All Features
Del Williams
Food processors have long sought a safer, more energy-efficient means to convey product with less spillage, breakage, or downtime due to necessary cleaning and maintenance. Although tubular drag conveyors have offered these desired attributes compared to belt, bucket, or pneumatic systems, many in…
Roxanne Oclarino
In an ideal world, a project economy would empower people with the skills and capabilities needed to turn ideas into reality. In that world organizations would deliver tremendous value to exceed stakeholders’ expectations by successfully completing projects. Yet research shows that only 35 percent…
Mike John
This article has been republished with permission from Medical Plastics News.
While ISO 13485 sets the standard for quality management systems (QMS) in medical device manufacturing, metrology is often treated as an afterthought and used simply to validate products and detect defects at the end of…
Edmund Andrews
Even if the pandemic abates enough for a return to normal, all evidence indicates that a substantial share of Americans will continue to work from home, relying on videoconferencing to team up.
Yet, while the ease of gathering virtually has made the shift to widespread remote work possible, a new…
Steven Brown
One of the unexpected rewards of working at NIST has been the opportunity to see other disciplines through the NIST prism of measurement science and standards. By working with NASA scientists, astronomers, oceanographers and geologists, I’ve had the opportunity to witness the lives of scientists in…
Megan Wallin-Kerth
Many industries are embracing apprentice and trade programs in efforts to create a strong and reliable workforce for the future—and the manufacturing field is no exception. The BASF apprenticeship program began as a way for young professionals to find success through practical on-the-job training.…
Emily Newton
Staying on top of packing quality-control measures can have positive ramifications for companies. For starters, products are more likely to arrive undamaged if they're in appropriately robust boxes. There’s also a safety element involved. Suppose a fragile item shatters in transit due to improper…
jeffdewar
This is the first installment of a five-part series.
In May, Quality Digest editor in chief Dirk Dusharme and I attended ASQ’s 2022 World Conference on Quality and Improvement (WCQI) in Anaheim, California. It was the first in-person conference since Covid hit the world, and attendance was just…
Kath Lockett
‘Firefighters are heroes.” We hear it all the time, from children, the media, and young people looking for a rewarding career. It’s probably something you’ve said or thought yourself at one time or another. These brave men and women put their own safety on the line every day to protect their…
Aarin B. Clemons, Lindsey Brickle
Many manufacturers have struggled for years to hire qualified workers. The outlook is for more of the same. With an aging workforce, emerging new technologies requiring more skilled talent, and the continuing decline of trades education in high schools and community colleges, an estimated 2.1…
Becky Ham
In February 2020, MIT professor David Simchi-Levi predicted the future. In an article in Harvard Business Review, he and his colleague Pierre Haren warned that the new coronavirus outbreak would throttle supply chains and shutter tens of thousands of businesses across North America and Europe by…
George Siedel
There is no shortage of books critical of business schools. The titles leave little doubt about how much disdain the authors have for the schools meant to prepare future leaders in business. Consider books like Shut Down the Business School: What’s Wrong with Management Education (Pluto Press, 2018…
Quality Digest
One question led the founders of Nemo’s Garden, a subsea farming platform, to embark on its mission to take agriculture beneath the waves and bring better harvests to market: “Seventy percent of the planet is covered by water. Why don't we try to use part of the ocean to make more food, in a better…
Otto de Graaf
Despite the urgency of the climate crisis, and smart tech that enables the transition toward the factory of the future, for many manufacturers sustainability still feels like an afterthought rather than a priority. Certainly, sustainability may require big changes in strategy, processes, technology…
Gleb Tsipursky
The pandemic has made organizations aware of the need for a new C-suite leader, the CHO, or chief health officer. This has been driven by recognizing the importance of employee health for engagement, productivity, and risk management, along with lowering healthcare insurance costs. At the same time…
Ann Brady
Safer food, better health: This was the theme of World Food Safety Day (June 7, 2022), and it’s obvious, is it not, that access to safe food is vital for life and health? The challenge in today’s world is how to achieve this. Global food systems, already under pressure before the pandemic, are now…
Jorge Gonzalez Henrichsen
In April 2022, China's manufacturing output fell to its lowest level in two years, according to official data. The figures were the latest sign of economic pain as Beijing maintains its uncompromising zero-Covid response.
Dozens of cities, including Shenzhen and Shanghai, have been partially or…
engineering.com
Unlike a biological or identical twin, a digital twin does not have a universally accepted definition. In application, a digital twin will mean different things to different industries. On an assembly line, a digital twin of a robot may look identical to the physical robot, especially if it is…
Del Williams
The use of membrane technology as a processing and separation method in the food industry is gaining wide application for demineralization, desalination, stabilization, separation, deacidification, purification, and reducing microbial load.
Perhaps the most obvious application for membrane…
Ruth Castel-Branco, Hannah Dawson
Narrative frames are fundamental to unifying ideologies. They frame what is possible and impossible, which ideas can be accepted, and which must be rejected. In her book, Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics (Zed Books, 2018), storyteller and political analyst Nanjala Nyabola examines the framing…
Susan Robertson
A debate you frequently hear in business circles is whether working online or in-person is more creative. The short answer? Both. Or neither. It’s solely dependent on how the meeting is structured and managed.
When it comes to creativity, a recent study found that online interactions result in…
Angie Basiouny
Walter Orthmann has worked for the same textile manufacturer in Brazil for more than 84 years, setting the Guinness World Record last month for longest career at a single company.
It’s a remarkable stretch, considering American workers now spend a median of 4.1 years with their employers,…
Jamie Steiner
Ultra-low temperature freezers became popular due to the storage of Covid-19 vaccines, but they have been important components of laboratories for many years. There’s a lot, however, to think about—quality, productivity, maintenance, different types of technology, warranties, etc. And if you end up…
Donald J. Wheeler
Walter Shewhart made a distinction between common causes and assignable causes based on the effects they have upon the process outcomes. While Shewhart’s distinction predated the arrival of chaos theory by 40 years, chaos theory provides a way to understand what Shewhart was talking about.…
Tristan Mobbs
Let’s consider how to build a data analytics community. Many organizations want to establish communities of practice or other structures with a similar aim, fostering best practice and collaboration, often with analysts working in different parts of a corporation.
A data analytics community can…
