All Features
Sachin Waikar
‘Diversity means lots of things,” says Amir Goldberg, an associate professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business. “These days, it evokes the idea of race or gender, but it’s also about how people think.”
Beyond their demographic differences, people working in a group…
Tahira Reid, James Gibert
People interact with machines in countless ways every day. In some cases, they actively control a device, like driving a car or using an app on a smartphone. Sometimes people passively interact with a device, like being imaged by an MRI machine. And sometimes they interact with machines without…
Ryan E. Day
Chickens come home to roost, and canaries meet their demise in coal mines. But hey, we knew there was a high probability of each happening eventually, right? However, when a black swan shows up with severe impact and consequences, everyone is caught off guard. I’m wondering if it’s a black swan…
Rebecca Saenz
There are three key things cobot developers and employers using cobots must remember when considering implementation: 1) human life takes precedence, 2) human life takes precedence, and 3) human life takes precedence.
Dictionary.com defines cobot as “a computer-controlled robotic apparatus that…
Bert Thornton, Sherry Hartnett
The past two years have been tough. Many of us are feeling bogged down, burned out, and wary of what the future holds. But instead of creeping into 2022 with a sense of dread, what if you bounded into it with optimism and confidence?
Yes, there’s a way to revitalize your career, your outlook, and…
Megan Wallin Kerth
In the wake of manufacturing and chip shortages, some may think that Covid-19 slowed down production on the whole as supply chain issues and remote work presented significant obstacles for manufacturers. However, there were both struggles and some unexpected benefits that arose as professionals…
Katie Rapp
For manufacturers, artificial intelligence (AI) can be a game changer. Greater efficiencies, lower costs, improved quality, and reduced downtime are just some of the potential benefits. This technology isn’t just for large manufacturers. High-value, cost-effective AI solutions are more accessible…
Prasad Akella
We are a full two years into post-pandemic manufacturing life, with the omicron variant the latest cause for concern. It might sound hyperbolic, but I’m pretty sure manufacturing will never be the same as it was in 2019. In some ways, that’s a good thing.
One silver lining of the novel coronavirus…
Ben Bensaou
A manufacturer of the fabric used to reinforce car tires might not seem an obvious source of innovation inspiration. But in just a few years, Kordsa, a part of the Turkish industrial conglomerate Sabancı Group, transformed itself from a price-driven maker of commodity products into a provider of…
Etienne Nichols
If you’re looking for information on medical-device design controls and product development, you can find a practically endless number of articles, videos, and podcasts with a few quick online searches. Yet with so much out there on these topics, there’s a glaring omission of a closely related…
Bruce Hamilton
You may recognize the following quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, or more recently from Kelly Clarkson: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I’ve thought about this often during the last 22 months in context of the horrible pandemic and, more parochially, in relation to the efforts of many…
Mike Richman
It’s hard to fathom that Quality Digest, a little Northern California media company respected by all and beloved by many, turned 40 in November 2021. For a human being, 40 may be the new 30, but it’s still just creeping up on middle age. For a small business, on the other hand, 40 years is…
Ryan E. Day
Quality Digest (QD) was born 40 years ago. Birthed as Quality Circle Institute (QCI), the organization was conceived as a consultancy focused on bringing the success of quality control circles at Lockheed to organizations that were beginning to awaken to the importance of employee involvement in…
Anthony D. Burns
I’m a chemical engineer. The fundamentals of the chemical engineering profession were laid down 150 years ago by Osborne Reynolds. Although chemical engineering has seen many advances, such as digital process control and evolutionary process optimization, every engineer understands and uses Reynold…
Dennis Bailen, Bob Sherlock
Manufacturing businesses small and large have had their hands full with the fallout of the pandemic, and although it seems the worst of the crisis is now behind us, companies will continue to grapple with how to keep both customers and employees on board despite supply chain issues, intense…
Steven Severt
Although ISO 19011—“Guidelines for auditing management systems” has included language about remote quality management system (QMS) auditing since the 2018 revision, this became a reality for many of us in March 2020 with the onset of Covid-19 and the mass lockdowns that ensued. Many of us have been…
Jason Tham
It’s common to hear about how the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted supply chain operations. Supply chain leaders are navigating one of the most difficult periods in recent history, and it’s impossible to foretell an end to global disruptions. What many don’t realize, however, is that the pandemic…
Kari Miller
In the medtech space, all roads lead to quality. Unlike pharma, which looks at safety and quality separately, all of the information around risk and vigilance to inform product improvement will be housed within a medtech company’s quality management system (QMS).
The primary goal of post-market…
Siemens PLM Software
Siemens Digital Industries Software introduces System NVH Prediction, a new Simcenter software application. It can bring the benefits of a comprehensive digital-twin approach to accurately and easily predict the interior and exterior noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) performance of a vehicle…
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,…
