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(ANSI: New York) -- The Japanese Industrial Standards Committee recently submitted a proposal to the International Organization for Standardization for a new field of technical activity on industrial furnaces and associated thermal processing equipment.This type of thermal equipment is used…
(NQI: Toronto) -- Canada’s National Quality Institute will present “Improving Your Business Through Benchmarking Best Practices” on April 23–24, 2008 in Toronto.Participants in this workshop you may expect learn how to plan and conduct benchmarking as a strategic and operational tool to…
In the last couple of months, two topics have become particularly vexing to me. First, how can we be environmentally responsible by purchasing E85 fuel when there are few service stations that provide this new elixir? Second—even more difficult to comprehend—why do companies eliminate products and…
With all the emphasis today on quality, and studies showing that quality is very important to the leaders of American business, why are so many organizations struggling to achieve and sustain quality systems? The answer is that managers have been inundated for 20 years with a parade of quality…
(PowerSteering: Cambridge, Massachussetts).--PowerSteering, the only on-demand, enterprise project portfolio management (PPM) software used to manage information technology, Six Sigma, product development, and other enterprise initiatives, recently announced that its 2007 sales increased by 58…
Unique three-dimensional solar cells that capture nearly all of the light that strikes them could boost the efficiency of photovoltaic systems while reducing their size, weight, and mechanical complexity. The new 3-D solar cells capture photons from sunlight using an array of miniature “tower”…
(NIST: Gaithersburg, Maryland) -- A team of computer scientists and mathematicians from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Texas, Arlington, is developing an open-source tool that catches programming errors by using an emerging approach called “combinatorial…
(Best Practices: Chapel Hill, North Carolina) -- Many companies believe that they deliver superior customer experience, but far fewer customers agree with this assessment. Because the many elements that add up to the customer experience can have such a profound effect on business performance and…
Now that I have your attention, let me explain. This year I will enter a very special age group, namely, those people eligible for Medicare. The magical age of 65 provides one with certain mystical rights—Medicare benefits, of course, which means we’ll be swimming in extra disposable income. Yeah…
(CSPI: Washington) -- On several Web sites, the Sara Lee Corp. muses about how consumers are likely to mistakenly believe that many “whole grain” breads are actually more like whole wheat bread than white bread, and chides its competitors for not being “100-percent whole-grain.” Sara Lee helps…
(The Center for Business Intelligence: Woburn, Massachusetts) – CBI will host the conference with the theme, “Implement a Strategy for Continuous Quality Systems Improvement in Accordance with ICH Q10 Guidelines,” January 24–25, 2008, in Philadelphia.ICH Q10 describes one comprehensive approach…
(AHRQ: Rockville, Maryland) -- An array of toolkits designed to help doctors, nurses, hospital managers, patients, and others reduce medical errors was recently released by the U.S. Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.The 17 toolkits, developed by AHRQ-funded…
Research reported recently in the journal Advanced Materials describes a potentially promising strategy for encouraging the regeneration of damaged central nervous system cells known as neurons.The technique would use a biodegradable polymer containing a chemical group that mimics the…
Editor’s note:This short story is part of a three-volume series—Integrated Enterprise Excellence: Going Beyond Lean Six Sigma and the Balanced Scorecard, by Forrest Breyfogle. Within the context of this fictional story the author discusses the attributes of an integrated training program that he…
As I’m writing this, our first big snowfall of the year is piling up outside and it is –10°C (15°F). This brings to mind the many times my grandfather told me of how he walked to school in winter uphill (both ways) with no shoes. So I wondered, will I be able to spin the same yarn for my girls and…
From left, Col. Michael Pelletier, 555th Aircraft Sustainment Squadron commander; Col. James Fulton, 727th Aircraft Sustainment Group commander; DeLana Aylor, 448th Combat Sustainment Wing financial management; and Ernie Guttery, 76th Maintenance Support Group, discuss their…
Guest speaker Julie Rushin, director at Internal Revenue Service’s strategy and finance division (ASQ: Milwaukee) -- Lean Six Sigma experts from around the world will gather at the 8th Annual American Society for Quality Lean Six Sigma Conference Feb. 11-12…
(ASQ: Milwaukee) -- The American Society for Quality’s 2008 World Conference on Quality and Improvement, May 5-7, 2008 in Houston, Texas, will provide attendees with a myriad of improvement opportunities. More than 90 breakout sessions are planned ranging from topics on business excellence,…
(Paton Professional: Chico, California) -- Santa Claus became aware of the ISO 9001 standard several years ago and immediately recognized the value it could bring to his North Pole operation. The ever-generous Claus now offers gratis his quality manual as a PDF download from which all can benefit.…
(CSPI: Washington) -- In a report released in mid-November, the Food and Drug Administration claimed a new report prepared by the Eastern Research Group showed it would be difficult to create advisory committees free from conflicts of interest and that advisers granted conflict-of-interest waivers…
(ANSI: New York) -- The American National Standards Institute’s (ANSI) board of directors recently appointed its new members and officers for the term beginning January 1, 2008.Robert W. Noth, manager of engineering standards for Deere & Co., was reappointed for a third one-year term as ANSI’s…
I don’t believe in ghosts. Yet quality professionals chase them every day. Why? Because erroneous control limits tell them to. Control limits should be statistically based, 100-percent reliable, and reveal natural process variability. Hence, they should help to uncover unnatural events. Yet when I…
(Artel: Los Angeles) -- At Death Valley for Mission No.3 of the Extreme Pipetting Expedition, Artel found that pipettes underdeliver by up to 35 percent in dry and hot environments. While volume delivery errors were partially reduced by prewetting pipette tips, underdelivery still persisted…
Our original plan for workshop No. 3 was to discuss what are generally referred to as material condition modifiers, namely the encircled letters “M,” “L,” and “S” which sometimes follow tolerance values and sometimes follow datum-feature labels in feature-control frames. The idea was to explain…
(Agilent Technologies Inc.: Santa Clara, California) --Agilent Technologies Inc. and Multiprobe Inc. will expand the their strategic partnership. As a result, Multiprobe’s Multiscan Atomic Force Prober (AFP), the world’s highest-resolution nanoprober, will be sold and supported by Agilent to…
