All Features
Stephanie Ojeda
Companies today implementing automated compliance management systems are motivated by a wide variety of factors.
For many, it’s about reducing manual labor hours required to execute quality processes—and achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness in their operations. For others, the priority…
Donald J. Wheeler
When presented with a collection of data from operations or production, many will start their analysis by computing descriptive statistics and fitting a probability model to the data. But before you do this, there’s an easy test that you need to perform.
This test will quantify the chances that…
Patrick Gale
Medical equipment is a necessary yet substantial investment for any health system. Making strategic decisions about these assets can be daunting in the face of shifting patient demand, financial uncertainty, and fast-changing cybersecurity risks.
Because clinical assets account for an average of…
Bruce Hamilton
In a humorous moment from Steve Martin’s comedy Father of the Bride, there’s a scene where George Banks (Martin) argues with a store clerk that the number of buns in a package is mismatched with the packaged number of hot dogs: “I wanna buy eight hot dogs and eight hot dog buns to go with them. But…
Adam Zewe
If a robot traveling to a destination has just two possible paths, it only needs to compare the routes’ travel time and probability of success. But if the robot is traversing a complex environment with many possible paths, choosing the best route amid so much uncertainty can quickly become an…
Evi Giourouki
Gone are the days of manual labor and repetitive tasks. Nowadays, robots are taking over these responsibilities, leaving human workers to focus on complex problem-solving and innovation. These robots are equipped with advanced sensors, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning capabilities…
Mike Figliuolo
If you have kids, you know the nauseating feeling of one of them going down for the count and having to rush them to the emergency room. I had that grim experience recently. What I learned from that ER visit is businesses can make very strong statements about how little they care about their…
Kate Zabriskie
‘She wanted to return a cake that was almost gone. How bad could it have been? Normally, if something is spoiled or not up to standards, it’s returned almost intact. This thing was a pile of crumbs. But it gets better: She demanded cash, yelled at me, and started causing a scene. I hope she never…
Denise Robitaille
The buzz has begun. ISO 9001 is being revised. There hasn’t been a revision in about 10 years, so it’s due—if not overdue. Still, there are individuals who don’t understand the justification or the purpose of the revision. After all, it’s a perfectly good standard. So, what’s up?
It’s worth…
Jennifer King
The cost of poor quality can be devastating to business: Failed quality control costs manufacturers anywhere between 15–20% of their total profits on average, and as much as 40% for some, the ASQ reveals. Businesses with successful quality programs, on the other hand, can benefit from increased…
William A. Levinson
What do quality and productivity have to do with World War III, which we all hope will never happen? The answer is everything. A massive loss of American manufacturing capability between 1945 and 2024 has conceded enormous advantages to aggressor nations that might be inclined to break the peace.…
Adam Creuziger
Like many people, as a child I had dreams of flying into space as an astronaut. That interest in aerospace and space exploration has continued throughout my life.
So when my colleague Tim Foecke, who was working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology at the time, invited me to…
Jones Loflin
When we talk about a lack of work-life balance, stress, or burnout, one of the things we’re actually saying to ourselves is that we feel we have no control over the outcome or our future. It can feel like the line between work and life has blurred into one big, overwhelming blob.
It’s time for a…
Alonso Diaz, Maria DiBari
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) emphasizes the importance of being prepared for device recalls.
FDA product recalls are on the rise in the post-pandemic era. There has been a clear upward trend from 2021 through 2023, and medical devices ranked the highest of all product types. (See…
Mike Figliuolo
Organizations that use “stay bonuses” as a retention tool could be making a huge mistake. Instead of letting poor performers go, they pay tons of money to keep them.
It’s been a rough year in the market. Let’s hit rewind and explore some underlying axioms about business. Sure, many of these are…
Ben P. Stein
Many critics and movie fans alike name 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark as one of the best films of all time. But watching the movie as a 12-year-old, I didn’t realize that it has what some consider to be a major flaw, pointed out in a 2013 episode of The Big Bang Theory.
As the argument goes,…
Seb Murray
Have a massive, daring goal in mind? Breaking it into smaller steps can help you achieve your dreams.
A research paper led by Wharton Ph.D. alumni Aneesh Rai and Edward Chang and co-authored by Wharton professors Marissa Sharif, Katy Milkman, and Angela Duckworth found that breaking down a…
Alissa Greenberg
Calls for cultural transformation have become ubiquitous in the past few years, encompassing everything from advancing racial justice and questioning gender roles to rethinking the American workplace. Hazel Rose Markus recalls the summer of 2020 as a watershed for those conversations. “Everybody…
Stephanie Ojeda
Implementing an automated compliance management solution is a mammoth undertaking with high stakes and potentially high returns for those who navigate the process successfully.
Get it right and you could save thousands of labor hours, avoid millions of dollars in compliance issues, and free up…
Mark Graban
I’ve learned so much from Timothy R. Clark of the firm LeaderFactor, and author of the excellent book, The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety (Berrett-Koehler, 2020). I can’t recommend his work enough—including his free podcasts, webinars, and more. I was fortunate to go through a formal…
Daniel Marzullo
If you ever feel like some parts of your work turbocharge your day while other parts leave you running on empty, it might be time for an energy audit.
This exercise can be a game-changer if you feel unmotivated or uninspired by your work. Here’s how to do it.
Reflect on your typical workday. Which…
Graham Ward
Just as there’s no yin without yang, there’s no leadership without followership. The two interdependent and complementary roles can’t exist without each other.
Followership is the symbiotic interchange between a leader and those they seek to influence. However, the word has long carried…
David L. Chandler
In the predawn hours of Sept. 5, 2021, engineers achieved a major milestone in the labs of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) when a new type of magnet, made from high-temperature superconducting material, achieved a world-record magnetic field strength of 20 tesla for a large-scale…
Mike Figliuolo
It’s important to have customer-friendly policies if you want to have a great customer service culture. Your policies drive team behaviors, so be sure they’re consistent with the brand you want to put forward.
I’m going to hark back to my recent post, “$325 Equals $210? The Math of Customer-…
William A. Levinson
In his Quality Digest article published in February 2023, Michael Mills1 reported that the next version of ISO 9001 will add to clause 4.1, “Understanding the organization and its context” the words, “the organization shall determine whether climate change is a relevant issue.”
Although nothing in…
