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Some lies you can see a mile away: “The check is in the mail.” “Your table will be ready in a few minutes.” “I didn’t say that.” “This won’t hurt a bit.” Add to this rather long list some lies of the lean variety. I’ve heard more than my fair share.
Often, I just shake off the falsehoods and…
(CCP: Beavercreek, OH) -- Certified Comparator Products has announced plans to move to a new, larger facility in early 2012. CCP has outgrown its existing manufacturing and sales showroom at 838 Distribution Dr., and will soon begin renovations at its new 19,000 sq ft Customer Center at 1174…
(Kistler: Winterthur, Switzerland) -- Kistler, a global supplier of precision sensors, systems, and instrumentation for the dynamic measurement of pressure, force, torque and acceleration, has introduced the Type 9260AA, a portable multicomponent force plate, designed to measure such parameters…
(ASTM: West Conshohocken, PA) -- Manufacturers of solar radiometers, and testing laboratories for solar energy, materials and durability testing will be among the primary users of a new ASTM International standard that outlines procedures using indoor test methods to calibrate radiometers with…
(Cognex: Natick, MA) -- Cognex Corp. has introduced a new feature for its In-Sight vision systems that allows manufacturers to easily and automatically test the vision system and verify that it is functioning correctly. This new functionality, called TestRun, is available only with In-Sight…
(SAE: Warendale, PA) -- Project management (PM) and advanced product quality planning (APQP) are two critical techniques used in product development in the mobility industry. This seminar will bring these techniques together in an easy to understand format that goes beyond the typical concept…
(J.D. Power: Westlake Village, CA) -- More than two-thirds of owner-reported, new-vehicle interior problems are design-related issues rather than defects or malfunctions, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2011 U.S. Interior Quality and Satisfaction Study.
The study finds that in 2011…
If you don’t think our society is experiencing a communication overload, you really are living under a rock. We can record all of the ups and downs of our personal sagas through blogs. We can call or text anyone at any time. And this communication avalanche doesn’t exist just in our personal…
Technology developed by Oxford University’s classics department could help reveal the secrets of historical documents. A scanning device that uses different wavelengths of light to detect faded or erased ink can be used for analyzing manuscripts and archived documents, as well as for detecting…
Improvement in any organization is difficult enough, but if you don’t know about these counterintuitive truths, you stand to make things worse.
I had long searched for a way to be able to improve service organizations the same way that W. Edwards Deming did for manufacturing. No approach was…
I’ve had the privilege of using laser trackers on many applications. One of the most interesting and rewarding applications is their use on machine tool calibrations. I have used laser trackers to measure machine tools since the instruments first became a viable solution in the machine tool…
(Wiley: Hoboken, NJ) -- Approaching the topic of digital holography from the practical perspective of industrial inspection, Digital Holography for MEMS and Microsystem Metrology, edited by Anand Asundi (Wiley, 2011), describes the process of digital holography and its growing applications for…
(ASQ: Milwaukee) -- The American Society for Quality (ASQ), the global voice of quality, is gearing up for the 2011 World Quality Month celebration in November with the launch this week of the YouQ video contest—asking people passionate about quality to show how quality tools have made a…
(Microscan: Renton, WA) -- Microscan, a global technology leader in bar code, machine vision, and lighting solutions, has released the Vision HAWK smart camera, built for high performance in rugged packaging and production environments.
Manufacturers in the pharmaceutical, food and beverage,…
(threeRivers 3D: Pittsburgh) -- threeRivers 3D Inc., a manufacturer of standard and custom 3-D imaging systems, has launched the LC-2-MACRO laser scanner. The LC-2-MACRO is optimized for 3-D scanning small parts such as dental molds, hearing-aid impressions, jewelry, and other highly detailed…
(A2LA: Frederick, MD) -- The American Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA), a nonprofit, nongovernmental, public service,
membership society that provides comprehensive services in laboratory accreditation and
laboratory-related training, is now offering on-site advanced…
(ANSI: Washington, D.C.) -- High voltage… biohazard… wet floor… radioactive materials… the effectiveness of safety signs like these relies on consistency and bold, graphic impact to warn people against specific hazards and personal injury. Six recently revised American National Standards (ANS)…
In 1985, when I transferred to an operations role, I inherited a production-only suggestion program. I recall that we received 16 ideas that year, of which one was awarded $1,600 calculated as a percentage of one year’s savings. The remaining ideas did not make the cut.
So I asked employees…
A readily portable miniature microscope weighing less than 2 grams and tiny enough to balance on your fingertip has been developed by Stanford University researchers. The scope is designed to see fluorescent markers, such as dyes, commonly used by medical and biological researchers studying the…
FARO Technologies, Inc., a global provider of portable measurement and imaging solutions, announces the debut of CAM2 Measure 10, its newest software for the FaroArm, ScanArm, and FARO Laser Tracker. This groundbreaking release marks the first time FARO has included features for collecting and…
As of 2008, the war for good jobs has trumped all other leadership activities because it’s been both the cause and the effect of everything else that countries have experienced. This will become even more real in the future as global competition intensifies. If countries fail at creating jobs,…
The nonprofit Reshoring Initiative enables U.S. companies to close the cost gap with offshore manufacturing by helping each company understand the true cost of offshoring—as well as the total cost of ownership.
When they combine reshoring with cost-saving and customer value-enhancing techniques…
Recently, I was working with a committee of leaders, support staff, and line personnel interested in encouraging and soliciting suggestions from their firefighters in an effort to improve their operations and service. The agency already had an employee suggestion program that worked well, but…
(Jossey-Bass/Wiley: Hoboken, NJ) -- The Future of Value: How Sustainability Creates Value Through Competitive Differentiation, by Eric Lowitt (Jossey-Bass, 2011) reveals what it takes for companies to grow and outperform the competition in today’s growth-constrained, sustainability-conscious…
(Paul N. Gardner Co.: Pompano Beach, FL) -- The pH/ORP TesTrode is perfect for general purpose, environmental, aquaculture, or other pH and temperature measurements.
With the tester’s ±0.02 pH unit accuracy and calibration ability with 1, 2, or 3 pH buffers that are automatically…
