All Features
David Hart
Climate plans are the order of the day in the presidential primary campaign because carbon pollution is a global threat of unique proportions. But it’s worth asking whether candidates’ plans are based in the reality of the climate, the economy, and the election.
All three dimensions must come…
Thomas R. Cutler
Quality control and inventory control are equally important to the ongoing success of all manufacturing businesses. Both form the basis of an efficient organization that operates at high productivity levels, minimizes waste, and delivers quality products to meet or exceed consumers’ expectations.…
Pawel Korzynski
Dell is doing it. MasterCard, too. Even universities, not exactly bastions of social media influence, are embracing it. Employee advocacy in social media is gaining currency as an effective way to promote an organization by the very people who work in it. Rather than creating ads or hiring social…
Kevin Meyer
Most of us have learned that being busy does not mean you’re being productive, and that multitasking leads to being less productive—although I still see that being harped on as a “skill” on resumes and profiles. Leading organizations manage by clearly defined objectives rather than arbitrary and…
The QA Pharm
Weekly CGMP Quiz 1: Part 210 & 211 Subpart A General Provisions. Use with your team for training credit!
This is the first of eleven quizzes on CGMPs that will appear weekly on QA Pharm. Try it yourself, and use it as a discussion tool for your staff groups. Also, each quiz will have one…
Dustin Poppendieck
On August 29, 2005, I was starting my first semester teaching freshman environmental engineering majors at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. At the exact same time, Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi with 190 kph (120 mph) winds and a storm surge in excess of 6 meters (…
Heather Thompson
Software as a medical device (SaMD) is a growing sector in medical device technology. Through the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, SaMD has the power to influence health on a global scale as well as allow for personalization in medicine and life-saving therapies.
Medical device…
Matt Kunkel
Third-party vendors are increasingly working with their own third parties (fourth and fifth parties), spreading your data across many different vendors. This can make your company an easy target for cybersecurity threats, especially if your organization is a hospital or part of the healthcare…
Jennifer Chu
In today’s factories and warehouses, it’s not uncommon to see robots whizzing about, shuttling items or tools from one station to another. For the most part, robots navigate pretty easily across open layouts. But they have a much harder time winding through narrow spaces to carry out tasks such as…
ISO
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly ubiquitous in various industry sectors, establishing a common terminology for AI and examining its various applications is more important than ever. In the international standardization arena, much work is being undertaken by ISO/IEC’s joint…
Chad Kymal
With the advent of the internet, cloud, and electronic workflows, what is the future of documented management systems? Do we continue with a structure of quality manual, processes, work instructions, and forms and checklists? How do we imagine the future of documented management systems?
For…
Jim Benson
Editor’s note: This is episode two in the Respect for People series. Click here for episode one.
When we build any working system, we need to understand and appreciate how people naturally exchange information. They withhold some things, say some other things. Some of this is fear, some is…
Donald J. Wheeler
Lean production is built on the explicit assumption that each step is operated predictably and capably. Predictable operation can only be achieved and maintained by using process behavior charts. But short production runs and multiple products make it hard to see how to use process behavior charts…
Julie Winkle Giulioni
If you’re like many leaders, you are knee-deep in preparing strategies and tactics to drive success in the new fiscal year. And that prompted me, in the first part or this two-part series, to pose the question: “What if leaders brought the same thoughtfulness, rigor, and discipline that we apply to…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
I recently wrote a column about loyalty, which got me thinking about trust. I wondered who is in my life that I trust, and who that I don’t trust. It didn’t take me long to realize that I trust everyone in my life because I shed those whom I don’t trust.
As I pondered trust, I recalled a woman I…
The company Grace Science was born through an inversion of the normal business sequence. Typically, if an entrepreneur launches a startup and it succeeds, the founders will create a nonprofit, declaring, “We want to give back.” In this case, the nonprofit spawned the startup.
The company’s…
Larry Emond
No matter where you’re located, you might think that Schneider Electric is a native company. It’s an easy assumption to make. The €25.7-billion energy, automation, and software solutions company is officially headquartered in France, but its strategy is to localize to the markets it’s in—and it’s…
Brian Charles
It’s often difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when things change, but it usually happens faster than one imagines. Old technology gets replaced by new innovations; first by early adopters, and then, suddenly, by everyone. A century ago silent movies reigned, then talkies, and now 3D and virtual…
Dileep Thatte
According to information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), every year 48 million people in the United States get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from foodborne diseases. That means one in six people in the United States get sick from contaminated food every 12…
William A. Levinson
How will the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement affect greenhouse gas emissions? Quality Digest editor in chief Dirk Dusharme and Mike Richman, principal at Richman Business Media Consulting, point out that most manufacturers already recognize that waste, including waste of energy…
Ken Voytek
Productivity matters. It matters a lot. Yet it often seems that folks talk about productivity but don’t do anything about it. At least, it feels that way to me when I go outside of the MEP National Network, where we’re always focused on enhancing manufacturing productivity. And you could say that…
Julie Winkle Giulioni
It’s the time of year when many leaders find themselves consumed by the business planning process. They scour through historical data, evaluate the current state, scan the environment, forecast the future, identify multiple scenarios that may present themselves, consider alternatives that will…
Naphtali Hoff
Let’s assume that you want to delegate a task that’s been sitting on your desk since forever. You know what needs to get done and have (finally) found (and trained) the right person to do it. Let’s call this person Sally.
You sit down with Sally to plan the process. The two of you review…
Jody Muelaner
Measurement is often seen as nonvalue-added work. However, if we properly account for the expected costs involved in passing defects on to customers, then the increased value of the product can be clearly shown. This approach makes it possible to make rational, data-based decisions about when to…
Emily Safrin
When Scarlett hung up the phone, she was close to tears. Even more unexpectedly, so was the customer service representative on the other end. How did a seemingly simple inquiry end in two people so frustrated they were on the verge of a breakdown?
Scarlett had called to resolve a mistaken charge…
