All Features
Quality Digest
Despite numerous technological advances and tens of billions of investment dollars that were poured into information technology, a majority of businesses don’t have access to high-quality, reliable operations and financial information, according to a new report. Conducted by CFO Research…
Quality Digest
Analyst firm DMG Consulting recently named NICE Systems as the market leader in contact call center quality management and liability recording. DMG reports that NICE has a 32.7 percent worldwide market share, noting that the company also has large percentages of the call-center quality-…
Quality Digest
The National Standards Authority of Ireland will host a three-day course examining the new hazardous-substance–free specification. The “Electrical and Electronics Components and Products Hazardous Substance Free Standard and Requirements” specification, commonly referred to as EIA/ECCB-954…
Del Williams
After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, vulnerability to a growing number of potential disasters and disruptions has U.S. manufacturing executives turning to sophisticated third party logistics (3PL) providers to safeguard their brands at the end of the supply chain. "Major quake in California. Avian…
Quality Digest
QC Inspection Services Inc. announced a series of review courses that intend to help participants prepare for American Society for Quality certification testing. The company will host certified mechanical-inspector review and certified mechanical-inspector courses in February, in preparation for…
Quality Digest
Conference-planning company IXPERION is planning two major Six Sigma conferences for this spring. The 5th annual Six Sigma for Financial Services Summit will be held March 7–8 in New York City. The conference will feature presentations by Six Sigma users in the financial sector and two…
Quality Digest
Six Sigma IQ recently announced the finalists in its 2006 Six Sigma Excellence Awards competition. The awards will be presented Jan. 24 at the 7th annual Six Sigma Summit in Miami. In the Best Six Sigma Project in Health Care category, the finalists are: i3, an Ingenix business…
Quality Digest
Rath & Strong recently introduced a new road map to simplify the integration of lean and Six Sigma under the define, measure, analyze, improve, control (DMAIC) methodology. Rath & Strong’s Integrated Lean Six Sigma Roadmap: New Revised Edition is designed to take the guess-work…
Steven Ouellette
“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.” Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903) What’s distance learning? Six Sigma Black Belt training has long been the realm of the elite. It used to be so expensive and required so much time that only companies with the cash and resources to…
Quality Digest
Quality conference organizer WCBF has issued a call for entries for the Global Six Sigma Awards, which will be awarded in June in Las Vegas. Entries are now being accepted for the following categories: Best achievement of Six Sigma in manufacturing Best achievement of Six Sigma in service…
Quality Digest
The 2005 National Health Quality Report suggests that a push for health care quality improvement by U.S. quality improvement organizations (QIO) has been successful. The report found significant improvements in the delivery of diabetes, heart disease, respiratory, maternal and child health and…
Quality Digest
Minitab recently began offering direct client assistance through its new statistical support services. Minitab established the service under the premise that successful quality-improvement initiatives require accurate analysis of performance data, but most companies lack the advanced…
Quality Digest
Quality industry professionals have a new opportunity of learning the secrets of lasting success through a new book that compares Toyota Motor Co.’s fabled management practices to DNA that passes down as “genes” to its plants and managers. Inside the Mind of Toyota—Management Principles for…
Quality Digest
The California Council for Excellence will host its 12th annual Conference & Awards Gala April 6–7 at the Hyatt Regency Irvine. The event will feature dozens of workshops and seminars, along with a host of celebrity look-alikes including Theodore Roosevelt, Joan Rivers, Groucho Marx,…
Ken Levine
Lean Six Sigma and other continuous improvement initiatives require effective teamwork, and effective teamwork requires good meetings. Ineffective meetings are the reason many organizations fail to improve continuously. Therefore, effective meeting management should be an integral and early part…
Laser scanning makes it easy to keep older military equipment running by enabling companies to create spare parts that perfectly duplicate the originals at a reasonable cost. Manufacturers of weapons systems are taking advantage of new technologies, particularly the ModelMaker laser scanning…
Quality Digest
Quametec Corp., a consultancy, proficiency-testing organization and training provider, has released a new course for metrology professionals.Quametec Trainer is a self-paced, multimedia training system based on the company’s popular ISO/IEC 17025:2005 uncertainty-analysis seminars. It’s been…
Quality Digest
Leica Geosystems’ line of Universal coordinate measuring machine (CMM) products was recognized by the Chinese trade magazine Automobile Industry for its new technologies and manufacturing equipment for the automobile industry. It took 67 industry experts three months to select the winner from…
Quality Digest
Intertek Automotive Services, which operates the first commercial automotive test lab of its kind in China, is now offering buzz, squeak and rattle (BSR) testing at its facility in Shanghai. The company uses a newly purchased MB Dynamics low-noise vibration system for the BSR testing. IAS is…
Quality Digest
FARO Technologies Inc. has combined two of its top-selling portable coordinate measuring machines into a single package called the TrackArm. The new offering unites the FARO Laser Tracker, which has a range of up to 230 ft., and the Platinum FaroArm, a long-reach probe with six degrees of…
Quality Digest
Instron Corp. is now offering on-site temperature-calibration services for a wide variety of equipment. With more than 100 field-service engineers located all over the United States, the company offers temperature, force, speed, displacement, strain, and alignment calibrations. Instron’s…
Quality Digest
D.L. Newslow & Associates Inc. has announced a series of wintertime seminars to be held in Daytona Beach, Florida. The organization will host Internal Quality Auditing from January 24–26; Enhancing Your Quality Management System will be held January 25–28. These two seminars can be…
Quality Digest
The deadline for ANSI-accredited U.S. technical advisory groups to the International Organization for Standardization to complete their 2005 Annual Reports is Jan. 31, the American National Standards Institute recently announced. ANSI requires that its U.S. TAGs complete annual reports, which…
Quality Digest
The International Organization for Standardization recently introduced WorldSID, the world’s most advanced crash-test dummy, which will allow the automotive industry to improve vehicle design and increase passenger safety. WorldSID (World Side Impact Dummy) was developed to allow a single,…
Denise Robitaille
Some ISO 9001 requirements simply don’t get as much attention as others. One such example is found in clause 6.4, which relates to work environments. It states: “The organization shall determine and manage the work environment needed to achieve conformity to product requirements.” What…
