All Features
Anisur Rahman, Arif Arifuzzaman, Edgar Lara-Curzio, Tomonori Saito, Sungjin Kim
Researchers at the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ONRL) have developed an upcycling approach that adds value to discarded plastics for reuse in additive manufacturing, or 3D printing. The readily adoptable, scalable method introduces a closed-loop strategy that could globally…
David Stevens
The United States has more than 6,000 hospitals, and each one has thousands, if not tens of thousands, of clinical assets, such as imaging machines, ventilators, and IV pumps. Managing this equipment becomes a mighty task when hospital staff must handle the monitoring, repair, and maintenance of…
Richard Harpster
On Dec. 7, 2021, Ford Motor Co. updated its IATF 16949—“Customer specific requirements” (CSR), which require the use of reverse FMEAs (RFMEA) on new equipment (“tooling”). The first sentence of the reverse FMEA requirement reads: “Organizations are required to have a process in place that ensures…
Adam Zewe
Malicious agents can use machine learning to launch powerful attacks that steal information in ways that are tough to prevent and often even more difficult to study.
Attackers can capture data that “leak” between software programs running on the same computer. They then use machine-learning…
Constance Noonan Hadley, Mark Mortensen
Most white-collar employees have spent the bulk of their career working in teams. However, the rise of hybrid work environments is changing work paradigms in ways that make us wonder whether we still need teams. We’re not saying this lightly: Between the two of us, we’ve spent more than 40 years…
Lily Chen, Matthew Scholl
In our connected, digital world, cryptographic algorithms are implemented in every device and applied to every link to protect information in transmission and in storage. During the past 50 years, the use of cryptographic tools has expanded dramatically, from limited environments like ATM…
Jeremy L. Boerger
You may not be familiar with the term “information technology asset management” (ITAM), but most businesses deal with it on a regular basis (for better or worse). ITAM is what helps control the costs of computers, servers, software, and services used to create the computing environment modern…
Naresh Pandit
Rather than rebounding in 2022, economic conditions in the United Kingdom have deteriorated. Forecasts for growth in 2022 and the year after have been cut dramatically.
The reasons for this are well documented. Take your pick from soaring energy costs, supply chain disruptions, the effect of Covid…
Brian A. Weiss
From my standpoint, technology transfer is not easy, especially when attempting to introduce a new capability or technology into the manufacturing sector. Smaller manufacturers in particular present unique environments and challenges that must be appropriately understood if the transfer is to…
Kari Miller
Quality management is essential to the growth and performance of any organization. It’s a valuable resource in the effort to ensure that products and services satisfy the highest quality requirements and deliver positive customer results.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers must ensure that the…
Julie Winkle Giulioni
Welcome to the season that many leaders face with more than a little trepidation: midyear reviews. It’s the point on the calendar that serves as a reminder that the time remaining to deliver desired 2022 results is finite. It’s also the point when managers find themselves working (and worrying)…
Gleb Tsipursky
Elon Musk recently demanded that all Tesla staff return to the office full-time, according to an email sent to executive staff and leaked on social media. Musk said those who don’t want to come to office should “pretend to work somewhere else,” insinuating that those who work from home aren’t…
Rebecca Beyer
There is Alexa sitting on the kitchen counter waiting for your next query. But before she tells you how to make a perfect avocado salad, would you like to know something about the person who invented her?
As the use of automated assistants and other AI agents becomes more pervasive, how humans…
William A. Levinson
Quality-related data collection is useful, but statistics can also deliver misleading and even dysfunctional results when incomplete. This is often the case when information is collected only from surviving people or products, extremely satisfied or dissatisfied customers, or propagators of bad…
Faustino Gomez, Sepp Hochreiter
With ongoing global shortages of all kinds of goods, from cars to lumber to cooking oil, both consumers and companies are struggling. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, along with renewed Covid outbreaks in China, are two things that are likely to make things worse before they get better.
One way to…
Nathan Parde
For years, organizations have taken a defensive “castle-and-moat” approach to cybersecurity, seeking to secure the perimeters of their networks to block out any malicious actors. Individuals with the right credentials were assumed to be trustworthy and allowed access to a network’s systems and data…
Samuel Lesko
The manufacturing and production industries have rapidly evolved during the past 10 years, faced with significant challenges both in finding resources to run production and in manufacturing under tighter tolerances for surface texture and 3D feature dimensions.
The strict tolerances required in…
Anil More
Air gauge measuring devices have given highly reliable and precise measurements since the 1940s. As the name suggests, an air plug or air ring gauge is a gauging probe that uses metered air under controlled pressure to sense the back pressure generated as it impinges on the surface of the part…
Amy Kim
As companies continue to adjust to the wave of employees returning to the office, one thing is certain: The pre-pandemic working world is no more. Although remote employee productivity has been proven in terms of output—albeit subjective and loosely defined—many companies are gradually increasing…
Angus Robertson
It turns out that the triple threat of being locked away in quarantine, forbidden from visiting clients in person, and being under pressure to continue to deliver sales and profits, has had a seismic impact on digital transformation. The COVID-19-led paradigm shift in how customers work and buy has…
Kevin Ketels
The conditions that led to a shortage of baby formula were set in motion long before the February 2022 closure of the Similac factory tipped the U.S. into a crisis.
Retailers nationwide reported supplies of baby formula were out of stock at a rate of 43 percent during the week ended May 8, 2022,…
Greg Fiumura
After wading through airport security and a turbulent trans-Atlantic flight, the last thing I wanted was more friction arriving back in the USA. However, I was looking forward to using Global Entry, a voluntary Department of Homeland Security program that, after a thorough background check, allows…
In an open letter, Bob Fangmeyer, director of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, wrote that the Baldridge Award process would be suspended this year. The reasons and future plans are outlined in the letter shown below.
Dear Friend of Baldrige,
I am writing today to provide an important…
Albert Rees, Joe Vernon
The pandemic had many consequences for manufacturing companies, the most prevalent being supply chain disruption. In light of these disruptions, it is paramount that organizations establish robust and reliable operations to ensure productivity targets are met—especially as consumer demands continue…
Corey Brown
Gemba walks are an essential tool to understand the challenges of your manufacturing frontline. Each manufacturing facility is unique. The best way to solve your unique operational challenges is to perform a gemba walk focused on specific goals.
This article will outline the fundamentals of a…
