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It is a great time to be a small business in manufacturing. Today’s digital disruption is about ideas, not major capital investments or facilities with sprawling footprints. Although it’s true that larger companies possess more resources, yet with the right technology, small companies can behave…
(Marposs: Auburn Hills, MI) -- Marposs, a leader in measurement and process monitoring technologies, has announced the availability of its Mida Laser 75P Hybrid tool setter, which combines a noncontact laser and touch probe in one system. While the laser enables measurement and checks on high-speed…
Quality is related to processes. A process is “a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.” It doesn’t matter whether the process is the handling of invoices, customers in a bank, the manufacture or assembly of parts, insurance claims, the sick passing through a…
Quality management systems (QMS) have become strategic components that touch more and more of the business today. With new versions of QMS standards, and the enrollment of all people in the quality management effort, the need for cohesion from one system to the next is becoming critical.
Let’s…
The staff of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) always tries to utilize cutting-edge science and up-to-date process management, befitting our stature as the global “gold standard” in drug regulation. Maintaining that standard requires us to…
The digital age is well underway, and that accounts for every aspect of business. A 2016 Boston Consulting Group (BCG) survey says that companies that digitally transform their supply chains will be leaders in their industries.
With 10-percent better product availability and 24-percent faster…
Do you seesaw back and forth, trying to manage polarities in your life and find the right balance?
There are a lot of seesaws you can get caught on: overcommitted—bored, trust too easily—distrustful, being agreeable—blowing up, overeating—dieting.
When the seesaw tips, our natural tendency is to…
A story is told about a reporter who was interviewing a successful bank president. He wanted to know the secret of the man’s success. “Two words: right decisions,” the banker told him.
“And how do you make right decisions?” asked the reporter.
“One word: experience,” was the banker’s reply.
The…
There’s a big problem for companies within industry these days: the inability to monitor statistical process control (SPC) in real time. This issue manifests itself in several ways, and its effects are filled with risk for enterprises of all shapes and sizes. However, practical solutions are…
Advanced Integration Technology (AIT) serves the world’s largest and most technologically advanced aerospace OEMs and tier one suppliers, including Boeing, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, BAE, Embraer, Spirit AeroSystems, Triumph, and Bombardier. AIT has facilities in the United States,…
Let’s take a second to emphasize who is important in the following quotes, all by W. Edwards Deming: “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you are doing.” “A bad system will beat a good person every time.” “Drive fear from the workplace.”
Well, by golly, it’s…
Augmenting its efforts to protect the nation’s critical assets from cybersecurity threats as well as protect individuals’ privacy, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued a draft update to its Risk Management Framework (RMF) to help organizations more easily meet these…
Confidence intervals show the range of values we can be fairly, well, confident, that our true value lies in, and they are very important to any quality practitioner. I could be 95-percent confident the volume of a can of soup will be 390–410 ml. I could be 99-percent confident that less than 2…
There is a lot going on in trade relations between the United States and China recently. Sanctions and threats of sanctions, then sanctions withdrawn. There has also been a great deal of finger pointing and accusations from both sides, all while those most affected by sanctions—you and me—are…
The future of transportation in waterway-rich cities such as Amsterdam, Bangkok, and Venice—where canals run alongside and under bustling streets and bridges—may include autonomous boats that ferry goods and people, helping clear up road congestion.
Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and…
During the June 1, 2018, episode of QDL, we presented a special look at the parameters of relations between the United States and China, from the shifting perspectives of culture, trade, and history. Dirk and I, along with Quality Digest CEO Jeff Dewar, offered up our thoughts on what it all means…
A lot of people in my classes struggle with conditional probability. Don’t feel alone, though. A lot of people get this (and simple probability, for that matter) wrong. If you read Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos (Hill and Wang, 1989), or The Power of Logical Thinking by Marilyn vos Savant (St.…
Iran across the book, Successful Human Relations: Principles and practice in business, in the home, in government (Harpercollins, 1952) while browsing older books about relationship development from William J. Reilly, who also wrote The Law of Intelligent Action (Joanna Cotler Books, 1945). His…
Human beings are good at placing roadblocks to success and building plans that can’t be followed. We tend to fall back on our “common sense” or “snap judgement” which often makes us feel like our cavalier decisions were actually thought out. Yet, time and again, we find ourselves in deadline…
I n November 2018, in Versailles, France, representatives from 57 countries are expected to make history. They will vote to dramatically transform the international system that underpins global science and trade. This single action will finally realize scientists’ 150-year dream of a measurement…
Many years ago, the Toyota Production System Support Center (TSSC) introduced a visual measurement device to my factory, referred to as a “production activity log” (PAL), also known to some as an hour-by-hour chart. Posted at the last operation of a particular process, the PAL provided an up-to-the…
The 1962 film, Lawrence of Arabia, won the Oscar for Best Picture at the 35th Academy Awards. Given the current conflicts in the Middle East, I recently watched the four-hour movie to learn more about the cultural history of the area.
Thomas Edward Lawrence (played by Peter O’Toole) was a British…
The grand prize winner at this year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition was an MIT spinout that’s developing a system that captures and recycles vaporized water from thermoelectric power plants. The recycled water can be constantly reused in the plant’s cooling system, saving millions of…
(Olympus: Waltham, MA) -- Olympus announces its LEXT OLS5000 3D laser confocal scanning microscope was recognized by the judges of the annual Laser Focus World Innovators Awards program. The judging panel consisted of senior industry experts who honored the microscope with a Silver award.
The LEXT…
Some properties of a probability model are hard to describe in practical terms. The explanation for this rests upon the fact that most probability models will have both visible and invisible portions. Understanding how to work with these two portions can help you to avoid becoming a victim of those…
