All Features
Gleb Tsipursky
Generative AI is revolutionizing industries, from drafting legal contracts to crafting personalized marketing campaigns with unmatched speed and precision. Yet this transformative power comes with challenges: fears of job loss, concerns about algorithmic bias, and the phenomenon of “hallucinations…
William A. Levinson
The ongoing relevance of the quality profession requires evolution and adaptation to meet the needs of the 21st century. Remember, the quality profession originated with the need for inspection to prevent poor quality from reaching customers; this was before it evolved to include metrology,…
Silke von Gemmingen
Our solar system has fascinated mankind for thousands of years. Astronomical research is looking for answers to the big questions of human existence. How big is the universe? How did it come into being? Astronomers all over the world use telescopes to cast their gaze into space.
However, it’s not…
Quality Digest, Ryan Pembroke
Hexagon is frequently at the fore of innovation. Like many in its industry, part of the company’s initiative to succeed is rooted in the constant push to automate tedious processes that take up valuable time, eat up resources and personnel, and delay production and delivery of products. Tools like…
Erin Vogen
For many maintenance teams, the story is all too familiar: Limited resources make it difficult to anticipate equipment failures, which leads to frequent, costly breakdowns. During these moments of crisis, miscommunication and disorganization only amplify the problem. This perpetuates the perception…
Akhilesh Gulati
It was another busy morning at the monthly operations meeting. Lindsay, the operations manager at TechElectronics, a growing manufacturer of consumer electronics, called the meeting to order. As usual, they started with the routine updates—inventory levels, production schedules, and customer…
Etienne Nichols
Compliance with industry regulations and standards is a fundamental part of medtech. Without proper medical device compliance, companies risk patient harm, litigation, and reputational damage.
Fortunately, compliance with medical device regulations and standards is not an impossible task. A…
Mike Figliuolo
Everyone has goals these days. The one that causes more disconnects than any other is a sales goal. It’s a number to hit (either units or dollars or both—the better ones are actually measured in profit dollars rather than revenue dollars). They’re problematic because by their very nature they get a…
Jennifer King
A study by Upwork has revealed that about 22% of the American workforce will be working from home by 2025. Remote work is here to stay, bringing many benefits along with it—including significant cost savings for businesses and the promise of a better work-life balance for employees. However, the…
Marian Merritt
Cybersecurity is a fast-growing field with a constant need for skilled professionals. But unlike other professions—like medicine or aviation—there’s no clear-cut pathway to qualifying for cybersecurity positions. For employers and job seekers alike, this can make the journey to building a team (or…
Victoria Alestra
In regulated industries like pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and food manufacturing, compliance is crucial for operational excellence. A validated quality management system (QMS) is key to maintaining this compliance. Let’s explore how QMS software streamlines validation and ensures regulatory…
Patrick Willemson
As sustainability and transparency become increasingly vital to global business practices, the European Union has introduced the Digital Product Passport (DPP)—an initiative that will reshape the manufacturing landscape worldwide.
For manufacturers in the U.S. and other regions, understanding the…
Gleb Tsipursky
As organizations increasingly integrate generative AI (gen AI) to boost productivity, innovation, and competitive advantage, they encounter a host of challenges. Many face resistance to change, fears of job displacement, and concerns about data privacy.
Understanding and overcoming these…
Yushiro Kato, Quality Digest
The state of American manufacturing is in dire need of improvement. For decades, the U.S. economy has been transforming into a service-based model while the manufacturing power we associate with the American postwar capacity of the 1950s and ’60s has dispersed offshore.
This slow degradation of U.…
ISO
A customer calls asking for details about how they are registered in your company’s database so they can make sure their information is updated. You get a phone call from a business partner who needs to contact your colleague and asks you to check her calendar to see when she’s free. Although in…
Mike Figliuolo
As leaders, we say we want our people to be empowered to go out and make decisions. We say we’re OK with them making mistakes, and we’ll still support them making decisions on their own. But not really.
I’m lucky to have a huge leadership lab in the form of the SmartBrief on Leadership weekly…
Michael Sharp
Welcome knowledge seeker! Do you feel dazzled and awed by the great potential of artificial intelligence (AI)? Perhaps hesitant or lost when terms like convolution, deep learning, or autoencoder are thrown around? Well, fear not, for you’ve come to just the right place. You don’t need to be a…
Akhilesh Gulati
In the ever-changing world of quality management, the intersection of innovation and standardization offers both exciting opportunities and tough challenges. Maria, a dedicated and certified quality professional, struggled with the concept of “standardizing innovation”—something that seemed like an…
Brett Farmiloe
Struggling with underperforming team members while trying to maintain a positive work environment? To help navigate this delicate situation, we’ve turned to insights from CEOs and human resources managers.
We’ll explore six effective strategies HR leaders use to support and guide underperforming…
Chris Rush
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently published new guidance on conducting clinical trials with decentralized elements. It offers recommendations for sponsors, investigators, CROs, and other parties that are interested in implementing decentralized clinical trials.
By issuing this…
ISO
From small family-run companies to tech giants, the business world is changing at an unrelenting pace. Amid a constantly evolving economic landscape and sometimes dizzying technological advances, one thing remains constant: the need to maintain the highest level of quality.
Whether manufacturing a…
Anthony Hardy
In a competitive manufacturing industry, meeting high standards is crucial to quality, sustainability, and safety. While it can be challenging to earn customer trust and establish a positive brand reputation, third-party certifications to standards such as IATF 16949: Automotive Quality Management…
Donald J. Wheeler
Managers are commonly fed a diet of report-card data. These data have usually been aggregated into summaries, averages, and totals to characterize the big picture. As useful as such summaries can be, they can also be an obstacle to an effective analysis. Here, we’ll learn how to avoid this obstacle…
Charlotte Sanders
Businesses are always searching for methods to improve supply chain operations and increase customer satisfaction in today’s smart business world. Leveraging third-party logistics (3PL) providers is one of the most effective strategies for enhancing customer satisfaction and supply chain efficiency…
George Schuetz
Whether you’re a small machine shop or a large multimillion-dollar manufacturing giant, there’s no doubt you use dimensional gauges to maintain the standards for quality in your production.
The accuracy of these dimensional measuring instruments must be periodically checked to ensure that they’re…
