All News
This story was originally published by MIT News.
Manufacturers are constantly tweaking their processes to get rid of waste and improve productivity. As such, the software they use should be as nimble and responsive as the operations on their factory floors.
Instead, much of the software in today’s…
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
Alfalfa, oats, and red clover are soaking up the sunlight in long narrow plots, breaking up the sea of maize and soybeans that dominates this landscape in the heart of the U.S. farm belt. The 18 by 85 meter sections are part of an…
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
Alfalfa, oats, and red clover are soaking up the sunlight in long narrow plots, breaking up the sea of maize and soybeans that dominates this landscape in the heart of the U.S. farm belt. The 18 by 85 meter sections are part of an…
When I was 7 years old, I went into the woods behind my house, built a fire, then fried an egg over it in an old pie tin. When the egg was done, I ate it. I didn’t even like eggs, but because I had cooked it on my own, it was delicious.
I was so proud of my achievement that I ran inside and told…
It’s 1 p.m. on a sunny afternoon in July—smack dab in the middle of summer break—and a perfect 75° outside, but Jonathan Park is laser-focused. Though he could be strolling down a beach, or at home browsing social media, this 16-year-old is bent over a lab bench, intently pipetting reagents to run…
In manufacturing, standardization in production and process control leads to increased profitability and cuts down on many siloed problems that can plague even the most quality-focused organization. But when you have multiple, disparate plants around the country or the globe, standardization can…
On the surface, the well-being of the American worker seems rosy. Unemployment in the United States hovers near a 50-year low, and employers describe growing shortages of workers in a wide array of fields. But looking beyond the numbers tells a different story.
My new book, The Importance of Work…
(Renishaw: Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire) -- The youngest patient in the world to receive deep brain stimulation has undergone surgery at Evelina London Children’s Hospital in London. The aim of the procedure was to help the patient, Viktoria Kaftanikaite, who was just two years old, to manage…
Soldiers develop attachments to the robots that help them diffuse bombs in the field. Despite numerous warnings about privacy, millions of us trust smart speakers like Alexa to listen into our daily lives. Some of us name our cars and even shed tears when we trade them in for shiny new vehicles.…
Taylor Attachments, based in the United Kingdom, custom designs and produces tractor headstock conversion brackets. These are attachments for farm handlers and loaders, for mounting everything from buckets to forks, grapples, saws, carriers, bale stabbers, grabbers, hitches, backhoes, tillers, yard…
Although certification to major standards is often the threshold to winning next-level contracts, it is when your organization synthesizes the standard’s values that real payoff is realized. Chief among those values is customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is paramount to attracting new…
Being a customer experience (CX) professional is hard enough; misinformation just makes our work more challenging. Misinformation or confusing information by a person with a ton of followers and a ton of influence makes our work even more challenging.
Recently, Seth Godin published a post on his…
Leadership development might be one of the most significant loss-making ventures in modern business. Companies spend big money on developing leaders—about $3.4 billion annually by some estimates—yet research shows that 50 to 60 percent of executives fail to achieve the strategy they were hired to…
(Exact Metrology: Cincinnati) -- Exact Metrology, a leading provider of 3D and CT scanning equipment and metrology services, now offers the GOM CT scanner—the most accurate industrial CT scanner currently on the market. The GOM CT scanner offers the highest accuracy and highest resolution of any…
It’s a Catch-22 for a manufacturing supervisor: You need to train new hires properly to master the skills for the job, but your own daily job duties can’t wait. Putting time aside to train workers is especially challenging if you’re a small to medium-sized manufacturer (SMM) with tight, daily…
Founded in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2001, Green Tools is a leading manufacturer of cutting tools, providing circular saws and other woodcutting machines for the sawmill, furniture, and woodworking industries throughout Russia.
Green Tools began as a small reseller of woodworking tools produced…
Machine learning can be used for more than violating your privacy for a social media challenge. For example, one fascinating application has been developed by Instrumental AI, which uses machine learning to detect defects and anomalies in photographs of parts during various stages of assembly,…
Counterfeiting is widespread and rapidly expanding. In 2015, the value of fake and pirated products globally was estimated at $1.7 trillion, equivalent to the GDP of Canada. The scope of this phenomenon is vast. In both developing and developed countries, counterfeiting affects many sectors,…
In our constantly evolving, data-rich universe, collecting, interpreting, and understanding process data can be tricky. But it is increasingly important if we want to maintain sustainable quality across product development and manufacturing processes. This challenge is particularly evident in the…
Responsibility. It’s a hard word to come to grips with. What is the responsible thing to do right now? What is my personal responsibility? What is my responsibility as a team, family, company, state, or country member? What do I expect from others?
The world now is in transition, from being…
After reviewing Mark Graban’s wonderful book, Measures of Success (Constancy, 2018), I started rereading Walter Shewhart’s books, Statistical Method From the Viewpoint of Quality Control (Dover reprint 1986, originally edited by W. Edwards. Deming), and Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured…
One of the undergraduate engineering courses that left a deep and lasting impression on me was a course on innovation and aesthetics in engineering taught by David Billington at Princeton University. So, when I read the story of a skyscraper in New York that had to undergo secret emergency repairs…
How do you develop domain knowledge in your analysts, so their data use, interpretation, and recommendations make sense? I’ve mentioned in a previous article, about the difficulties of offshoring analytics, how vital domain knowledge can be. Yet, I find most articles or speakers focus on the need…
(Zontec: Cincinnati, OH) -- Zontec Inc., global leader in statistical process control (SPC) software, is expanding its software purchase options to include e-commerce subscription software. Starting today, Synergy 100 and Synergy 100+ are available to purchase and download without long-term…
While I was facilitating a retreat for a group of 15 men, all in their late 30s and 40s, all high-level executives and all high achievers, an interesting topic arose. One of the men asked for help dealing with his wife, who was complaining he worked too much. He wanted help in getting her to…
