All Features
Anne Willimann
The Airbus A380 is the most modern, spacious, and capable civilian aircraft ever. The project was launched in December 2000, christened “The Flagship of the 21st Century,” and developed in close cooperation with air carriers, airports, and air traffic authorities.
The A380 incorporates the most…
Quality Digest
(ASTM International: West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania) -- Manual 56, Guide to Friction, Wear and Erosion Testing is now available from ASTM International. The manual, authored by Kenneth G. Budinski, is a resource for newcomers to tribology, which is the science and technology of interacting…
Quality Digest
Metryx Ltd., a supplier of mass metrology equipment to the semiconductor manufacturing industry, has announced that it has entered into a joint development program with Interuniversity MicroElectronics Center (IMEC ) of Belgium, a leading research institute. The program is designed to evaluate…
Quality Digest
(Standards Council of Canada: Ottawa) -- The Standards Council of Canada has announced that Jacques Régis has began his three-year term as president of the International Electrotechnical Commission. Régis, who becomes IEC’s 32nd president and the first-ever Canadian elected to lead the…
Denise Robitaille
There’s a great scene in The Agony and the Ecstasy where Pope Julius, played by Rex Harrison, reacts to the paint dribbles from Michelangelo’s perpetual work on the Sistine Chapel. He’s processing out of the chapel after Mass and Charlton Heston, in his role as the great artist, has unceremoniously…
Quality Digest
(ANSI: New York) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently issued an updated list of consensus standards for use in evaluating medical devices before they are approved by the agency for market entry. The Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997 authorized the FDA to…
Quality Digest
(NQI: Toronto) -- Canada’s National Quality Institute will present “Improving Your Business Through Benchmarking Best Practices” on April 23–24, 2008 in Toronto.Participants in this workshop you may expect learn how to plan and conduct benchmarking as a strategic and operational tool to…
Richard Lepsinger
Companies frequently develop vision and mission statements about being No. 1 in their industry, the great service they provide to customers, and their rewarding work environment. More often than not, these statements are so far from reality that they become joke fodder for customers and…
Quality Digest
(ISO: Geneva) -- A suite of new ISO standards offers practical tools to address the challenge of effectively managing water resources so as to provide access to safe drinking water and sanitation for the world’s population. ISO recently published three standards providing guidelines for…
Quality Digest
(ANSI: New York) -- The Japanese Industrial Standards Committee recently submitted a proposal to the International Organization for Standardization for a new field of technical activity on industrial furnaces and associated thermal processing equipment.This type of thermal equipment is used…
Bill Kalmar
In the last couple of months, two topics have become particularly vexing to me. First, how can we be environmentally responsible by purchasing E85 fuel when there are few service stations that provide this new elixir? Second—even more difficult to comprehend—why do companies eliminate products and…
Allen Huffman
With all the emphasis today on quality, and studies showing that quality is very important to the leaders of American business, why are so many organizations struggling to achieve and sustain quality systems? The answer is that managers have been inundated for 20 years with a parade of quality…
Quality Digest
(PowerSteering: Cambridge, Massachussetts).--PowerSteering, the only on-demand, enterprise project portfolio management (PPM) software used to manage information technology, Six Sigma, product development, and other enterprise initiatives, recently announced that its 2007 sales increased by 58…
Quality Digest
(CSPI: Washington) -- On several Web sites, the Sara Lee Corp. muses about how consumers are likely to mistakenly believe that many “whole grain” breads are actually more like whole wheat bread than white bread, and chides its competitors for not being “100-percent whole-grain.” Sara Lee helps…
Quality Digest
(NIST: Gaithersburg, Maryland) -- A team of computer scientists and mathematicians from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Texas, Arlington, is developing an open-source tool that catches programming errors by using an emerging approach called “combinatorial…
Quality Digest
(Best Practices: Chapel Hill, North Carolina) -- Many companies believe that they deliver superior customer experience, but far fewer customers agree with this assessment. Because the many elements that add up to the customer experience can have such a profound effect on business performance and…
Bill Kalmar
Now that I have your attention, let me explain. This year I will enter a very special age group, namely, those people eligible for Medicare. The magical age of 65 provides one with certain mystical rights—Medicare benefits, of course, which means we’ll be swimming in extra disposable income. Yeah…
Georgia Institute of Technology
Unique three-dimensional solar cells that capture nearly all of the light that strikes them could boost the efficiency of photovoltaic systems while reducing their size, weight, and mechanical complexity. The new 3-D solar cells capture photons from sunlight using an array of miniature “tower”…
Quality Digest
(The Center for Business Intelligence: Woburn, Massachusetts) – CBI will host the conference with the theme, “Implement a Strategy for Continuous Quality Systems Improvement in Accordance with ICH Q10 Guidelines,” January 24–25, 2008, in Philadelphia.ICH Q10 describes one comprehensive approach…
Quality Digest
(AHRQ: Rockville, Maryland) -- An array of toolkits designed to help doctors, nurses, hospital managers, patients, and others reduce medical errors was recently released by the U.S. Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.The 17 toolkits, developed by AHRQ-funded…
Georgia Institute of Technology
Research reported recently in the journal Advanced Materials describes a potentially promising strategy for encouraging the regeneration of damaged central nervous system cells known as neurons.The technique would use a biodegradable polymer containing a chemical group that mimics the…
Quality Digest
(ASQ: Milwaukee) -- The American Society for Quality’s 2008 World Conference on Quality and Improvement, May 5-7, 2008 in Houston, Texas, will provide attendees with a myriad of improvement opportunities. More than 90 breakout sessions are planned ranging from topics on business excellence,…
Forrest Breyfogle—New Paradigms
Editor’s note:This short story is part of a three-volume series—Integrated Enterprise Excellence: Going Beyond Lean Six Sigma and the Balanced Scorecard, by Forrest Breyfogle. Within the context of this fictional story the author discusses the attributes of an integrated training program that he…
Steven Ouellette
As I’m writing this, our first big snowfall of the year is piling up outside and it is –10°C (15°F). This brings to mind the many times my grandfather told me of how he walked to school in winter uphill (both ways) with no shoes. So I wondered, will I be able to spin the same yarn for my girls and…
Quality Digest
From left, Col. Michael Pelletier, 555th Aircraft Sustainment Squadron commander; Col. James Fulton, 727th Aircraft Sustainment Group commander; DeLana Aylor, 448th Combat Sustainment Wing financial management; and Ernie Guttery, 76th Maintenance Support Group, discuss their…
