstack
(Formstack: Fishers, IN) -- Formstack, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company with a mission to transform the way people collect information and put it to work, announces the launch of Formstack Documents. Formstack Documents is a comprehensive document generation and automation product built to…
David Moser
Technology companies are frequently driven by their engineering processes. Of course product quality is regarded as most important, and that quality can be tested and measured with numbers and data. Such companies also frequently align their core identity with the engineering that belies their…
Paul Laughlin
What tools should data analysts have in their toolbox? It’s a broad question and one with diverging views. So, I am delighted to welcome back a guest blogger who doesn’t shy away from controversy.
Martin Squires is a very experienced znalytics leader, whom I’ve previously interviewed in our audio…
Donald J. Wheeler
In the past two months we have looked at how three-sigma limits work with skewed data. This column finds the power functions for the probability limits of phase two charts with skewed probability models, and compares the trade-offs made by three-sigma limits with the trade-offs made by the…
Steven Brand
If you remember the woodworking, metalworking, and auto shop classes that used to be taught in high school, you already have an idea of what a makerspace is. Makerspaces, sometimes called Maker Labs, are defined as “a place in which people with shared interests can gather to work on projects while…
Marposs
(Marposs: Auburn Hills, MI) -- Marposs, a world leader in measurement and inspection technologies, has announced its M62 Scan, a universal gear inspection system that performs a very quick and efficient inspection of cylindrical gear tooth profiles in a production environment. The M62 Scan helps…
Jody Muelaner
One of the key ideas in lean manufacturing is that defects should be detected as early as possible. Efforts to control manufacturing processes, so that issues can be detected before defects occur, actually predate lean. Statistical process control (SPC) is a set of methods first created by Walter A…
Kendall Powell, Knowable Magazine
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
When my kids, ages 11 and 8, bang through the back door after school, often the first thing out of their mouths is: “Mom! Can we play Prodigy?”
After a quick mental calculation of how much screen time they've already had for the week and…
Tom Comstock
How can industrial and manufacturing enterprises achieve better new product introduction (NPI), a critical element of operational excellence? Corporate goals of improving market share and revenue, maintaining competitive differentiators, and improving customer experiences are especially challenging…
Davis Balestracci
In 2006 I was at a presentation by a world leader in quality (WLQ) who has been singing W. Edwards Deming’s praises since the late 1980s and even does the famous red bead experiment as part of some of his plenaries.
He presented the following bar graph showing a comparison of the sum of rankings…
Joseph Paris
A few years ago, I was asked to conduct a workshop, deliver a keynote, and chair a three-day conference on manufacturing process excellence in Europe, produced by the Process Excellence Network (PEX), a division of IQPC. Although that was a lot to ask of me, the lineup of speakers and content was…
NVision Inc.
(NVision: Southlake, TX) -- NVision Inc., in cooperation with the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, is making it possible for those with vision-impairment to interactively engage with some of the great works by modern sculptors. NVision, a leader in 3D non-contact optical scanning/measurement for…
Derek Benson
As a quality professional, you’ve probably heard the famous quote from W. Edwards Deming, “In God we trust; all others bring data.” Thanks to technological advancements in our industry, data exist more abundantly than ever. This presents a new challenge for those tasked with extracting and…
Bill Snyder
In 1500, China’s economy was the strongest in the world. But by the 19th century, the United States, Western Europe, and Japan had leapfrogged over China by churning out goods and services in vast quantities while the former superpower stalled.
Why? Some economists argue that China’s lack of free…
L.S. Starrett Co.
(The L.S. Starrett Co.: Athol, MA) -- The L.S. Starrett Co., a leading global manufacturer of precision measuring tools and gages, metrology systems, and more, has introduced two new digital Rockwell/Superficial Rockwell Benchtop Hardness Testers (No. 3823 and 3824) with fully automated load/unload…
Anthony D. Burns
You’ve set aside Sunday afternoon to bake some cookies, but you discover you have run out of eggs. Your partner in marital bliss has gone out and taken the car. You call a couple of mates, and they tell you to try bananas, vegetable oil, or applesauce as egg substitutes. You decide to have some fun…
Harish Jose
Today I’m looking at design from a cybernetics viewpoint. My inspirations come from cybernetics and design theorists Ross Ashby, Stafford Beer, Klaus Krippendorff, Paul Pangaro, and Ranulph Glanville. I was curious about how the interface of a device conveys the message to the user on how to…
Anjalika Singh
Management system implementation reminds me of the advice my gym instructor gave when I first enrolled at my local health club: “Losing weight doesn’t happen in one day and with crash diets,” he said. “You gotta work out, gotta sleep the right amount, have a little fun in life. Yes, food is the…
Elana Feldman
An email pops up on your screen. It’s a client sharing a project update. A Slack message appears. It’s your boss asking a question. A text alert beeps. A colleague wants to know if you will be attending a meeting.
Sound familiar? People are increasingly besieged at work by interruptions through…
Kathy Anton
Throughout our 30-year company history, we have witnessed over and over how clearly communicated systems, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and policies can transform business results. It's common to see dramatic improvements like 50-percent faster employee onboarding, a 65-percent reduction in…
Kevin Meyer
I have been immersed in the lean world for more than a quarter century. From the start, when some folks from the Association for Manufacturing Excellence showed me how quick changeover could save my injection-molding operation (and probably my job) from imminent destruction, to now, when I can…
Teofilo Cortizo
The mean time between failures (MTBF) calculation is widely used to evaluate the reliability of parts and equipment. In the industry it is usually defined as one of the key performance indicators. This short article is intended to demonstrate in practice how we can fool ourselves by evaluating this…
Michael Brundage
How do we get smart? I was first asked this question while sitting in on a call with a small manufacturer who supplied parts for automotive manufacturers. With all the buzz around “smart manufacturing,” this manufacturer wanted to join the movement. The problem was that its leaders didn’t know…
