All Features
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…
Pat Toth
This morning my favorite local morning news program had an interesting segment on new slang words and what they mean. While the definitions were probably not necessary for millennials or generation Z, but for baby boomers like me, it was an eye-opening vocabulary lesson. I must admit I didn’t know…
Jon Speer
Imagine that your medical device malfunctioned during patient use. Do you know whether quality assurance or quality control is responsible? When working through remediation efforts, do you know which quality function demands the attention, or should you make improvements to both?
More often than…
Jane Cavalier
We live in an upside-down world where the old rules no longer apply. Many call it a VUCA world—volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Mass consumerism is being challenged by a new consumption paradigm as people are driven by new essentialism where things matter less and relationships,…
Donald J. Wheeler
Many different approaches to process improvement are on offer today. An appreciation of the way each approach works is crucial to selecting an approach that will be effective. Here we look at the problem of production and consider how the different improvement approaches deal with this problem.…
Sabrina Habib
Creativity is among the most in-demand skills in the workplace.
It’s not surprising that top multinational companies are looking to hire inventive thinkers: Research shows that creativity can drive innovation and resilience in organizations.
Tech giant Google has grown by innovating the way we all…
Richard S. Hawkes
In my work helping to build high-performing teams at a diverse range of organizations, I have found that there is nothing that bonds a team quite like being on an authentic transformational journey. It’s invigorating to experience a continuous improvement journey with others on the same team, and…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
In a recent column, I wrote about the power of suggestion. I stated, “When our subconscious mind is exposed to a constantly repeated message, it’s going to penetrate unless we are cognizant of it.” Becoming conscious of indoctrinating media messages is important, but recognizing your own internal…
NIST
A vulnerable spot in global commerce is the supply chain: It enables technology developers and vendors to create and deliver innovative products but can leave businesses, their finished wares, and ultimately their consumers open to cyberattacks. A new update to the National Institute of Standards…
Gleb Tsipursky
Covid-19 has disrupted many areas of our lives, including our careers. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to strengthen and secure your career during these uncertain times.
Due to the devastating effect of the pandemic on the restaurant industry, one of my coaching clients, Alex, who served…
Jacob Bourne
GE Renewable Energy has opened a new R&D facility in Bergen, New York, where it will research how 3D printing can play a role in boosting the energy efficiency of wind turbines.
Supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, researchers will explore 3D printing the concrete base of…
James J. Kline
Big data is a relatively new phenomenon. Its use is increasing in many organizations. But, as with many new processes, its use cuts both ways. It has positive benefits to both the organization and customers. It also has its potential downside. This piece looks at both with respect to the quality…
Matt Fieldman
I remember well when the phrase “a thousand points of light” entered regular usage. Popularized by President George H.W. Bush, the phrase referred to individuals and organizations that provide valuable and even lifesaving work in communities around the country. In 1990, President Bush founded the…
Brandon Cornuke
Manufacturers work hard to minimize disruptions to their operations and invest significant resources to minimize production risk. They also are under constant pressure to find new ways to deliver more value to their customers. Sustainable business growth is critical to delivering this value. Many…
Georgia State University
Georgia State University researchers have successfully designed a new type of artificial vision device that incorporates a novel vertical stacking architecture and allows for greater depth of color recognition and scalability on a microlevel. The research is published in the journal ACS Nano.
“…
Kurt Kleiner, Knowable Magazine
Every time you sit down with your phone in your back pocket, you’re reminded of a fundamental truth: Human bodies are soft and flexible. Electronics aren’t.
But soon there may be devices that can stretch, bend, and even repair themselves when they’re damaged. By harnessing the unusual properties of…
Merilee Kern
Since the dawn of civilization, humans have used natural remedies for their healing properties. Some of the same treatments are still used by billions around the world, based largely on anecdotal evidence and lore. Clinical research on natural treatments is lacking due to costly clinical trials,…
Cybercrime is on the rise. And as we move deeper into the digital age, the era of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution, it’s also growing more sophisticated and severe, with serious consequences. As cyber criminals become more adroit, cybercrime has touched all our lives in one way or another…
Duxin Sun
When you hear the word “nanomedicine,” it might call to mind scenarios like those in the 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage. The film portrays a medical team and robotic submarine shrunk to microscopic size to travel through a man’s body to clear a blood clot in his brain.
Nanomedicine has not reached…
Ben P. Stein
When we talk about measurement units here at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), you’ll typically hear us rattling off the official ones—such as the meter, the second, and the kilogram. These official measurements, which are part of the International System of Units (SI),…
J. Stewart Black
Marjorie, an HR professional, receives a seemingly impossible mandate: She is asked to recruit six Spanish-speaking, front-end programmers with at least 10 years of experience who are able to relocate to Miami—all within a month.
Not so many years ago, this would have been impossible. Today, she…
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Astudy led by researchers at the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory could help make materials design as easy as point-and-click.
The study, published in Nature Partner Journals’ Computational Materials, used an invertible neural network, a type of artificial intelligence that…
Eric Whitley
Unplanned downtime is a major source of costs and loss in productivity for the manufacturing industry. According to IndustryWeek, unplanned downtime costs industrial manufacturers an estimated $50 billion annually. A major cause of such unplanned downtime is usually poor maintenance.
The…
