All Features
FABTECH
With FABTECH 2024 in Orlando, Florida, fast approaching (Oct. 15–17), many in the steel industry are expected to attend. Some will be part of the manufacturing side of the iron and steel sector, some will be involved in fabrication, and others part of steel service centers.
So, how is the industry…
ISO
ISO and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) have unveiled the world’s first international guidelines to help businesses and organizations expedite their contributions to the U.N.’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).
New guidelines for urgent action
The ISO/UNDP guidelines for…
Thierry Mantel
Metal cold-rolling is a critical process in manufacturing various steel and aluminum products. As manufacturers look for ways to modernize and streamline their manufacturing and quality control processes, digital technologies are poised to transform the metal cold-rolling industry by offering…
Creaform
Reaume Bros. Racing is an American professional stock-car racing team that competes full time in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Owned by Josh Reaume, the team fields the No. 22 Ford F-150 full time for multiple drivers, the No. 27 part time for Keith McGee, and the No. 33 full time for Lawless…
Stephanie Ojeda
How can a quality manager secure stakeholder engagement and hold individuals accountable for the quality of their work throughout the corrective and preventive action (CAPA) cycle?
With the burden of quality and compliance on their shoulders, it can be tempting for a quality manager to gather…
MIT News
Imagine how a phone call works. Your voice is converted into electronic signals, shifted up to higher frequencies, transmitted over long distances, and then shifted back down so it can be heard clearly on the other end. The process enabling this shifting of signal frequencies is called frequency…
Laura Velásquez Herrera
With its roots in compassion and humanity, the healthcare sector might seem an unlikely place for artificial intelligence (AI) to play a big role. Yet as we look deeper into the complex processes that build our medical systems, we uncover a multitude of ways that AI could revolutionize patient care…
Lawrence Bernard
A unique manufacturing program for large metal parts holds promise to help revitalize American manufacturing and return clean-energy manufacturing technologies to the United States. The approach could greatly reduce waiting times for critical components and enable economic growth in the…
Mike Figliuolo
For many of us, screwing up is in our DNA. It happens. Blame Murphy if you like, but it happens. However, when this happens to someone on your team and you’re in a leadership role, the implications of a mistake can be far-reaching.
The most important aspect of these kinds of events, however, isn’t…
Bruce Hamilton
I once attended a presentation that Eli Goldratt gave for the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. We were seated in an auditorium, listening as Goldratt paced back and forth on the stage, puffing on his cigar, gesturing for effect, and occasionally cursing for emphasis. The author of The Goal (…
Paul Sagar
In 1988, a small company began developing and supplying electronic instruments that automatically compensate for temperature-induced errors in industrial gages that are used to make precision dimensional measurements. Its products are now in use worldwide, improving factories and workshops that…
Sara Harrison
A hush has fallen over the workplace. At tech startups and banks, in doctors’ offices and law firms, workers are increasingly being asked to keep secrets. These aren’t personal confidences but organizational secrets about clients, proprietary technologies, or business strategies. Sometimes…
NIST
It’s not easy making green.
Scientists have made small red and blue lasers for years, but other colors have been a challenge. Now, researchers have filled an important technology gap by creating orange, yellow, and green lasers tiny enough to fit on a chip. Low-noise, compact lasers in this…
George Schuetz
Electronic temperature compensation in gaging has become a valuable tool in improving the accuracy and gage repeatability and reproducibility (GR&R) of gages in harsh manufacturing environments.
The need for temperature compensation comes into play when the expected errors from temperature…
Mike Figliuolo
Moving to a new job can be scary and intimidating, with many risks inherent in making that transition. But if you think of the transition like laying siege to a fortress, you will be just fine.
There are a few major risks you must account for as you plan how to attack your next job. Those risks…
David Satterwhite, Mark Hembree
The world of remote work spawned by the pandemic posed several new and unprecedented challenges as employers and employees alike reconfigured relationships and adopted new expectations for each other.
For most people who were able to do so, skipping the commute and working from home was preferable…
ResumeBuilder
ResumeBuilder.com, a premier resource for professional resume templates and career advice, has published a recent survey report assessing companies’ return-to-office (RTO) plans. The report also provides insights into the motivations behind these findings.
The survey reveals that a significant…
Gleb Tsipursky
The transformative potential of generative AI in learning and development (L&D) is a topic of growing interest among business leaders. And if you think your workers aren’t using generative AI, you could be seriously off base.
According to a global study of 14,000 workers in late 2023 by…
Adam Zewe
Identifying one faulty turbine in a wind farm, which can involve looking at hundreds of signals and millions of data points, is akin to finding a needle in a haystack.
Engineers often streamline this complex problem using deep-learning models that can detect anomalies in measurements taken…
NIST
‘There is a tremendous opportunity for women to influence the manufacturing industry in a positive way,” says Lisa Dach, strategic business advisor at the Northwest Industrial Resource Center (NWIRC), part of the Pennsylvania MEP and the MEP National Network. “Women in leadership improve the…
James Chan
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the country’s chief agency for regulating the manufacture, marketing, and distribution of critical consumer goods including food, cosmetics, medical devices, biological products, and pharmaceuticals. The FDA provides direct oversight of the businesses…
William A. Levinson
Most quality practitioners are familiar with the Taguchi loss function, which contends that the cost of any deviation from the nominal follows a quadratic model. This is in contrast to the traditional goalpost model, where anything inside the specification limits is good, and anything outside them…
Mike Figliuolo
Susan Strayer, a friend of mine, posed a question on social media the other day: “Can you sum up your expertise in 140 characters or less?” Great question. A few people took her up on the challenge. Being an overachiever, I did it in three words. Before I dive in, let me provide some context.
For…
Gleb Tsipursky
As businesses navigate the complexities of remote and hybrid work policies, leaders often face questions regarding the perceived fairness of these arrangements. Employees performing similar tasks may have different levels of flexibility, which can lead to concerns about favoritism and inequity.…
Donald J. Wheeler
The objective of all improvement projects should be to improve the overall process. Everything else should be secondary to this objective. If you improve the efficiency of a support process, or even a portion of the core process, but at the same time lower the efficiency of the overall process,…
