All Features
Benjamin Kessler
Suddenly, supply chains are in the spotlight. The practical details of how products arrive on supermarket shelves, for example, gained unwelcome relevance amid last year’s wave of panic buying caused by Covid-19 disruption. At the same time, the environmental damage wrought by wasteful industrial…
Merilee Kern
In many ways, being an effective leader boils down to your ability to influence people—a proficiency that is driven by one’s emotional intelligence (EQ). Leadership is more about soft skills—the ability to inspire, persuade, guide, sway, and communicate in a way that’s “heard” rather than just “…
James Wells
I was talking recently with a friend who runs an academic program at a major U.S. university. She was telling me about solving a problem in her department and how the solution was obvious so she just did it. She then related how one of her colleagues protested that she should have used some Six…
Enterprise Minnesota
Based in Winona, Minnesota, Alliant Castings is a foundry manufacturing abrasion and impact-resistant castings for a variety of heavy-duty industries. Utilizing the latest technologies, they create custom, proprietary materials to meet their clients' needs for demanding and extreme performance. In…
Isaac Maw
The ongoing pandemic has pushed many jobs to virtual settings and home-based working environments. In industries outside manufacturing, it can be seen how the pandemic has affected business. For example, take a look at Zoom stock, the price of which quadrupled during the five months following March…
Nathan Furr
As soon as South Korea confirmed its first case of Covid-19 on January 20, 2020, the government set in motion a disease control protocol that was to become the envy of other developed nations. By the end of March 2020, South Korea had done more than 300,000 tests, more than 40 times higher per…
Don Cox
Despite the high ratio of intelligent work-from-home (WFH) business professionals, the current cybersecurity landscape for that work model could best be described as disorganized and dysfunctional. Hackers have been busy exploiting these cyber risks, as evidenced from the reported 300-percent…
Bruce Hamilton
This time of year the abundant ads for junk removal and cheap storage units remind us that it’s time for spring cleaning, an annual pastime that has perhaps been bolstered by the need to unlock extra space in the home during the pandemic. Businesses, too, have managed to find space to accommodate…
Ryan E. Day
Writing a press release is easy. Writing a great press release takes some thought. And great press releases can draw more potential customers into your sphere of influence. Fortunately, writing great marketing copy isn’t all that complicated. Include these three elements and you’re well on your way…
Jon Speer
The medical device technical file is a must-have document for devices to be sold in the European Union (EU) marketplace. The file contains detailed information about your medical device, its design, intended use claims, composition, and clinical evaluations. It’s essentially an “everything you must…
Bryan Christiansen
Root cause analysis (RCA) is the process of finding the basic underlying cause for an effect we observe or experience. In the context of failure analysis, RCA is used for finding the root cause of frequent machine malfunctions or a big machine breakdown. But what exactly is RCA, and how is it done…
Jim Benson
We want to grow as professionals. We want our products to be better, our know-how to be deeper, our impact to be known and recognized.
This is impossible without continuous improvement.
I have met many mediocre professionals who are mediocre only for one reason: They feel like they are done…
John Baldoni
Leadership is not about the leader. On the other hand, leadership is all about the leader. Garry Ridge, CEO of the WD-40 Co., knows this lesson firsthand.
In 2008, at the start of the Great Recession, when Ridge would travel from office to office and country to country, people would ask him how he…
Vincent Dominé
Remember the last time you tried to change your habits in a big way? Perhaps you made a vow to eat healthier, or to listen more actively during meetings. Whatever it was, whether you ultimately succeeded or succumbed to the force of old habits, you almost certainly struggled. You may have done well…
Nate Burke
Search engine optimization (SEO) has come a long way, with continued developments, advancements, and algorithm tweaks giving business owners, brand agencies, and marketing gurus more than just a digital headache.
But traditionally, SEO has been a numbers game, with ranking positions the all-…
Henrich Greve
In March 2001, publishing executive Ann Godoff—then in her third year as president, publisher, and editor-in-chief of Random House Trade Publishing Group (RHTPG)—was the subject of a gushing profile in New York Magazine. Laced with tributes from authors and peers (“She’s the real deal,” rhapsodized…
Janet Woodcock, Judy McMeekin
During the past year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approach to foreign and domestic inspections for food and medical products has been both risk-based and deliberate. The Covid-19 pandemic required us to rework our business operations so that we could carry out our public health…
Fred Schenkelberg
In 2019, Nicholas W. Eyrich, Robert E. Quinn, and David P. Fessell published an article in the Harvard Business Review titled, “How One Person Can Change the Conscience of an Organization.” In it, they discuss how corporate transformations, although assumed to occur from the top-down, are actually…
Chip Bell
Iam often asked by customer service leaders how to get the CEO to care about customers. They are convinced there is a missed tactic that, if implemented, would have the C-suite camping out in the contact center and inviting customers to board meetings. When I outline a number of possible approaches…
Thomas R. Cutler
The demand for quality assurance and quality control managers in the manufacturing sector has never been stronger, according to Patrick O’Rahilly, founder of FactoryFix. This online platform matches vetted manufacturing workers with companies seeking specific skill sets. They set a new quality…
Harish Jose
Today I’m looking at the ideas inspired by mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are a class of neurons that activate when someone engages in an activity, or when they observe the same activity being performed by someone else.
The phenomenon was first identified by a group of Italian neurophysiologists…
Edmund Andrews
Seems everybody has a horror story about health insurance: Kafkaesque debates with robotic agents about what is and isn’t covered. Huge bills from a doctor you didn’t know was “out of network.” Reimbursements that take months to process.
It’s no secret that healthcare in the United States is…
Gleb Tsipursky
Have you or your employees been feeling work-from-home burnout (WFH) and Zoom fatigue these past months despite the supposed convenience of working from home and using video conferences to meet?
Due to the computer-based nature of their work, many quality professionals have been in the privileged…
Rita Men
Ending the pandemic depends on achieving herd immunity, estimated at 70 percent or even 80 percent to 90 percent of a population. With some 30 percent of Americans telling pollsters they have no interest in getting vaccinated, that’s cutting it a bit close. The numbers are even worse in many other…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Quality professionals no longer focus solely on product or service quality. Today, the quality function is involved in almost every aspect of a company, from customer interactions and compliance management to environmental health and safety, supply chain management, risk management, and more.
A…
