All Features
Eric Stoop
If you had your AS9100 transition audit tomorrow, could you say right now whether you would pass? More important, do you know where the gaps are in your processes that could trigger nonconformities?
AS9100 is the leading standard for aerospace management systems, required by original equipment…
Sameer Hasija
Let’s assume you’re a company scouting for vendors for a variety of business-critical IT projects. Every candidate you approach wants to scoop up as much of your business as possible. Should you try to find the best partner for each task, or look for a one-stop shop?
The theoretical advantages of…
Morten Wendelbo, Christine Crudo Blackburn
Flu season in the United States typically peaks in February, but this year’s outbreak is already one of the worst on record. As of Jan. 6, 2018, 20 children have died from the flu, and overall mortality caused by the virus is already double that of last year’s.
One reason the flu is so severe…
Rob Matheson
Liquid-liquid separation and chemical extraction are key processes in drug manufacturing and many other industries, including oil and gas, fragrances, food, wastewater filtration, and biotechnology.
Three years ago, MIT spinout Zaiput Flow Technologies launched a novel continuous-flow liquid-…
Jack Barkenbus
Every day about 100 people die in car crashes on U.S. roads. That death toll is a major reason why both Congress and the Trump administration are backing automotive efforts to develop and deploy self-driving cars as quickly as possible.
However, officials’ eagerness far exceeds the degree to…
Mike Richman
Last Friday’s episode of QDL welcomed the new year with our usual original take on featured editorial content, plus a great Tech Corner. In case you missed it, here’s what we covered:
“Most ‘Innovations’ Are Mere Novelties” In this article, author Helen Barrett exposes the myth of the lone-wolf…
Mike Richman
Last Friday’s episode of QDL was our final show of the year, and we’re leaving 2017 on a high note! We brought you two great interviews and a terrific Tech Corner, not to mention some advice on increasing your productivity in 2018. Let’s take a look:
“AIAG and VDA Release Draft of Harmonized FMEA…
Trevor Blumenau
How does one define quality in the context of a warehouse? The perfect warehouse is clean, has everything in its place, and is easy to access. Your warehouse looks like the one below, right?
You have a perfectly accurate database table that tells you exactly where everything is, correct? And…
William A. Levinson
The recent revelation that a major steel maker falsified test data,1 and similar scandals at other companies,2 underscores the menace of counterfeit parts, or what a 1987 Senate hearing called COME UPS: COunterfeit MatErials and Unauthorized Product Substitutions. The history of COME UPS shows the…
Mike Richman
During the Nov. 3, 2017, episode of QDL, we (figuratively) traveled the globe to bring you quality information. Let’s take a closer look:
“‘Made in Japan’ Falls from Grace Amid Scandals, Systematic Flaws in Manufacturing Industry” Kobe Steel is the latest Japanese manufacturer to admit to…
Sam Golan
In today’s economy, almost all manufacturing organizations are part of a supply chain, either as a buyer or a supplier themselves. Quite often they are both.
Outsourcing in traditional as well as new industries is growing rapidly. Consider that Boeing’s outsourcing evaluation grew from 400,000…
Mike Richman
We cover a wide range of topics on QDL most weeks, but our latest episode, from Friday, Oct. 20, 2017, provided a steady drumbeat of technological detail. Here’s what we chatted about:
“Energy Harvested from Evaporation Could Power Much of U.S., Says Study” Renewal sources of energy like solar…
Elizabeth Gasiorowski Denis
Global freight transport is a key component in the trade of goods and materials, but new demands on the transport network are creating fresh challenges for data. Transport companies are endeavoring to meet those new demands, but are they successful? Discover how an adaptive, intelligent supply…
Timothy Zimmerman
Cybersecurity, at this point in the technological age, has become a household word. Every week, almost like clockwork, it seems there is a story in the news about a newly discovered hack or data breach, often made possible by poor cybersecurity practices. Many of these incidents are focused around…
Mike Richman
Friday, Oct. 6, 2017, is Manufacturing Day, one of the most important events of the year for those of us working within industry. On this occasion, we should all take some time to honor the science and art of manufacturing, an endeavor that has quite literally built our amazing modern society from…
Graham Ross
Why doesn’t machine translation (MT) work for all languages? There are currently more than 7,000 languages worldwide. If each of those had four dialects, that would be more than 28,000 language variances. To offer a perspective, Google can translate 37 languages. If you take into account…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
One thing you can say about that critical commodity called steel: It gets around. Ancient ironware excavated in what is now Turkey has been dated to 1800 B.C. Some 1,200 years later, blacksmiths in Sri Lanka employed furnaces driven by monsoon winds to produce a high-carbon steel. The Tamils of…
Beth Colbert
When we think of champions of manufacturing today, we tend to think of some of the big companies such as Boeing, Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM. But companies don’t form themselves, and patents don’t automatically mean innovation—people do.
Not all companies have inventors. However, all…
GBMP
American Rheinmetall Systems (ARS) LLC, formerly Vingtech, is located in Biddeford, Maine. Established in January 2007, as part of a Norwegian company that had received a supplier contract for the U.S. Army’s CROWS remote weapon station program, the company was acquired by the Rheinmetall Group in…
William Hang, Zihua Liu, Kevin Yang
It seems to happen to every company, big or small, newcomer or seasoned expert. You ship a product design off to a manufacturer, and something goes wrong on the manufacturer’s side. The problem crops up in the design, production, or packaging, and leads to a bad apple in a batch of otherwise great…
Arun Hariharan
In the last week of August 2017, two extreme weather events occurred on opposite sides of the world. Hurricane Harvey brought record-breaking rain and catastrophic flooding to Houston, Texas, causing loss of life, mass evacuation of people, and damage estimated to be in billions of dollars. Around…
Mike Richman
Last week, my friend and colleague, QD editor in chief Dirk Dusharme, wrote an uplifting and important column in this space. Titled “The Day We All Looked for the Same Thing,” Dirk’s article used last week’s solar eclipse, seen in its totality in so many places around the United States, as a motif…
Thomas R. Cutler
Flawless order fulfillment from a distribution center or warehouse to the customer’s door is the neglected leg of the supply chain. Ironically, without careful attention to the last mile, e-commerce customers are disappointed with the quality, accuracy, and condition of the products being…
MIT News
The first of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) half online, half in-person supply chain management master’s degree programs is making a profit and bringing dozens of new degree-seeking students to campus.
The results from the blended program in supply chain management are…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Our August 11, 2017, episode of QDL looked at the role of technology in after-market service, stairs that help you up, Fidget Cubes, and more.
“Climbing Stairs Just Got Easier With Energy-Recycling Steps”
These stairs actually help you go up.
“The Curious Case of the Fidget Cube”
How a product…
