All Features
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
Let’s begin with yet another example of a lack of understanding of the Perversity Principle, this one from a recent The Times of India report.
“Authorities in India have reportedly arrested some 300 people and expelled 600 students in connection with a massive cheating scandal in the northeastern…
InnovMetric Software
(InnovMetric: Quebec, QC, Canada) -- InnovMetric Software Inc. is proud to announce that its annual 2015 release of the PolyWorks universal 3D metrology software platform is focused on enhancing measurement quality, repeatability, and productivity. Key new functionalities of PolyWorks 2015 include…
Perceptron Inc.
(Perceptron: Plymouth, MI) -- When Robert Howard formed Carolina Metrology in Duncan, South Carolina, he knew the level of core measuring capability that was required to compete as a contract dimensional metrology service. Howard has spent more than 15 years in the metrology, quality, and…
Mike Figliuolo
Erin joined your team about a year ago. She came in with many other candidates for a job opening, and she impressed you during the interview. She was far and away the best candidate.
She has lived up to the high expectations she set in her interviews. She reduced the time it takes to deliver her…
Christine Schaefer
During the recent leadership plenary of the Baldrige Program’s Quest for Excellence Conference, senior leaders of the 2014 Baldrige Award recipients shared their insights and lessons learned.
Scott McIntyre, the U.S. leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) Public Sector Practice, said, “If we’re…
Phil Wiseman
All the technical journals are abuzz with the changes to ISO 9001:2015. One significant paradigm shift is to a risk-based management approach. Most companies already apply risk-based thinking in their planning process for organizational management. This article will take a narrowly focused…
Mark Troppe
Spring has always been my favorite time of year. The flowers are out again in full bloom, it’s time to plant the garden, and baseball season is here again. Go Nationals!
My absolute favorite thing to do is spring cleaning, which provides the perfect opportunity to address all of the chores punted…
Dianna Booher
Leaders who empower their team members get better results. They make faster decisions, have the ability to act, and create dramatically better experiences for customers. Read on to learn how you can empower your teams.
“Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way…
(Dynapar: Gurnee, Illinois) -- Announced today and effective immediately, Dynapar is offering a free 30-day beta test trial to all interested and qualified parties, for its key product families of incremental and absolute encoders, with thousands of configurations available. According to North…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
Years ago, while in a traveling sales job that I hated, I stopped at a gas station and used the restroom. Someone, annoyed by the wet floors, had scrawled above the urinal, “We aim to please. You aim too, please.”
It was a classic bit of latrinalia that I’d seen a dozen times before. Written…
Davis Balestracci
Welcome to baseball season! I always do a baseball-themed article around this time, and I found my topic after stumbling on this article recently: How accurate are umpires when calling balls and strikes?
From what I understand, since 2008, home plate umpires have been electronically monitored…
Michael Causey
Informed consent (IC) is more than getting a quick signature from a clinical trial participant, the FDA gently reminds industry in a new guidance addressing increasingly complicated electronic IC (eIC) issues. Issued almost simultaneously with Apple’s new ResearchKit tool, which promises faster,…
Quality Digest
(Quality Digest -- Chico, CA) Quality Digest, for more than 30 years the leading source for quality news and resources, is now available on mobile devices. Check out our website on your smartphone or tablet for exclusive content, in-depth articles and columns, industry news, webinars, and more.…
Patricia Walsh
We all face adversity in our lives. The difference is in how you approach it. If you’re willing to look past the challenge and have the determination to overcome it, you can achieve more than you ever dreamed was possible.
In 1986 I lost my vision due to a pediatric brain tumor. I lost my vision…
Chip Johns
Reducing waste, implementing efficiency-promoting practices, and continuously improving operations are the main goals of lean manufacturing ideology. These tasks may seem daunting for a manufacturer at the start of an improvement program, but there are many concrete steps that can be taken to…
Michelle LaBrosse
As a project manager, you’re most likely familiar with the five project phases outlined in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMI, 2013): initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. However, do you know the 47 project management “processes” that these five…
Frost and Sullivan
(Frost & Sullivan: London) -- Increasing procedure volumes have been fuelling the adoption of custom procedure trays and packs (CPTP) in Western and Eastern Europe. In part, the expanding aging population, which is more likely to develop chronic wounds as they have more medical issues…
Jon Speer
When people talk about U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) design controls, they often place a lot of emphasis on inputs and outputs, verification, transfer, and the design history file. All good things, of course; without them, you won’t meet FDA requirements for your design controls. The…
Mettler-Toledo
(METTLER-TOLEDO: Columbus, Ohio) -- The latest addition to the METTLER TOLEDO CI-Vision portfolio is the newly developed Label Check Station (LCS), which prints and verifies labels automatically. Food manufacturers can use the LCS to print high-quality, product-specific labels at a rate of up to…
Bruce Hamilton
Sometimes we receive unreasonable and confusing directions, and sometimes we give them.
As in the short video clip below, even if the systems behind this confusion are sound and the motivations reasonable, when you put them together they can create a frustrating no-win situation:
Here are a few…
Jim Benson
Business runs on estimates. “How long do you think that might take?” we naively ask. Then when someone tells us how long they think something might take, we write that down and hold them to it.
Merriam-Webster’s says the very word “estimate” means to roughly calculate or judge the value, number,…
Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence
(Hexagon Metrology: North Kingstown, RI) -- Hexagon Metrology has released the RS3 upgrade package, delivering a dramatic performance improvement for the ROMER Absolute Arm with integrated laser scanner. The RS3 doubles the scan rate of the previous RS2 integrated scanner, enabling users to…
Bob Emiliani
Regular readers of my column, as well as my Twitter and LinkedIn feeds, will know that in recent months I have posted many critiques on various aspects related to the products, promotion, and practice of lean management. Why now? The reason is that 20 years of engagement in lean offers the unique…
Strahinja Stojanovic
A quality manual will not be a mandatory document for a quality management system (QMS), according to the available version of the ISO/DIS 9001:2015 standard. How did that happen? The quality manual was one of the first documents that a certification body asked for before the certification audit.…
Calin Moldovean
Management systems programs such as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 were originally implemented to help organizations gain market access, satisfy mandatory customer requirements, streamline processes, manage growth, drive continual improvement, and generally keep up with the competition.
In today’s…
