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A few months ago I attended a business networking event where everyone had a chance to talk about their business. I noted three people I wanted to talk with further. After the meeting, I made it my mission to connect with each of them. I saw one heading for the door, so I caught up with her before…
Many of our most popular stories of discovery are portrayed as accidents or matters of luck. We love these stories because they make creativity seem easy and fun. Nevertheless, they are misleading.
In a recent New York Times opinion piece titled “How to Cultivate The Art of Serendipity,” author…
(METTLER-TOLEDO: Columbus, Ohio) -- Health Specialties Manufacturing (HSM) could borrow the tagline Ford used in the 80s and 90s: “Quality Is Job 1.” To protect product quality, the company installed a standalone Safeline SideChek x-ray inspection system from Mettler-Toledo Safeline in January…
If you want to convince someone that at least a basic understanding of statistics is an essential life skill, bring up the case of Lucia de Berk. Hers is a story that’s too awful to be true—except that it’s completely true.
A flawed analysis irrevocably altered de Berk’s life and kept her behind…
The perils of focusing on customer acquisition and sales over customer experience and retention can be summed up nicely with this: “As fast as you’re bringing customers in the front door, they’re running out the back door.” Some refer to it as the leaky bucket syndrome.
If only companies knew…
(American Quality Institute: Orlando, FL) -- Provision 6.1 of ISO 9001:2015, “Actions to address risks and opportunities,” is perhaps the biggest change in the standard. The purpose of the Risk-Based Thinking Handbook, by William A. Levinson (American Quality Institute, 2016), is to equip readers…
(OEO: Lake Zurich, IL) -- When home-demonstration merchandiser Princess House wanted to improve lighting and decrease energy usage in its 200,000 sq ft warehouse, it turned to OEO Energy Solutions. The solution was to replace the existing 278 360W metal halides with 278 OEO EZ LED 230s. LED…
Nearly 30 years after the start of the lean movement, there is widespread agreement that things have not gone according to plan. Of course, there have been some notable successes (particularly from those who worked with Shingijutsu), yet they are far fewer in number than anyone expected, given the…
(NIST: Gaitherburg, MD) -- Medical devices such as the infusion pumps that deliver medication intravenously were once standalone instruments that interacted only with the patient. Today, they have operating systems and communications hardware that allow them to connect to other devices and…
When you run a small business (perhaps as small as just you), does failure ever really occur? I hear often in the media about this or that business being “too big to fail,” but in reality isn't it more like “too small to fail?”
I ask myself this question, more rhetorically than anything. I’ve…
I’ve noticed that many companies are using the trendy term “digital transformation” without fully understanding what it means. Leveraging digital technology to make organizational processes and offerings more efficient may increase profit margins in the short term. But a true digital…
In October 2014, 17-year-old Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by a Chicago police officer. In November 2015, footage of the shooting was released and has been viewed all over the world. The footage shows an aggressive attack by a police officer, a supposed person of service to the community, as…
My lean journey of more than 20 years has changed my life in many ways, perhaps none as pervasively as recognition of and disdain for waste.
Along with respect for people, waste awareness has changed my career, leadership style, and personal life. Observing waste has led to a life of increasing…
I wrote last month about the need to increase security for imaging devices in hospitals. The devices I cited store both personal and medical information about patients and should be subject to standard security measures. Very often they are not.
Last month the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (…
In the first article of this series, we explored what a process improvement (PI) function would look like if it could apply the principles of reducing waste and variation to its own processes. Here, we build on that analysis to identify the work practices that can drive better, faster, and cheaper…
The revised ISO 9001:2015 standard was published on Sept. 23, 2015. The release of this standard has many organizations preparing for the transition from ISO 9001:2008, and with transition comes uncertainty: How long will it take? What will it cost my organization? Where do I start? These and…
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is working with drugmakers in a new way to help the industry adopt scientifically sound, novel technologies to produce quality medicines that are consistently safe and effective—with an eye toward avoiding drug shortages.
When manufacturing problems…
(LPT: Rochester, NH) -- Laser Projection Technologies (LPT) is the leading manufacturer of advanced, 3D, laser templating and measurement projectors in the world. In the interest of giving back to the community, LPT is donating a LPT1 model laser projector to Great Bay Community College. The LPT…
(Verisurf: Anaheim, CA ) -- Verisurf Software Inc. announces the availability of its Verisurf X9 software for 3D measurement. Verisurf X9 is now available for download and includes the addition of Verisurf SOLIDS, a complete 3D solid modeling application, as well as major productivity enhancements…
(CMSC: Weatherford, TX) -- The Coordinate Metrology Society, in collaboration with UNC Charlotte, today announced that the second working meeting of the PrecisionPath Consortium for Large-Scale Manufacturing will be held Feb. 24–25, 2016, at the UNC Charlotte Center City building in downtown…
(Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence: North Kingstown, RI) -- Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence (formerly Hexagon Metrology) announced today that its WLS qFLASH vision measurement system has won a distinguished GOOD DESIGN Award from the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design.…
(API: Rockville, MD) -- EMS Inc., one of the largest single-source providers of advanced 3D scanning and 3D printing solutions, and Automated Precision Inc. (API), today announced a formal reseller partnership to distribute API’s advanced laser tracker metrology products in the United States.
“API…
The industrial metrology sector is an ever-changing landscape for 3D measurement professionals. In the thick of it you will find the Coordinate Metrology Society (CMS), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL)—each offering…
Headquartered in Graz, Austria, the Andritz Group (composed of Andritz Hydro, Andritz Pulp & Paper, Andritz Metals, Andritz Separation, and Andritz Automation) is a leading global supplier of plants, equipment, and services provided to hydropower stations, the pulp and paper industry, the…
(FARO: Lake Mary, FL) -- FARO Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: FARO), announces highly adaptable 3D imager arrays that promise to drive automated industrial manufacturing metrology processes to the next level.
The new FARO Cobalt 3D Imager is equipped with dedicated on-board processors—an industry…
