All Features
Don Cox
Despite the high ratio of intelligent work-from-home (WFH) business professionals, the current cybersecurity landscape for that work model could best be described as disorganized and dysfunctional. Hackers have been busy exploiting these cyber risks, as evidenced from the reported 300-percent…
Christine Schaefer
If you care about improving your local economy, education, community health, or other aspects of residents’ quality of life, you may benefit from learning about the initiatives of Communities of Excellence 2026. One place you can read a concise summary of the innovative, Baldrige-based nonprofit…
Bryan Christiansen
Root cause analysis is not a singular way to an answer. It is a conceptual framework for investigating the true reasons behind the events we observe. Many frameworks are available to execute RCA that have been tried and tested by experimenters. None of these methods are foolproof, but they provide…
Barbara Cuthill
The internet of things (IoT) offers many attractions for small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs) that may want to integrate IoT into their facilities and operations, or who seek to enter the IoT market with innovative products. However, when venturing into the IoT waters, it’s helpful to be…
Ryan E. Day
Just like its predecessors, this fourth industrial revolution (dubbed Industry 4.0 in 2011) is all about increasing productivity. Unlike the first three revolutions, today’s pivotal technologies hold forth the possibility to also improve efficiency, quality, and human satisfaction.
Steam power,…
Bruce Hamilton
This time of year the abundant ads for junk removal and cheap storage units remind us that it’s time for spring cleaning, an annual pastime that has perhaps been bolstered by the need to unlock extra space in the home during the pandemic. Businesses, too, have managed to find space to accommodate…
Clare Naden
The internet has been one of the biggest winners in the past year’s pandemic, with traffic and transactions reaching unprecedented levels in 2020. Unsurprisingly, the number of malicious attacks and activity has risen with it.
According to INTERPOL Secretary-General Jürgen Stock, “Cybercriminals…
David L. Chandler
This story was originally published by MIT News.
Two MIT professors have proposed a new approach to estimating the risks of exposure to Covid-19 under different indoor settings. The guideline they developed suggests a limit for exposure time, based on the number of people, the size of the space,…
Sabine Terrasi
In yacht and boat building, the most commonly used materials are composites. By combining the positive properties of at least two components, composites often have outstanding features—some of them even specially adapted to their respective areas of application.
It is hardly surprising that they…
Ryan E. Day
Writing a press release is easy. Writing a great press release takes some thought. And great press releases can draw more potential customers into your sphere of influence. Fortunately, writing great marketing copy isn’t all that complicated. Include these three elements and you’re well on your way…
David Darais, Joseph Near
In our last article, we discussed how to determine how many people drink pumpkin spice lattes in a given time period without learning their identifying information. But say, for example, you would like to know the total amount spent on pumpkin spice lattes this year, or the average price of a…
Jon Speer
The medical device technical file is a must-have document for devices to be sold in the European Union (EU) marketplace. The file contains detailed information about your medical device, its design, intended use claims, composition, and clinical evaluations. It’s essentially an “everything you must…
Bryan Christiansen
Root cause analysis (RCA) is the process of finding the basic underlying cause for an effect we observe or experience. In the context of failure analysis, RCA is used for finding the root cause of frequent machine malfunctions or a big machine breakdown. But what exactly is RCA, and how is it done…
Knowledge at Wharton
Technology firms are the drivers of disruption across industries, but things will play out differently for automobiles, according to John Paul MacDuffie, Wharton management professor and director of the school’s Program on Vehicle and Mobility Innovation.
Tomorrow’s vehicles will be built with…
Jim Benson
We want to grow as professionals. We want our products to be better, our know-how to be deeper, our impact to be known and recognized.
This is impossible without continuous improvement.
I have met many mediocre professionals who are mediocre only for one reason: They feel like they are done…
John Baldoni
Leadership is not about the leader. On the other hand, leadership is all about the leader. Garry Ridge, CEO of the WD-40 Co., knows this lesson firsthand.
In 2008, at the start of the Great Recession, when Ridge would travel from office to office and country to country, people would ask him how he…
George Schuetz
Inspection is often subject to the management team’s efforts at cost control or cost containment, as is the case with most other areas in modern manufacturing operations. Although it’s sound business judgement to maximize the value of every dollar, it also means that hard choices must be made when…
Vincent Dominé
Remember the last time you tried to change your habits in a big way? Perhaps you made a vow to eat healthier, or to listen more actively during meetings. Whatever it was, whether you ultimately succeeded or succumbed to the force of old habits, you almost certainly struggled. You may have done well…
Sabine Terrasi
Strong price pressure combined with high-quality requirements—the beverage and bottle industry faces the classic dilemma of many industries. This is also the case in the quality control department of SOLOCAP, a French manufacturer of plastic caps.
SOLOCAP is a subsidiary of La Maison Mélan Moutet…
Nate Burke
Search engine optimization (SEO) has come a long way, with continued developments, advancements, and algorithm tweaks giving business owners, brand agencies, and marketing gurus more than just a digital headache.
But traditionally, SEO has been a numbers game, with ranking positions the all-…
Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick
The civil rights movement and Moore’s Law are colliding to transform politics. On the street, smartphone technology is being used to document social life as never before, putting power into the hands of the public and making eyewitnesses of us all.
This same technology, bolted onto cheap and easy-…
Donald J. Wheeler
In my article, “Tightened 100% Inspection” (Quality Digest, March 29, 2021), we found that the excess costs associated with tightened specification limits are generally prohibitive. Here we consider the question: “Under what conditions can we use tightened specifications without incurring undue…
Emily Newton
Food manufacturers must carry out numerous specific processes to check that the foods they produce and distribute are safe for consumers. Analytical testing plays a vital role in meeting that goal. Here’s a look at how such examinations raise food quality and purchaser trust.
Checking foods for…
Henrich Greve
In March 2001, publishing executive Ann Godoff—then in her third year as president, publisher, and editor-in-chief of Random House Trade Publishing Group (RHTPG)—was the subject of a gushing profile in New York Magazine. Laced with tributes from authors and peers (“She’s the real deal,” rhapsodized…
Janet Woodcock, Judy McMeekin
During the past year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approach to foreign and domestic inspections for food and medical products has been both risk-based and deliberate. The Covid-19 pandemic required us to rework our business operations so that we could carry out our public health…
