All Features
Etienne Nichols
Amedical device company is expected to deliver innovative, life-changing devices while ensuring compliance and achieving true quality. This task bears loads of responsibility—all of which must be kept and documented within your quality management system (QMS).
A QMS contains everything that…
National Physical Laboratory
Graphene and related 2D materials have the potential to disrupt technologies such as energy storage devices, composites, and electronics through their exceptional material properties. Depending on the material, these can include properties such as high electrical conductivity, high mechanical…
FABTECH
Manufacturers understand that their businesses won’t grow if their workforces don’t grow along with them. That’s why the talent shortage in the metal fabrication industry continues to be a pressing concern—and three-quarters of respondents in the National Association of Manufacturers’ 2023 First…
Hank C. Andersen
Not many years ago, there was a CEO so exceedingly fond of finding the right strategy that he spent all of his money on consultants to tell him what the strategy should be. One day there came two consultants, and they said they could craft the most magnificent strategy imaginable. Not only would it…
Megan Wallin-Kerth
Business owners and employees alike have long debated over how best to achieve quality standards and what those standards ought to be. However, as much as linear thinking may help when measuring degrees of improvement, increases in profit, or low turnover rates, it can’t tell you that your company…
Angie Basiouny
Wharton experts used machine learning to help uncover the secret formula for successful healthy habit formation, and it turned out there’s no one formula.
“There’s this widely spread rumor that it takes 21 days to form a habit,” says Katy Milkman, a Wharton professor of operations, information,…
Jennifer V. Miller
What are the stories we tell ourselves? It’s a simple question, yet one rich with possibility. In my years of creating leadership development programs, one of the “stories” that continually surfaces with leaders is “I need to do X for my direct reports because they are not yet ready/willing/able to…
Aaron Smith
A successful company can’t run without happy and motivated employees. One way you can achieve that is by improving your employees’ uptime. Uptime refers to your employees’ freedom to pursue personal and occupational growth without the burden of preventable injuries. Here is everything you need to…
Mike Figliuolo
You folks know I love asking questions. From this post about forgoing answers in favor of asking questions, to my quote, “Asking the right question about the future is more powerful than having the right answer about the past,” I’ve found questions to be a more powerful leadership tool than many…
Chandrakant Isi
The future is here, and it’s taking shape with 4D printing. This emerging technology, also known as shape-morphing systems, adds the dimension of time to 3D printing.
By employing responsive materials that react to external elements like heat, light, moisture, electric current, or pressure, 4D-…
Mark Mortensen
The end of Covid-19 workplace disruptions has ushered in a fresh set of challenges for organizations. Chief among them has been establishing new office policies for a workforce that has largely embraced flexible work and has expressed a desire for this to become a permanent fixture.
But…
Gleb Tsipursky
As the world slowly recovers from the pandemic, many knowledge workers find themselves at a crossroad. On one hand, the prospect of returning to the office stirs up a cocktail of dread and nostalgia. On the other hand, the threat of AI-driven job elimination looms large. It’s like being caught…
Anne Trafton
A team of chemists from MIT and Duke University has discovered a counterintuitive way to make polymers stronger: Introduce a few weaker bonds into the material.
Working with a type of polymer known as polyacrylate elastomers, the researchers found that they could increase the materials’ resistance…
William A. Levinson
‘Tech leaders issue warning: AI raises risk of extinction”1 comes across as another version of science fiction stories that have been around for decades about humans creating something greater than themselves that finally destroys them. Although it’s obviously risky to allow a computer to control…
NIST
A bullet piercing the protective armor of a first responder, a jellyfish stinging a swimmer, micrometeorites striking a satellite—high-speed projectiles that puncture materials show up in many forms. Researchers constantly aim to identify new materials that can better resist these high-speed…
Stephanie Ojeda
Design controls are a frequent citation in 483 observations and warning letters from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In fact, the agency has noted a large proportion of past recalls that could have been prevented with design controls.
FDA guidance also makes an explicit link between…
ISO
Net zero is our strongest tool yet against the climate crisis. The transition to net-zero emissions presents a compelling solution that offers not only environmental benefits but also economic, social, and health advantages. Failing to act swiftly and decisively risks catastrophic climate change,…
Mark Hembree
Pick a problem—any problem. As soon as you have one without an immediate answer, we can begin.
Perhaps you’re a quality professional, an auditor, a systems analyst, or just the person your boss sent to find out what the heck is going on around here. Whether you have a problem on your plant floor…
Matt Fieldman
A manufacturing youth-engagement program that excites local businesses, offers templates and guidance to effectively launch in new regions, has a 10-year track record of connecting hundreds of students annually, and is financially sustainable?
Yes, please.
That’s exactly what Pennsylvania’s What’s…
Ethan Mollick
Nano Tools for Leaders—a collaboration between Wharton Executive Education and Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management—are fast, effective tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes, with the potential to significantly affect your success.
The goal
Adopt a seven…
Gleb Tsipursky
The unemployment rate is surprisingly low, at 3.7%, shocking economists who expected a slowdown in hiring and rising unemployment rate. Frontline work, such as healthcare, led job growth. Frontline workers are in high demand, and the competition for their services is fierce. Yet wage growth cooled…
Sébastien Breteau
Supply chain quality control is a demanding job. Ensuring that products meet specific standards and expectations for safety and customer satisfaction by monitoring and managing the entire supply chain, from raw materials to finished products, must be accomplished consistently and reliably.
At any…
Donald J. Wheeler
Chunky data can distort your computations and result in an erroneous interpretation of your data. This column explains the signs of chunky data, outlines the nature of the problem that causes it, and suggests what to do when it occurs.
When the measurement increments used are too large for the job…
Bruce Hamilton
Last May marked the 35th anniversary of the Shingo Prize, an award bestowed each year to recognize organizations that demonstrate the principles and methods espoused by its namesake, Shigeo Shingo. Although I haven’t made it to every celebration and award ceremony, it turns out that I was the only…
Kevin Cool
You probably won’t find it in a book on business leadership, but Faiz Shakir has a dictum for executives of major corporations who really want to understand what their employees’ jobs are like: “Know the coffee.”
The reference was in the context of unionization efforts by Starbucks employees, and…
