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The plan vs. actual chart is one of the most powerful and simple visual process performance metrics. In fact, it’s a sort of Swiss Army knife of charts in that it not only provides insight into process performance but also, by the virtue of its comment field, begs and shares information as to when…
I have always loved working with military people. Their training firmly builds within them a “can do” mentality and a fixation on mission objectives.
One of the best employee associates I ever had was a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. He could always be depended on to get jobs out the door…
These days, my memory isn’t what it used to be. Besides that, my memory isn’t what it used to be. But my incurable case of CRS (can’t remember stuff) is not nearly as bad as that of the exponential distribution.
When modeling failure data for reliability analysis, the exponential distribution is…
Not knowing the answer to the question posed in the title of this article has led many medical device manufacturers to undertake expensive and unnecessary retesting of their previously certified products.
In Annex 1 of the “Medical Device Directive 93/42/EEC—Essential Requirements—Section 2,” the…
More than 25 years ago, an abandoned NASA spacecraft fulfilled its mission, fell silent, and has since been hurtling around the sun, somewhere between the orbits of Earth and Mars. Now, a University of Arizona engineering student is trying to wake it up.
Jacob Gold, an undergraduate student…
Your quality management system (QMS) documents for AS9100, ISO 9001 or any other standard for that matter, do not have to be complicated. Why create volumes of wordy procedures that employees will probably never read? And even if they do, they certainly won’t understand.
As auditors and quality…
In 1963, two paintbrush salesmen changed the process for coating artist canvases. They went from preparing the canvas by hand to a mass production process. By purchasing a textile machine, rolling the fabric, and applying gesso to the fabric continuously instead of sheet by sheet, Tara Materials…
It’s been well over a decade since Dan Pink predicted that the macro trend of automation would change the nature of just about everything in his bestselling book A Whole New Mind (Riverside Books, 2006 edition). The context of his message revolved around work, with the central idea being to take a…
I’ve been following the panting exuberance of big data apostles for the past few years, rolling my eyes at most of it. Sure, it can be interesting, but maybe my age is showing when I say, “So what?” to most of it.
What finally pushed me over the edge enough to comment on it was a tweet I saw from…
To keep the food supply safe, have safe, effective, and high quality medical products, and decrease the harms of tobacco product use, we have to work with the rest of the world.
As the Food and Drug Administration’s Deputy Commissioner for Global Regulatory Operations and Policy (GO), I oversee…
This month’s column is about a recent trip to New York and what I learned along the way. About a month ago, we attended the National Band and Orchestra festival at Carnegie Hall. The high school orchestra our granddaughter, Claire, plays in was invited to participate, and we were not about to miss…
Let’s consider for a moment the discipline we need to be quality professionals. It might take years to master our profession, but even when we have, we must not stop practicing and exercising it. Rather like being linguists or musicians, we must keep performing quality to keep ourselves fit for it…
Two major noncommercial health information technology organizations are working together in a new vendor-neutral health IT innovation network designed to stimulate development of new ideas and shorten the time required to bring new solutions into practice.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)…
Companies seem to try everything imaginable to fix their workplaces, except the only thing that matters: Naming the right person manager.
Leaders go to seminars, hire consultants, and employ a long list of interventions—competencies, 360s, and so forth. I don’t think any of them work. What’s…
“We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
When I think back to the moments that have shaped me to be who I am today, I don’t credit the times of relaxation and…
“We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
When I think back to the moments that have shaped me to be who I am today, I don’t credit the times of relaxation and…
One famous scene from the movie Five Easy Pieces shows Jack Nicholson ordering a side of whole-wheat toast with his omelet at a diner. He’s then informed that the system doesn’t allow sides of toast. So he orders a chicken salad sandwich on whole-wheat toast—without butter, lettuce, mayonnaise,…
My recent columns have emphasized the need for critical thinking to understand the process that produces any data. By just plotting data in their naturally occurring time order, many important questions arise about the data’s “pedigree” (a term coined by my respected colleagues Roger Hoerl and Ron…
The other day, while skimming LinkedIn, I came across yet another one of those cheesy quotes that, unfortunately, have become all too common on the site: “Surround yourself with people on the same mission.” I proceeded to get into an online discussion with several people who have probably never…
The Golden Rule “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” may have applied in biblical times when the “others” lived in your village and shared your values and attitudes. Someone halfway around the world might not, on the other hand, want you to do unto him as you would have him do unto…
The big data gold rush has become a stampede. Technology vendors are racing to bring big data solutions to the market, and companies with a never-ending flow of data are looking to big data to make better sense of their business—and to generate better value as a result.
The challenge is that…
I’m starting a new series (thought provoking or maybe just provoking…) about some of the oxymorons we find in the “traditional” manufacturing world.
An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms. We hear these all the time in common speech, things like “open secret” or “…
(Creaform: Lévis, Quebec, Canada) -- Creaform, a global leader in portable 3D measurement solutions and 3D engineering services, has launched two completely new versions of the Go!SCAN 3D scanner. Both versions provide unmatched fast and reliable 3D measurements, while offering the easiest portable…
(FARO: Lake Mary, FL) -- FARO Technologies, the world’s most trusted source for 3D measurement, imaging, and realization technology, has released the Focus3D X 130 laser scanner.
The Focus3D X 130, the newest member of Focus3D X Series range of laser scanners, delivers tremendous power, compact…
(AICON: Braunschweig, Germany) -- AICON’s 3D Arena will facilitate vehicle designers’ work in the future. The new tracking system enables them to determine the absolute position of machines in working space, i.e., processing machines such as mobile milling machines or measuring devices such as…
