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After my last column citing some really bizarre flaws in how our brains perceive reality, I thought I might cover some flaws in logic that are applicable in the world of quality. So, basically, even if our brains are working correctly, we can still send our Black Belts off on false trails trying…
Personal appearance is one of the few things that is completely within your control. It is also one of the things that employers expect you to handle without much discussion. Basically, if you can dress yourself, you should dress yourself well. Do you really need your employer to discuss this with…
(Process Sensors Corp.: Franklin Lakes, NJ) -- Process Sensor Corp., a manufacturer and distributor of noncontact infrared temperature and moisture measurement instruments, announces its high-accuracy bench-type blackbody calibration source, design model BBS 1150, that features high emissivity of…
(AIAG: Southfield, MI) -- The Automotive Industry Action Group’s (AIAG) B-8 Quality Assurance Guide for Shipping Labels and Other Bar Code and 2D Symbology Applications is available for companies looking for help evaluating and testing label quality.
When the original Guide for Quality…
(FDA: Silver Spring, MD) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has introduced a new web resource called FDA Basics for Industry to help companies and others save time and resources in their interactions with the agency. The website includes basic information about the regulatory process,…
(InfinityQS: Chantilly, VA) -- With the Jan. 4 signing of the Food Safety Modernization Act, the most significant update in American food safety was passed into law since the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938. This new law authorizes the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to increase…
(Precision Machined Products Association: Brecksville, OH) -- “Moving Precision Machining into the Future,” the biennial Precision Machining Technology Show (PMTS), returns to the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio, April 19–21. PMTS, presented by the Precision Machined Products…
U.S. health care organizations, from multihospital systems to rural community health centers, are gearing up for the challenge of their times: the effect of health care reform on how they care for patients and how they run their operations. Future health care organizations will need to find a way…
The race is on for who will manufacture 1,000 mirrors for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). Cranfield University in the United Kingdom has begun work on producing seven of the mirror segments for “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” with the aid of high-accuracy measurement systems…
Consumers believe the Ford brand has gained considerable ground as perennial leader, even as Toyota has declined during the past two years, according to Consumer Reports’ 2011 Car Brand Perception Survey. Although the two car companies are in a statistical dead heat, Ford excels in the factors…
In parts one and two of this ongoing primer on leak testing, we discussed pressure-decay testing and differential pressure-decay testing, respectively. Although those leak-testing methods remain the most widely used, it is often because they are assumed to be the least expensive leak-testing…
(Konica Minolta: Ramsey, NJ) -- Konica Minolta Sensing Americas Inc. (KMSA), a global leader in the industrial measurement of color, light, and shape, announces the U.S. launch of its new FD-Series Spectrodensitometers for the digital imaging market.
The spectrodensitometers will come in two…
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- On Jan. 4, President Obama signed the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010, which provides several important updates to the funding, programs, and leadership of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The signing of COMPETES “means more…
(ASQ: Milwaukee) — “The new role of quality: Tomorrow’s applications of proven quality tools” is the theme of ASQ’s 2011 World Conference on Quality and Improvement, to be held May 16–18 in Pittsburgh. Conference registration is available here. The conference content seeks to reexamine the role…
(Mettler-Toledo Inc.: Greifensee, Switzerland) -- Mettler-Toledo has announced an upcoming webinar in collaboration with Dionex Corp. that will describe a unique, automated approach to linearity testing to shorten workflow and reduce error rate. The sample preparation process will be discussed as…
(The Center for Industrial Effectiveness: Amherst, NY) -- As a certified lean professional and activity-based cost management expert with the University at Buffalo's Center for Industrial Effectiveness, Julie Stiles has helped companies in multiple industries to improve business performance and…
When Airman 1st Class Cole Cargill finished hanging the Mental Health Flight’s new idea board, he started something that could potentially improve his flight’s business practices and its service to customers.
The 95th Medical Group hung 16 idea boards around its various sections to solicit…
(Measurement Systems International: Seattle, WA) -- A chemical processing facility wanted to integrate data from a crane scale to its programmable logic controller (PLC) system and structured query language (SQL) server. A secondary goal was to provide real-time access to the scale data from…
For website owners and bloggers, there is a new widget from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that will keep web pages right on time.
Web “widgets” are small application programs designed to be run inside web pages. The NIST time widget, created by engineer Andrew…
Temperature is one of the four most common types of process loops. While the other common loops—flow, level, and pressure—occur more often, temperature loops are generally more difficult and important. It is the single most frequently stated type of loop of interest to users, and the concern for…
The emergence of cargo cults on some Pacific Islands after World War II is an amusing and oft-repeated story.
The relatively simple lifestyles of these islanders were interrupted by Japanese aircraft dropping large supplies of clothing, medicine, canned food, and tents to support the Japanese…
A green laser flashes across a high-pressure spray that fuels a jet engine. Those flashes, some just 50 millionths of a second apart, freeze the droplets of fuel for a camera to record and a computer to analyze.
This is particle image velocimetry, just one of the advanced flow-diagnostic tools…
(Capture 3D: Costa Mesa, CA) -- Capture 3D has released the GOM ATOS Triple Scan series of 3-D scanners incorporating blue LED light-source technology and new pattern projection techniques.
ATOS is known for its accuracy, speed, and configuration flexibility, and supports small to extra-large…
(Mahr Federal: Providence, RI) -- Mahr Federal has introduced a new MarCheck measuring and evaluation unit for its high-precision Linear 100 universal length-measuring instrument. MarCheck allows both measurements and calibrations to be performed quickly and reliably at the touch of a button.…
(CRC Press: Boca Raton, FL) -- Traditional statistical process control assumes that manufacturing process data come from a normal bell-curve distribution. Numerous supplier reports and in-house control charts are essentially meaningless, because their creators do not know how to check the…
