All Features
Mark Esser
Maintaining a social media account involves keeping track of the many random celebrations that can provide an excuse to post a story that otherwise might not have a timely hook. National Peanut Butter Day (Jan. 24 for the uninitiated) is just such a day.
While NIST chemist Carolyn Burdette spent…
Greg Anderson
A s the market gradually moves toward value-based reimbursement, hospital payments to physicians have also been in transition from purely productivity-based pay to incentives based in part on quality, patient experience, and efficiency of care. This shift has taken place in employment,…
Nikolai Klimov
Physicists at NIST’s Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML) have been working on a new class of chip-based photonic thermometers that measure temperature with light. Now the team has reached another key milestone with the creation of a system that tests and packages their photonic thermometers…
Chris Howells
Reputation is fast becoming one of the most important risks to manage. Build quantifiable arguments to get boards on board.
Corporate reputation, the close cousin of a firm’s brand, is one of the most intangible assets a company has. If a brand is the inside-out perception of a firm, reputation…
Jeffrey Phillips
Not long ago a new client asked our team to lead an innovation project to create a product. As always with a new client, we did a quick survey. It’s important to understand what the client knows and has attempted in the name of innovation.
In this case the client had adopted another consulting…
Dan Jacob
It’s shaping up to be an interesting year. The U.S. presidential campaign looks to be outrageous and entertaining, stocks started the year with a nasty hangover, and ranchers turned militant in Oregon. Although the outlook for quality management isn’t quite as exciting, there are a number of…
Bob Emiliani
Every day, thousands of people confuse lean management with “Taylorism,” properly known as scientific management. The negative association brings out the lean bigwigs and others who work hard to create a great separation between lean and Frederick Winslow Taylor. This is an ill-informed and…
Kevin McKinley
Walking the snowy streets of the small Swiss town of Davos, it was impressive to know that 40 heads of state and 2,500 leaders from business and society were there to talk about some of the most important global challenges facing us today.
In the main congress hall, I saw and met leading…
John Bell
How often have you heard people say, “Our strategy is to become the biggest and the best?” This isn’t strategy. Strategy is not the what. Strategy is the how: How will you become the biggest and the best?
Of course, within that definition, there are good strategies and bad ones. Good strategies…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
For those awake enough to respond, please supply the Jeopardy question to this answer: “A computer system that won a million dollars in 2011 with access to 200 million pages of content, including the full text of Wikipedia.”
If you thought, “What is Watson?” you’d be correct as far as the…
Jon Speer
During the past several years, the FDA has been more aggressive and active in performing medical device company inspections. This has led to a far greater number of companies receiving Form 483 warning letters and citations. FDA Form 483s are a good way for your medical device company to flush $…
Chad Kymal
ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015, and ISO 45001:2015 establish clear expectations for top management. Not only are executives accountable for the effectiveness of these respective systems, they also have specific tasks ranging from establishing objectives to supporting relevant managers in their…
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Although the most common method of metal 3D printing is growing exponentially, moving forward from producing prototypes to manufacturing critical parts will be possible only by reaching a fundamental understanding of the complex physics behind the process, according to a new paper written by…
Gilles Hilary
In March 2014, Malaysian Airlines flight 370 disappeared on its way to Beijing. To this day, the fate of the plane has not been established. The tragedy of the aircraft’s disappearance was exacerbated by the images of distressed relatives herded into hotels in Kuala Lumpur and Beijing and being…
Thomas R. Cutler
Quality professionals in most manufacturing plants still have safety under their area of responsibility. Safety has been a growing concern in the workplace for decades, and in warehouse operations, forklift safety is one of the biggest.
OSHA statistics report that more than 100 workers are killed…
Kevin Cundiff
Ask how you can help, always keep a smile, respond to requests promptly... the list goes on. You’ve probably been exposed to an abundance of tips and tricks about how to become more customer-friendly.
That kind of advice can definitely be valuable, but what you likely don’t hear—unless you’re a…
Arun Hariharan
Technology is a useful tool in quality. That said, there are limits to what technology can do. Here’s my summary of its advantages and disadvantages for quality professionals.
1. Data and measurements. Technology can help you automate measurements and analysis of data (Minitab statistical software…
Grant Ramaley
The International Medical Device Regulators Forum (IMDRF) began a pilot phase for its new Medical Device Single Audit Program (MDSAP) in January 2014. This audit combines regulatory audits the manufacturer would typically face when they sell their products in certain IMDRF member countries: the…
Annette Franz
What happens when we really understand our customers’ desired outcomes or the jobs they are trying to do? Something pretty incredible.
A few weeks ago I wrote about “Faster Horses... and Customer Outcomes” and the importance of asking the right questions to understand desired outcomes in order to…
Brandon Henning
Although the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) was passed in 2011, the reality is that the rules that went along with the law—and that truly define how it will be executed and regulated—are just now being finalized. Enforcement of these rules should really ramp up in 2016 and 2017.
Will…
NIST
Flu season typically peaks between December and February, but by the time the winter holidays roll around, many of us will have already waited in line at area clinics, grocery stores, and pharmacies to get our annual flu shot. The Centers for Disease Control reports that U.S. vaccination efforts…
These days, even a cursory scan of the headlines brings fresh reminders of risk, from the ramifications of climate change to shocking terror events such as the recent attacks on Paris by the Islamic State. Now more than ever, companies need risk managers.
Paradoxically, however, the new ubiquity…
Donald J. Wheeler
The Levey-Jennings chart was created in the 1950s to answer questions about the quality and consistency of measurement systems in the chemical and process industries. This column will illustrate the fatal flaw in this technique and show a better way to track the consistency of your measurement…
Nathan Furr
Hackers and hipsters may be behind the innovative success of today’s startups, but established companies require different skill sets.
It’s becoming obvious to the startup world that entrepreneurial teams based on the corporation’s typical structure work poorly. The idea that a team should be…
Greg Fox
Unless you live under a rock, you’ve no doubt heard that the world recently lost David Bowie, one of the greatest artists of our time. My memories of the Thin White Duke go all the way back to my formative years. I recall his music echoing through the halls of our house as I crooned along while…
