All Features
Protolabs
Technology giant HP has developed and launched multi-jet fusion (MJF), an industrial-grade 3D printing technology that quickly and accurately produces functional prototypes and end-use parts for a variety of applications. Protolabs served as one of several test sites for this additive manufacturing…
Hilke Plassmann
The rise of neuromarketing has already begun to provide companies and researchers with greater insight into consumer behavior than consumers themselves are capable of giving. Neuromarketing tools such as facial-affective recognition, eye tracking, and fMRI technology can illuminate the…
Jay Zagorsky
The world is an uncertain and risky place. The news constantly bombards us with scary situations from school shootings to gruesome murders.
Risk is everywhere and associated with everything. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention a decade ago estimated 234,000 people a year…
W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne
The climb in the United States stock market during the last year has been greeted warmly by many, investors especially. This does not, however, take away the day-to-day challenges most businesses face. Think stiff competition, shrinking demand, and squeezed profits. The newspaper and magazine…
Mike Richman
On the Apr. 20 episode of QDL, we brought you interviews on manufacturing’s digital transformation and the primacy of photogrammetry for large-volume, close-tolerance metrology, plus news about logistical efficiencies and worker motivations (or lack thereof). Here’s a closer look at the show:
“…
Rob Matheson
Carrying your smartphone around everywhere has become a way of life. In doing so, you produce a surprising amount of data about your role in the economy—where you shop, work, travel, and generally hang out.
Thasos Group, founded at MIT in 2011, has developed a platform that leverages those data,…
Scott Berkun
The great surprise for people with good ideas is the gap between how an idea feels in their minds and how it feels when they try to put the idea to work.
When a good idea comes together, it feels fantastic. Good ideas often come with a wave of euphoria, a literal dopamine high, and we’re joyously…
Jeffrey Phillips
I have been thinking a lot about why innovation fails. Not about why supposedly innovative new products fail, because there are multiple reasons for that. A product could be too early or too late in the market window, or it could simply have the wrong pricing or distribution. A new product may lack…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
In our April 13, 2018, episode of QDL, we talked about anti-hacker robots, data privacy, and new product introduction.
“HoneyBot Lures in Digital Troublemakers”
MIT nerds come up with a tasty target for IoT hackers. But this one fights back.
“We Don’t Care About Data Privacy”
Privacy, schmivacy.…
Knowledge at Wharton
America’s healthcare system has been on the examining table lately: from the tortuous battle over the Affordable Care Act, to Senator Bernie Sanders’ bill to allow low-cost prescription drugs in from Canada, to the intriguing announcement in January that Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
On April 10, 2018, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress regarding the unauthorized sharing of 87 million Facebook users’ personal data, vacuumed up by data research company Cambridge Analytica. There were pointed questions regarding Facebook’s lack of transparency…
Frank Defesche
Your company leadership team just issued a corporate goal (aka mandate) of reducing defects to fewer than five per million units made. This goal is coupled with a need to reduce manufacturing costs by 10 percent while meeting new good manufacturing practices (GMP) or ISO standards. Oh, and you have…
Georgia Tech News Center
It’s small enough to fit inside a shoebox, yet this robot on four wheels has a big mission: keeping factories and other large facilities safe from hackers.
Meet the HoneyBot. Developed by a team of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the diminutive device is designed to lure in…
Dan Jacob
Developing profitable, timely, high-quality products is more important today than ever before. Visibility of in-use product performance has never been higher, while competitive pressures continue to squeeze margins and time to market.
Manufacturers devote considerable cost and effort to new…
Asimina Kiourti
Archaeology reveals that humans started wearing clothes some 170,000 years ago, very close to the second-to-last ice age. Even now, though, most modern humans wear clothes that are only barely different from those earliest garments. But that’s about to change as flexible electronics are…
Malvina Eydelman
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Breakthrough Devices Program is beginning to show important results for patients since it was established in late 2016 under the 21st Century Cures Act to help patients gain timely access to breakthrough technologies.
Consider Second Sight Medical…
Paulina Kuo
I am a scientist. I am often wrong, and that’s OK.
You may have heard about major errors in science and engineering that made the news headlines, like the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, aka “Galloping Gertie,” or the 1999 crash of the Mars Climate Orbiter. Or maybe you’ve seen the recent…
Ryan E. Day
In part one of this article, we explored how Woodland Trade Co. (WTC) leveraged high-accuracy portable CMMs to help land tight-tolerance aerospace contracts, and even earn Boeing’s Supplier of the Year award. Here in part two, WTC’s QA manager William Shanks reveals the advanced technology that…
Knowledge at Wharton
Instead of the internet of things (IoT), perhaps we should call it the “data of things” or the “internet of data?” IoT will generate a staggering 400 zettabytes (or 400 trillion gigabytes) of data a year by 2018, according to the 2016 Cisco Visual Networking Index.
This is being driven by…
Chip Bell
The coolest birthday present I ever received was a gift from my wife a number of years ago; it was a white 1962 Mercedes-Benz 220 sedan reasonably well-restored. But the classy antique car, with its deep fenders and leather seats, turned out to be a real lemon. That’s about all I remember about…
Jeffrey Phillips
There’s probably few activities that corporate folks enjoy less than corporate training. For most it’s guaranteed to be a slog, or a review of policies and procedures rarely used and important only to a specific team or set of circumstances. Most people assume they have enough knowledge to do the…
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Imagine if carbon dioxide (CO2) could easily be converted into usable energy. Every time you breathe or drive a motor vehicle, you would produce a key ingredient for generating fuels. Like photosynthesis in plants, we could turn CO2 into molecules that are essential for day-to-day life. Now,…
Barry Johnson
People naturally fear change. I hear that all the time, but I don't believe it. What people really fear is the unknown. People actually embrace change if they understand it. We see this when people try to change their habits, their bodies, their relationships, and their jobs. They don't fear those…
Laurel Thoennes @ Quality Digest
Employers can’t find people with the skills needed for the today’s workplace, because high schools and universities fail to teach students useful job skills. The skills gap is a decades-old and well-known problem that will remain unsolved unless we flip priorities not only in our school systems…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
Deb asked me, “Would you like to come over to my house tonight and learn about a business opportunity?” I’d met Deb on a church trip, and had been crushing on her for weeks. She could have ended her question with, “and scrub dirty toilets?” and I would’ve been there, because all I heard was “come…
