All Features
Mark Graban
People in health care know that miscommunications are a major cause of errors and potential harm. A curious incident that occurred during game five of the 2011 World Series illustrated this issue in a very public way: A miscommunication set off an action that ultimately left the St. Louis…
Tracker Handbook by Art Kietlinski
Understanding the importance of collecting accurate data, using the correct drift checks, and applying accurate thermal scaling are critical elements of a successful measurement plan. Even if all the correct measurement techniques are applied, creating the coordinate system incorrectly will…
Paul Naysmith
In the business world we certainly like to toss around choice words to express our ideas. I don’t think I’ve ever used the term “strategic planning” in my home or personal life. I can well imagine my wife’s stare of death (inherited from her two teacher parents) if I ever suggested that we “…
Donald J. Wheeler
From the perspective of data analysis, rare events are problematic. Until we have an event,
there is nothing to count, and as a result many of our time periods will end up with zero counts.
Since zero counts contain no real information, we need to consider alternatives to counting the rare…
NVision Inc.
Aircraft Technologies Inc., a leading manufacturer of toilets for corporate jets, saved $20,000 and four weeks in reduced tooling costs and time for a new model by utilizing NVision’s laser scanning and engineering services. “By scanning an existing upper and lower bowl assembly and modifying…
Andy McCabe
They’re all around us, all the time, but we don’t recognize them because they wear business suits, sports jackets, dresses, high heels, or maybe sneakers and dungarees. They’re the men and women we work with who are hiding their true identities in the workplace. Let’s see if we can figure out…
Mike Richman
As with enlightenment, there are many paths to quality improvement. Trade shows, seminars, and live video demos are all effective ways to keep on top of the latest developments in the industry. User conferences are another great option, particularly a well-designed, information-packed event…
Bruce Hamilton
I’ve just returned from a brief sojourn that included:1. Marrying off my older daughter, Christine, in Disneyworld, followed by
2. A short vacation for our younger kids, and then,
3. A short illness and trip to the hospital for me.
No relationship between the third event and the former two…
Kurt Manufacturing
Accuracy is what Kurt Manufacturing vises are all about. The company has delivered its rugged products for more than 50 years. Recently, Kurt designed automated gauging and work-holding into its automated production system (APS) to control all functions and deliver a quality, near-perfect…
Gartner
Gartner Inc., an information technology (IT) research and advisory company, has highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2012. The analysts presented their findings during the Gartner Symposium ITxpo that was held in Orlando, Florida, last…
Akhilesh Gulati
In part one of this article, I described a rapid strategic planning session for fire-service response time, and included a comment from one of the planners that he’d like to “see a fire station on every corner.” This was a terrific starting point because of the visual it presented.
Discussion…
Mario Gislao
Almost all of us have experienced the frustration of searching for a document we created in the past. Whether it is a spreadsheet of last quarter’s sales figures, a mission-critical report on 2007’s quality control improvements, or a list of contact names, we are so consumed with creating our…
Georgia Institute of Technology
It’s a pattern that no doubt repeats itself daily in hundreds of millions of offices around the world: People sit down, turn on their computers, set their mobile phones on their desks, and begin to work. What if a hacker could use that phone to track what the person was typing on the keyboard…
Dan Adams
Making a lasting change is usually easier said than done. Most of us spend more time talking about that next exercise program we plan to start than we do actually going through with it. Businesses have just as much difficulty as individuals in going through with change. Too often, companies are…
Argonne National Laboratory
When a nasty strain of E. coli flooded hospitals in Germany this summer, it struck its victims with life-threatening complications far more often than most strains—and the search for an explanation began.
During a feverish weekend after the rogue bacterium’s genome was sequenced, scientists…
The QA Pharm
Most good manufacturing practices (GMP) training that I encounter is not necessarily bad, just irrelevant. In fact, the same could be said for most training departments. They jealously guard their turf and deliver mediocre, perfunctory training. Names get checked off the list, and the training…
MIT News
The ability to see through walls is no longer the stuff of science fiction, thanks to new radar technology developed at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory.
Much as humans and other animals see via waves of visible light that bounce off objects and then strike our eyes’ retinas, radar “sees” by sending…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
Maybe the best book to come across my desk this year is Melissa Pregill’s Become One (Rojo Press, 2010). It’s all about becoming a consultant, or “independent,” as she likes to say. It’s a slim little volume, just right to leaf through during a break, so I did. Maybe that was a mistake, since I…
Laurel Thoennes @ Quality Digest
In 2003, Subir Chowdhury realized his company needed to change and tailor its tools and services to fit each of its client’s circumstances. His colleagues and employees developed the management approach called LEO—for listen, enrich, and optimize—which has been transforming people and…
APQC
It happens all the time: lost opportunities, missed handoffs, rework, delayed product launches, and frustrated employees and customers. The likely culprit: poorly managed processes. Even mature organizations struggle with inconsistent or incorrectly applied process management techniques. Only…
Flexibility is just one of the many benefits of acquiring ultrasound data directly into a PC and then performing application-specific processing in software. However, the large number of channels in ultrasound array imaging systems introduces data throughput and front-end connectivity…
Imagine a world where shoe sizes were not standardized, or where golf balls came in a variety of sizes and weights. What if your favorite CDs didn’t fit in your friend’s CD player? None of these things are problems today, thanks to an army of unsung heroes known as standards.
Standards—agreed…
Jay Arthur—The KnowWare Man
For the last decade, people have come by my booth at the American Society for Quality (ASQ) World Conference on Quality and Improvement and asked: “Isn’t there a better way to implement Six Sigma that doesn’t cost so much or take so long?” Of course there is, but conventional wisdom inhibits…
Ryan E. Day
It’s funny how the simple act of opening your e-mail can have a profound effect on your view of the world’s economic landscape.
Recently, I received a press release from South Korean tire manufacturer Hankook Tire Co. Ltd., which touted a deal with Volkswagen to outfit several of its vehicles…
NIST
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) colleagues of Dan Shechtman, Ph.D., joined others in the scientific community in congratulating him on winning the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Shechtman made his astonishing discovery of a quasicrystal—an arrangement of atoms thought to…
