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(Geomagic: Morrisville, NC) -- Geomagic, a leading provider of 3-D software for creating and inspecting digital models of physical objects, has announced the first service release of the Geomagic 2012 product lines. The Geomagic 2012 SR1 product line builds on the innovations that were introduced…
It’s getting to be an almost daily mantra for me to say, “We live in exciting times, and they’re getting more so every day.” Although the term “exciting” is usually associated with joy, it can be a double-edged thing. I’m aware of the benefits of manufacturing durable goods close to home, but have…
In “Close the Loop with the Customer, Part One,” we left off with Amla, the CEO of a large company, laying down what he called “commandments” for dealing with any problem brought by customers or agents. The commandments are based on lessons learned from an agent’s complaint for not receiving her…
Sometimes, customer issues or complaints get tagged as “resolved” without actually resolving them from the customer’s perspective. At times, the customer doesn’t even know that their complaint has been tagged as resolved because no one from the company told them. Often, this happens because someone…
My husband said to me the other day, “You talk about being lean all the time, but your email in-box is definitely not lean!”
I have to admit, I tend to keep things around just in case I might need them down the road. I keep coupons I might use for months beyond expiration, every piece of high…
(Gartner: Stamford, CT) -- Now more than ever, the supply chain is being buffeted by forces nearly impossible to predict. The global economy remains in limbo. Natural events are a source of disruption. And change in markets as well as technology is constant.
The Gartner Supply Chain Executive…
(SAE: Warrendale, PA) -- Companies seeking automotive engineering professionals will be able to meet with prospective candidates at the SAE 2012 World Congress Career Fair in Detroit.
The Career Fair will be held April 24-25 at Cobo Center Lobby from 10 a.m.–6 p.m. EDT at the SAE World Congress in…
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- The first of a planned series of regional workshops to design a proposed $1 billion federal initiative, the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI), will be held on April 25, 2012, at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.
The kick-off…
(Cognex: Natick, MA) -- Cognex Corp., developer and manufacturer of vision systems and surface inspection systems, has announced the new DataMan 302 ID reader designed specifically for solar traceability initiatives. The DataMan 302 features integrated, bank controlled, blue illumination for…
(Micro-Epsilon: Uhingen, Germany) -- Micro-Epsilon Eltrotec, manufacturer and marketer of color sensors, fiber optics, measure-light-barriers, and technical endoscopes, has introduced the colorCONTROL ACS 7000, the first online color measuring system. The measuring principle is based on spectral…
(NIST) -- Consistent with its purpose, the Foundation for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Inc. voted last week to commit funds to sustain the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program (BPEP) through fiscal year 2015.
The foundation stipulated that the use of the funds is for the…
(ThedaCare: Appleton, WI) -- ThedaCare has announced the launch of Potent Medicine: The Collaborative Cure for Healthcare, the latest title from award-winning author John Toussaint, M.D., of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value.
Potent Medicine (ThedaCare, 2012), outlines the essential…
(ISO: Geneva) -- From traditional sales-related services to intangibles such as banking, tourism, and education, services represent the fastest growing sector of the global economy. They are also by far the largest component of gross domestic product (GDP).
The March 2012 issue of ISO Focus+, the…
Memory devices based on magnetism are one of the core technologies of the computing industry, and engineers are working to develop new forms of magnetic memory that are faster, smaller, and more energy efficient than today’s flash and SDRAM memory.
According to the article, “Nanoscale spin wave…
(NSF: Ann Arbor, MI) -- NSF International, an independent global organization that writes public health and environmental standards for the food, water and consumer goods industries, can now certify service providers in a multitude of industries to North America’s first sustainability assessment…
(Kistler: Novi, MI) -- Kistler North America, a worldwide supplier of precision sensors, systems and instrumentation for the dynamic measurement of pressure, force, torque and acceleration, has announced the global market introduction of its industry exclusive STASA QC plastics injection molding…
(CRC Press: Boca Raton, FL) -- Many books and articles have been written on how to identify the “root cause” of a problem. However, the essence of any root cause analysis in our modern quality thinking is to go beyond the actual problem.
Diomidis H. Stamatis (aka Dean) offers a new nontechnical…
You check into a high-end hotel for an exorbitant fee. You are tired, thirsty, and you want a drink of water. Either you find no water or the bottled water costs an additional $5.50. You see a coffee pot and complimentary coffee or tea, but you don’t want to drink something hot; you want water.…
Fourteen months ago, I changed careers. I had been an independent consultant for 17 years (I still do public speaking), built a good practice and then gave it all away to go back into the corporate world as a vice president of global continuous improvement and supplier development for a high-growth…
(Mettler-Toledo: Greifensee, Switzerland) -- Following its acquisition by Mettler-Toledo, Pharmacontrol Electronic GmbH (PCE), specialists in intelligent vision inspection solutions, is expanding the reach of its track-and-trace technologies in Europe, the United States, and Asia. With the…
Although Quality Digest often has in-depth articles about the nuances of control charts, I’ve found that many beginners are at a loss to figure out how to organize their data, especially in service industries such as health care, hotels, and food. They complain that the examples are all…
(ReverseEngineering.com: La Jolla, CA) -- ReverseEngineering.com, developer and marketer of CAD integrated 3-D reverse engineering, scanning, and inspection software, now supports a high-speed, binary database software add-in for point-cloud processing for SolidWorks Standard and SolidWorks Premium…
(Siemens: Plano, TX) -- Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Industry Automation Division and a developer of product life-cycle management (PLM) software and services, has announced a new product in the Teamcenter software portfolio called Active Workspace, an intuitive, highly…
Last month in “Exact Answers to the Wrong Questions” we looked at how we can compute useful limits with as few as six to 10 values. In this column I would like to consider the question of how to use the limits on a process behavior chart to understand the underlying process. In order to do this, we…
(IHI: Cambridge, MA) -- The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), an independent organization that cultivates concepts and knowledge sharing for improving health care worldwide, and the BMJ Group, an organization committed to improving quality and safety in health care, are hosting the 17th…
