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On Nov. 18, 2011, President Obama signed into law the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2012 (P.L. 112-55), which provides fiscal year (FY) 2012 funding for a number of government agencies, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The act…
In production, “zero defects” is a frequent quality metric, but zero worker injuries, while a stated goal of most manufacturing plants and distribution centers, has not made it to the gold standard. There is no disputing that defective product costs companies millions of dollars in repairs,…
He is nameless in the movie Polar Express and the closing credits only give him the name, “Hero Boy.” The adventures depicted in the movie follow the plight of a young boy who doesn’t believe in Santa Claus. Hero Boy cannot hear the bells of Santa’s sleigh because he doesn’t believe.
For…
I recently attended the annual forum of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), which is probably the leading health improvement organization in the world. The forum has grown from under 100 attendees in 1989 to almost 6,000 this year—half of whom were there for the first time—with now…
(Thomson Reuters: New York) -- A new report has found that health care organizations that have won Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards for performance excellence or have been considered for a Baldrige Award site visit outperform other hospitals in nearly every metric used to determine the…
A nurse refuses to help an ailing alcoholic who is upset to find a hospital detox unit closed. A hospital clerk brushes off a deceased woman’s grieving family as they try to pay her bills and claim her belongings. A charge nurse keeps the mother of gunshot victim from seeing her son, saying the…
To improve quality, the most effective hospitals and leaders focus on processes and systems, instead of just lecturing and cajoling their employees and physicians to do better. W. Edwards Deming famously stated that the problem with posters and exhortations was that “they take no account of the…
Hospital-acquired infections, ventilator-acquired pneumonia, patient falls, and similar events are (hopefully) rare enough to promote discussion of control charts for rare events. A Google search will, for example, turn up the application of u charts to falls per 1,000 patient days (u being…
As a 2011 recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit has achieved recognition as a top-performing organization for excellence in innovation, efficiency, and quality improvement. The highest priority of our quality improvement work is to…
(Cornell University Press: Ithaca, N.Y) -- An estimated 9.3 million American adults lost health insurance coverage as a result of increased unemployment during the recession of 2007–2009, according to a newly published study by researchers at Cornell, Indiana, and Carnegie Mellon universities…
(Gartner: Stamford, CT) -- Gartner Inc. has released the findings from its third annual Healthcare Supply Chain Top 25. The research focuses on the health-care value chain’s pursuit of high-quality patient care at optimal economic cost. The Top 25 rankings for 2011 identifies organizations…
(ISPE: Tampa, FL) -- The International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE), a global nonprofit association of 22,000 pharmaceutical science and manufacturing professionals, has released a new guidance document on pharmaceutical commissioning and qualification titled, ISPE Good…
Story update 12/13/2011: Additional information was added to the first paragraph pointing out the connection between FDA requirements and statistical tools.
According to a September 2010 interview of Rick Friedman, director of the manufacturing and product quality division at the Food and Drug…
(SPAR Point Group Portland, ME) -- SPAR International 2012, which will take place April 15–18, 2012, in Houston, brings together industry leaders to share fresh, actionable ideas about the business and technology of 3-D imaging. The event is all about capturing, processing, and delivering 3-D to…
(Kistler: Novi, MI) -- Kistler, a global supplier of precision sensors, systems, and instrumentation for the dynamic measurement of pressure, force, torque, and acceleration, has introduced the USB-based Type 2825A DynoWare universal data acquisition and analysis software, designed for direct…
(Meggitt: San Juan Capistrano, CA) -- Meggitt Sensing Systems, designer and manufacturer of high-performance sensing and monitoring systems for air and land-based machinery in extreme environments, has announced the expansion of its Guaranteed InStock program to include 19 Endevco high-sensitivity…
(Projects Profiler: Wilmington, DE) -- Projects Profiler LLC has released ProjectsProfiler, a powerful Windows application that delivers analytical tools to executives who are responsible for multiple dynamically-changing projects that share team members. Unlike ordinary project management…
(ISO: Geneva) -- ISO has published an updated edition of the ISO 19011 auditing standard that will save money, time, and resources by providing a uniform approach to multiple management system audits.
Many organizations incorporate a number of management systems, such as quality, environmental…
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is soliciting proposals for the next round of funding in its long-running Precision Measurement Grant Program (PMGP). The program provides support for experiments to make novel, high-precision measurements of…
Humble leaders are more effective and better liked, according to a study forthcoming in the Academy of Management Journal.
“Leaders of all ranks view admitting mistakes, spotlighting follower strengths, and modeling teachability as being at the core of humble leadership,” says Bradley Owens,…
I attended a gathering of health care providers recently to participate in a site review and listen to some nice Toyota Production System (TPS) success stories. During a Q&A session at the conclusion of the review, this question came from one of the participants:“How can we get the docs to…
I was playing around with the power and sample size graphs in Minitab recently, and I noticed something interesting. Power, for the uninitiated, is usually described as the likelihood that you will find a significant effect or difference when one truly exists. But rather than simply describe…
(Newport: Irvine, CA) -- Newport Corp., a global leader in lasers and photonics solutions that make, manage, and measure light, has introduced the SCG-02 Wavelength Extender to their line of nonlinear microscopy and spectroscopy application solutions. The Wavelength Extender is specifically…
Armed with a degree in organizational psychology, I started my career in operational improvement during the early 1970s with a nationally recognized Hartford, Connecticut-based insurance company. As part of the company's productivity services team, my job was to conduct stopwatch time studies…
(Marsh Bellofram: Newell, WV) -- Marsh Bellofram Corp., an AS9100:B- and ISO 9001-certified global manufacturer of high-performance OEM, industrial, and process control instrumentation, has introduced the 405AR series, an economical industrial timer family with ON-delay instantaneous relay…
