All Features
Jeanne Spoden
High-volume medical equipment serves as the operational backbone of our healthcare system. From infusion pumps and monitoring devices to hospital beds and support surfaces, these assets support nearly every aspect of patient care. Yet in many hospitals, medical equipment management remains…
Alexandra Vazquez
A lot of CMMS rollouts fail quietly. It’s a common scenario: The software is installed, technicians are logging hours, and the digital work orders are flowing. On the surface, the implementation was a “success.”
But when the VP of operations asks for a quarterly performance review, no one can…
Peter Chhim
Most quality professionals have experienced this moment. A process improvement initiative is completed. Procedures are updated, the team is trained, and for a period of time everything works exactly as intended. The process runs smoothly, and the problem appears to be solved. Then, gradually, small…
James Glover
When manufacturing leaders discuss operational challenges, “culture” becomes the catch-all explanation: “Our culture doesn’t support discipline like Asian manufacturers,” or, “We need to change the culture around quality,” or, “It’s a cultural resistance to following procedures.”
This framing…
Mike Figliuolo
In a connected world, opportunities are more about who you know than what you know. Whether it’s a job, making a sale, or finding your next great new hire, you’d be a fool to miss some great opportunities to build your network.
With the growth of platforms like LinkedIn, it’s easier than ever to…
Jennifer Chu
When fundamental particles are heavier or lighter than expected, physicists’ understanding of the universe can tip into the unknown. A particle that’s just beyond its predicted mass can unravel scientists’ assumptions about the forces that make up all of matter and space. But now, a new precision…
Akhilesh Gulati
On an assembly line for household appliances, 10 operators assembled motors for downstream production. Demand was high, but output consistently fell short—and many motors failed final inspection, requiring weekend overtime to catch up.
Managers tried the usual fixes. Push the operators, tweak the…
Mike Figliuolo
I hear it all the time: “Let’s boil this idea down.” That’s a huge communication mistake.
What people are trying to do by “boiling it down” is get rid of all the extraneous information surrounding their idea to find something crisp they can share with others. The hope is that the crisp idea will…
Scott Ginsberg
At Dozuki, our teams are constantly on the factory floor. We spend hundreds of hours every year walking production lines, sitting in breakrooms with operators, and standing alongside quality managers during high-stakes audits. These site visits have given us a front-row seat to the friction between…
Jennifer Chu
The next time you’re scrolling your phone, take a moment to appreciate the feat: This seemingly mundane act is possible thanks to the coordination of 34 muscles, 27 joints, and more than 100 tendons and ligaments in your hand. Indeed, our hands are the nimblest parts of our bodies. Mimicking their…
Harish Jose
The great systems thinker Russell Ackoff had a provocation that stayed with me: A system isn’t the sum of its parts. It’s the product of their interactions.
He used a simple example. Take the best engine from one car, the best transmission from another, the best brakes from a third. You will not…
William A. Levinson
Most quality practitioners, as well as process engineers, are familiar with management of change (MOC). This means that any significant change to a process factor, such as the familiar ones in cause-and-effect diagrams like manpower, machine, material, method, measurement, and environment, can have…
Mike Melzer
If you ask 10 different manufacturers to identify their toughest problem, odds are at least five of them will say, “We can’t get parts through the shop floor fast enough.”
When you think about it, that answer shouldn’t come as a surprise. Today’s manufacturing customers demand increasingly shorter…
Harish Jose
I am exploring what I think is a fundamental question in epistemology: What does it mean to say something is true? I want to approach this through the lens of cybernetic constructivism. I’ll start with a question about pi, which feels fitting given that I wrote this on March 14.
What is pi? For…
Scott Ginsberg
Quality leaders know that an audit rarely fails because a company lacks documentation. It fails because the information exists somewhere but can’t be retrieved, verified, or executed consistently when it matters. For decades, preparing for an audit meant assembling binders, tracking down…
Gabriel Popkin
You’ve probably heard that time is relative. It sounds like a banal cliche, akin to “time flies when you’re having fun.”
But it’s no mere cliche: Time is relative. Though it’s not noticeable in daily life, time passes slightly more slowly when you’re moving vs. when you’re standing still. It also…
Jennifer Chu
By now, ChatGPT, Claude, and other large language models (LLMs) have accumulated so much human knowledge that they’re far from simple answer generators; they can also express abstract concepts, such as certain tones, personalities, biases, and moods. However, it’s not obvious exactly how these…
Global Shop Solutions
Picture this: It’s Monday morning. Coffee in hand. The schedule is full. Shipping is stacked. Your biggest jobs are lined up like dominos, ready to fall into place.
Then, the floor supervisor walks into your office with that look. “We can’t start Job 2471.”
You blink. “Why not?”
“Missing parts.”…
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
In response to the societal challenge of the growing electricity demand from AI data centers, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is launching the Next-Generation Data Centers Institute (NGDCI). This internal ORNL institute will unite the laboratory’s unique expertise and facilities spanning…
Adam Zewe
Studying gene expression in a cancer patient’s cells can help clinical biologists understand the cancer’s origin and predict the success of different treatments. But cells are complex and contain many layers, so how the biologist conducts measurements affects which data they can obtain. For…
Chris Chuang
As manufacturing emerges from a period of contraction, the industry faces more than just empty roles. The average tenure of a manufacturing worker has dropped, but the complexity of the machinery hasn’t. While the industry sees signs of hope, we face a knowledge crisis far more dangerous than…
Riley Wilson
From blood tests to mammograms, doctors need reliable measurements to make informed decisions about their patients’ health and deliver safe treatments. That’s why the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) serves as an important partner to health professionals and their patients…
Troy Harrison
What does onboarding mean? If you said “onboarding a salesperson” consists of doing the HR paperwork, giving a facility tour, a few days of shadowing existing salespeople, and then expecting the salesperson to hit the ground running, you’re not alone. Entirely too many sales managers feel that way—…
Akhilesh Gulati
A few months ago, during separate visits to an emergency department and an urgent care center, I experienced what many patients and clinicians now consider routine: long waits, crowded spaces, and visible strain on staff. It raised a familiar question that I’ve been asking for years: If the…
Adam Grabowski
Freedom is generally defined as the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. The license to act as one pleases offers a host of benefits but can also produce consequences that limit your freedom. The same can be said of your manufacturing. The choices you…