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Quality Digest
Stabilix Health Companion’s primary objective is to simplify health care for individuals. It helps people track expenses and reimbursements, keep personal health records and manage their health care costs.“As the health care marketplace moves toward a consumer-directed model,…
Quality Digest
AssurX Inc. recently released CATSWeb Complaints Management & Regulatory Reporting System, its next-generation suite for the medical device manufacturing industry. A comprehensive solution, CATSWeb Complaints Management & Regulatory Reporting features solutions for business-…
Quality Digest
California’s biomedical industry has grown significantly in recent years and is one of the biggest employers in the state and the second-largest contributor to its high-technology economy, according to new research. The research was performed by the California Healthcare Institute and…
AssurX
AssurX Inc. recently released CATSWeb Complaints Management & Regulatory Reporting System, its next-generation suite for the medical device manufacturing industry. A comprehensive solution, CATSWeb Complaints Management & Regulatory Reporting features solutions for business-…
Quality Digest
The National Committee for Quality Assurance has announced that 12 software vendors are seeking certification for its Health Plan Employer Data and Information Set (HEDIS) program. HEDIS uses automated testing to validate software designed to sift through health plan databases, collect…
A worsening epidemic of sophisticated antimalarial drug counterfeiting in Southeast Asia and Africa is increasing the likelihood of drug-resistant parasites, which yield false-positive results on screening tests and risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of malaria patients—mostly…
Quality Digest
LaBarge Inc., an electronics manufacturer for regulated technology organizations, recently achieved registration to ISO 13485. The certification was issued to the company’s Pittsburgh manufacturing facility, which is also registered to ISO 9001. The new registration to ISO 13485 will…
Quality Digest
An upcoming regulatory affairs conference will be held in Paris with focus on current registration procedures in the European pharmaceutical market. Key topics to be discussed at the event include centralized and decentralized procedures, mutual-recognition procedures, business-opportunity…
Quality Digest
Thailand’s Public Service Management Quality Award (PMQA), modeled on the Singapore Quality Award, will be presented for the first time next year. The PMQA’s seven criteria are those of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award—leadership, strategy development and deployment planning…
Quality Digest
A recent letter to the U.S. Congress and other elected officials from information quality professionals expresses concerns about the provisions of the 2002 Help America Vote Act (public law 107-252), which sets guidelines for replacing punch card or lever-type voting machines with electronic…
Quality Digest
World Energy, Griffin Industries and Cargill Inc. have embraced BQ-9000 and recently earned the distinction of becoming accredited producers of biodiesel fuel.BQ-9000 includes procedures for fuel production, storage, handling and management designed to ensure fuel quality. The…
Quality Digest
Widespread Linux-based application development in business, mission and life critical areas prompted McCabe Software to develop McCabe IQ, hosted directly on RedHat Linux.“The same software quality management benefits that our customers have come to expect are now available directly on…
Quality Digest
Mikel J. Harry, founder of Six Sigma Academy in 1994 and one of the world’s leading authorities on the methodology, is rejoining the company as chief knowledge officer and vice chairman.
“We are delighted that Mike is joining us. We love that he has chosen to return to his company,” says Scott…
Brian Copeland
Every day, I hear from frustrated quality assurance (QA) managers who’ve been informed by project management that their six-week testing schedule has been reduced to two weeks or less. It usually involves some sob story about how the development team is a month late because of the…
Quality Digest
The Society of Women Engineers announced on Oct. 11 that Siddika Demir is the recipient of its 2006 Emerging Leaders Award for her leadership in quality assurance. Demir is the manager of corporate services and Six Sigma for Bechtel Corp. She is charged with setting Six Sigma strategy for…
Thomas R. Cutler
In a repetitive manufacturing environment, Six Sigma’s quantification is much easier than in the engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturing environment, where no two products are identical.
Six Sigma is a program that affects the entire company. What have been missing for ETO manufacturers are the…
Quality Digest
Vice presidents, directors and managers from leading companies convened at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel in St. Louis for the Global Benchmarking Council’s third-quarter conference last month. “Unleashing Success through Breakthroughs in Lean Sigma and Quality” was attended by hundreds of Six…
Thomas R. Cutler
In a repetitive manufacturing environment, Six Sigma’s quantification is much easier than in the engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturing environment, where no two products are identical.
Six Sigma is a program that affects the entire company. What have been missing for ETO manufacturers are the…
Steven Ouellette
So far, we’ve discussed Stupid Six Sigma Tricks #10: Conflating systems, methods and tools and #9: Confusing breakthrough with continuous improvement. This month, I’ll spend some time on a more subtle, and no less costly mistake that, in its extreme form, we’ll call Stupid Six Sigma Trick #8:…
Quality Digest
While more than 50 percent of respondents in a new report indicated that they had implemented Six Sigma programs, only 16 percent of the programs meet the methodology’s core requirements. The survey, performed by the Aberdeen Group, also found that the 16 percent of programs that…
Quality Digest
Conference organizer WCBF will host a conference for Six Sigma professionals in the software and information technology industries Nov. 7–9 in San Francisco. The event will be held at the Holiday Inn Gateway Hotel. The conference is designed to blend real-world examples with practical advice,…
Quality Digest
Valley Baptist Health System recently selected Six Sigma software from Streamline Health Solutions Inc. to manage its document management and workflow solutions. Hospital representatives report that they expect better operational efficiencies that will result in higher-quality care for…
Quality Digest
Shanya Salamaca, RABQSA manager of certification services, now represents auditor authentication bodies on the American Aerospace Quality Group Registration Management Committee.“This is a very pleasing recognition of the value and contribution RABQSA is offering the aerospace industry,”…
Quality Digest
Focusing on ways end users can use RFID technology, the RFID Summit will take place in Novi, Michigan, on Nov. 2. The morning session will deal with other industries’ uses. The afternoon will feature automotive applications and case studies. As part of this event, an exhibit floor will…
Quality Digest
Reynolds and Reynolds Company recently received the Association for Services Management International’s (AFSM) Service Quality Award for the fourth consecutive year. ServicePartners, the research division of The Gasparovic Group Inc. presented the award.“As a dealer services company, our…
