All Features
David C. Crosby
Publisher's note: It is with great sadness that I must report that David Crosby passed away on Monday, November 15. This article nicely embodies and encapsulates David's life work, in which he always pressed for personal accountability through a creative yet realistic approach to process…
100 Customer Service Tips by Larry Williams
Telephone communication is thought of as the greatest technological advancement of the 20th century. It can certainly be credited with nearly every facet of progress that commerce has ever enjoyed. What’s not to like? We are all addicted to this user-friendly medium. However, there are times when…
Bill Kalmar
Buying a car used to be a relatively easy process. But now that the government and various consumer protection organizations have become involved in the transaction, it has become mind-numbing. Car dealerships must now comply with myriad rules and regulations that have escalated a simple purchase…
Jeffrey G. Stark is president of Sensor Products Inc.
M
odern microprocessor-controlled electronics and high-power LED lighting operate at elevated temperatures due to Joule heating. As a result, heat sinks, to dissipate temperature, have become important in electronic system designs.…
Qualitest USA LC
(Qualitest: Huntsville, AL) -- Qualitest, a provider of comprehensive solutions through material-testing instruments, systems, and accessories, has extended its range of products for measuring gas permeability rate. The new gas permeability tester VAC-V1 is ideally suited to measure the gas…
ASQ
(ASQ: Milwaukee) -- A vast majority of manufacturers are optimistic about an economic uptick in 2011 at their organizations, according to the second-annual ASQ Manufacturing Outlook Survey. The survey states 68 percent of respondents employed in the manufacturing sector predict their organizations…
ALG Inc.
(ALG Inc: Santa Barbara, CA) -- Perception is a powerful force in consumer-buying behavior. Consumers often base beliefs about quality on the emotional connection they have made with a brand, regardless of the actual quality associated with its products. Alternatively, a brand that experiences an…
Institute for Supply Management
(ISM: Tempe, AZ) -- Essentials for a strong supply-management career are in store at the 96th Annual International Supply Management Conference and Educational Exhibit, presented by Institute for Supply Management (ISM). ISM’s conference will take place May 15–18, 2011, in Orlando, Florida, at the…
(Assent Compliance: New York) -- In a global economy it is imperative that companies comply with regional, national, and global environmental regulations to avoid enforcement penalties, ensure continued patronage from customers, and uphold brand appeal.
Complying with regulations such as “…
nuvoTrace
(nuvoTrace: Las Vegas) -- With the Trace300 Benchtop Hydrogen/Refrigerant Leak Detector and Locator, nuvoTrace, a small business entity, offers a new industrial technology to change the way manufacturers check for leak tightness—and identify the locations of those leaks.
A new approach to leak…
Mike Micklewright
Just imagine for a moment that you are a major league baseball player in 1990. If you wish, you can even choose your name and position. Perhaps you would like to be a pitcher, let’s say, Dodger Lemens, or a hitter, perhaps Marcus McWired or Al Roidriguez. You want to improve your performance…
Environmental Quality Corner with Ken Appel
Ken Appel is the manager of regulated industries for Veriteq.
In part 1 of this article, we discussed the pros and cons of various systems for stand-alone monitoring instruments (e.g., chart recorders and data loggers) and wired networks, with and without power over Ethernet (POE). In the…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
The boys slumped against the wall of the dugout; you could read the despair on their faces. “What’s the point?” mumbled the right fielder. “We’re just going to lose again.” The team was on an eight-game losing streak, with a record of three wins and eight losses, and five games left to play.…
(PerkinElmer: Waltham, MA) -- PerkinElmer Inc., a provider focused on the health and safety of people and the environment, has launched two digital X-ray flat-panel detectors (FPDs) for nondestructive testing (NDT) applications at the ASNT Fall Conference and Quality Testing Show, which is taking…
Society of Manufacturing Engineers
(SME: Dearborn, MI) -- Kermit the Frog once declared, “It’s not easy being green.” But SME and Purdue TAP are making it easier for manufacturing professionals to become green workers—one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. work force.
The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) has…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is carrying out a survey of existing and potential users of ISO 9001, the global benchmark for quality management, to gather feedback to help decide whether the standard needs further improvement and, if so, what needs…
A2LA
(A2LA: Frederick, MD) -- The American Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA) announces the expansion of its accreditation activities to encompass special inspection agencies in New York City.
The criteria for special inspection agency accreditation requires agencies to provide…
(Agilent Technologies: Santa Clara, CA) -- Agilent Technologies Inc. has introduced the 708-DS Dissolution Apparatus, a quality control instrument that can be configured for manual and automated applications. The new device includes an improved design that minimizes variability and improves…
koclospadinashosukechosimuclucrojithiuicloguuaclesloselogupo
(AMETEK Inc.: Paoli, PA) -- AMETEK Inc. has acquired Atlas Material Testing Technology LLC, a global provider of weathering test instruments and related testing and consulting services, from Industrial Growth Partners for approximately $159 million in cash.
Atlas is headquartered in Chicago…
Environmental Quality Corner with Ken Appel
Ken Appel is the manager of regulated industries for Veriteq.
T
he U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its European Union counterparts recently agreed to cooperate on pharmaceutical plant inspections to enable stepped-up enforcement of safety guidelines. These agreements will help…
NIST
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- Researchers are characterizing a new technique as a neat solution to the “needle in a haystack” problem of nanoscale microscopy, but it’s more like using a flashlight to find a coffee table in the dark instead of walking around until you fall over it. In a recently…
Minitab LLC
B
efore Michael Mercer established his consulting company, he accumulated more than 30 years of quality improvement experience at 3M. That experience led him to develop a deep trust in the power of Minitab Statistical Software. He began using one of the earliest mainframe computer versions to…
Lean Enterprise Institute
(LEI: Cambridge, MA) -- The Gold Mine: a Novel of Lean Turnaround (Lean Enterprise Institute, 2005), a popular lean business novel about a failing company that survives by adopting lean manufacturing, is now available as an audio book.
Written by Freddy and Michael Ballé, the novel deftly…
Reverseengineering.com
(Reverseengineering.com: La Jolla, California) -- Reverseengineering.com has announced that its 2011 CAD-integrated software plug-in is now available. Each plug-in has been optimized for the 64-bit operating system, and reverse-engineering users will realize a direct improvement in time and…
Factory Strategies Group
(Factory Strategies Group: Morro Bay, CA) -- Factory Strategies Group has released its new Lean Enterprise Strategy Kit to support the strategic planning efforts at organizations and smaller companies. The kit brings together the best of traditional SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and…
