All Features
Dylan Walsh
Justin Berg has watched Back to the Future at least 25 times. Same with the DVD special features—the voiceovers and backstory and interviews. It’s his favorite movie, and he’s long believed that part of the film’s greatness is attributable to the fact that writer-director Robert Zemeckis oversaw…
Quality Digest
Getting your product into customers’ hands is often an undervalued—and under-engineered—part of your organization’s value chain. If the pandemic’s effect on our supply chains has taught us anything, it’s this: Diligent reevaluation of our modus operandi is a must for success.
When the Covid…
Matt Fieldman
Some are calling it, “The Great Resignation.” Others are calling it “The Great Reshuffle.” After spending the past year as executive director of America Works, I’ve talked with more than 250 manufacturing workforce development professionals throughout the MEP National Network and our partners.…
Prashant Yadav, Antoine Désir
The pandemic has seen an unprecedented global effort to accelerate the development of safe and effective vaccines as well as a rapid expansion of vaccine manufacturing capacity. However, challenges in further scaling up vaccine manufacturing capacity to meet higher-than-expected demand, and the…
Jacob Bourne
Simulation technology is continually advancing to model increasingly real-world product behavior; however, many companies lag in its adoption.
A recent survey found that only 37 percent of respondents said they applied manufacturing simulation during the product design phase. The vast majority…
Arron Angle
I just received and read the “2021 ASQE Insights on Excellence Executive Brief.” The brief examines how quality initiatives are progressing in the digital era, based on the views and experiences of 542 executives and quality professionals from global enterprises. Here we go again, I thought.
Yes,…
Nicholas Dagalakis
The RoboCrane—now hard at work at the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear cleanup sites—is a good example of a successfully commercialized technology invented at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). I’ll try to tell that story here.
During the early 1980s, the manufacturing of…
Rick Grimaldi
Employee engagement has been a boardroom buzzword for quite some time. We’ve long known engagement matters. Still, the unspoken “but” has always been that metrics—especially those of the performance and financial ilk—matter more. Now, with the workplace talent shortage at a 10-year high, the time…
Gleb Tsipursky
Organizations will need to pivot their corporate culture if they wish to survive and thrive in the world of virtual collaboration after the pandemic. The most important changes will stem from the wide-scale and permanent shift to hybrid and fully remote modes of working.
Between 65 percent to 75…
Taylor Brown
For medical device manufacturers, finding success means setting ourselves up for success with repeatable processes that not only ensure quality but also mitigate future risk.
This drive for quality is the reason we have such hyper-specific language in our standards. It’s what demands the stringent…
Emily Newton
Risks are inherent in the construction industry, and they come in various types. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) reports that more than one in three deaths happen in this sector because of falls. The data also show that companies with fewer than 20 workers had more…
Karla Jo Helms
Covid-19 has changed America’s workforce in a fundamental and most likely permanent way, and not adopting the “new normal” can be the difference between success and failure.
According to the Pew Research Center, more than half of American workers surveyed have said that given a choice, they would…
Bruce Hamilton
In 1996, the TSSC (Toyota Production System Support Center) began working with my company to create one-by-one production capability in our product assembly. Previous to TSSC’s assistance, we’d moved the furniture and machines into cells, creating the appearance of flow production, but we lacked…
Corey Brown
Even with advancements in technology and automation, the frontline workforce remains essential to modern manufacturing operations. In fact, 72 percent of factory work is still performed by people.
This means that operators, technicians, and line managers are all your biggest operational risks.…
Bastin Gerald
It’s a great feeling for business leaders when they find a framework they know can change the way their company formulates and executes their goals. The feeling of possibility that comes with finding the right goal-setting framework acts as motivation to achieve more, more efficiently. Many leaders…
Aron Solomon
The past few weeks I advised several entrepreneurs who are trying to bring a product or service to market. Each is struggling with whether the minimum viable product (MVP) they’re launching is too minimum and would therefore be nonviable. The notion of the MVP has always had its pros and cons, but…
Ian Williamson
Finding good employees has always been a challenge, but these days it’s harder than ever. And it’s unlikely to improve anytime soon.
The so-called quit rate—the share of workers who voluntarily leave their jobs—hit a new record of 3 percent in September 2021, according to the latest data available…
David Gillum, Kathleen Vogel, Rebecca Moritz
The origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains a mystery. One theory is that the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 was transmitted from animals to humans—a fairly common occurrence. Another is that it came from a laboratory accident—a more infrequent circumstance.
Around the world, scientists conduct many kinds…
Maureen Metcalf
Many organizations feel the need to be leaner, faster, stronger, more adaptable, and more profitable. The right tool set to get them to that outcome may not be intuitive or singular. Building organizational agility is a solid approach to help organizations develop the capacity to perpetually evolve…
jeffdewar
There are many endangered industries today, and publishing is certainly among them. In 2009 we didn’t know if we would survive the monumental changes that had torn through all areas of the publishing world.
W. Edwards Deming once said to me during an interview, “Pray that your competitors are…
Jon Speer, Devon Campbell, Christie Johnson
When I began my medical device career, I started as a product development engineer. Part of the role included—right, wrong, or indifferent—project management. And I’ve found throughout my career and from discussions with hundreds of others in the industry that this is commonplace.
What I learned,…
Henning Piezunka, Vikas Aggarwal, Hart Posen
Does this situation sound familiar? You’re sitting in a meeting, and you and your colleagues are energetically discussing how to handle an important issue or challenge. Ideas and suggestions are bouncing around so fast that the designated note-taker can barely keep up. Then a new voice chimes in,…
Matt Fieldman
In September 2021, I was fortunate to attend the FABTECH conference in Chicago, a sprawling trade show with what must have been billions of dollars of manufacturing equipment on display: robots, automation, 3D printers, you name it. While there, I had the privilege of listening to a keynote address…
Bryan Christiansen
There are various nondestructive testing (NDT) methods we can employ to evaluate the condition of different machine components, without the need to stop and disassemble the equipment. Vibration analysis is a prominent NDT tool used across many industries.
In this article, we will take a good look…
Gregg Profozich
If your food manufacturing plant has to issue a product recall, many people might take to social media to vent their frustrations, resulting in a public backlash that can damage your brand’s reputation. Other consumers might opt to switch brands, resulting in further revenue loss. How can you…
