National Quality Assurance USA recently announced its accreditation through the ElectroStatic Discharge Association to provide auditing services against ANSI/ESD S20.20:1999.

The accreditation will allow NQA USA to help organizations develop electrostatic discharge control programs. The ANSI standard addresses requirements to design, establish, implement and maintain electrostatic discharge control programs to protect electrical parts, assemblies and equipment susceptible to ESD damage.

Pilgrim Software recently announced the availability of its SmartAudit Offline solution.

The suite is based on Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003, though it’s a new and separately licensed add-on to Pilgrim’s SmartAudit version 7.03.5 internal and external audit management system. It allows users to perform remote offsite audits or any audit where a network or Internet connection isn’t available.

As organizations pursue quality and value, many find that Six Sigma alone isn’t enough to compete in the global marketplace. The addition of quality function deployment, however, often translates into increased functionality, quality and profitability.

International TechneGroup Inc. will host a teleconference seminar, “QFD At Its Best: Enabling Your Organization,” at 2 p.m. on Aug. 26.

Vought Aircraft Industries Inc. recently signed a contract with Leica Geosystems to buy six laser tracking systems for its manufacturing operations in Dallas.

Vought reports it will extend the contract over a span of four years to replace its existing measurement systems with approximately 24 Leica LTD800s and LTD600 laser tracking systems. The contract value could total $4 million.

DVT Corp. recently announced the availability of a new PC-based object linking and embedding for process control server designed to work with the company’s Legend series of smart camera-based machine vision systems.

OPC technology can eliminate expensive custom interfaces and drivers normally required for interconnecting equipment and moving data throughout the organization.

Hexagon AB added to its market share recently by acquiring ROMER CimCore Inc., a consolidation that is already underway.

ROMER CimCore Inc., which has operations in Carlsbad, California, and Farmington Hills, Michigan, manufactures and markets metrology equipment used widely in the automotive, aerospace and general industrial markets. Its products include portable coordinate measuring machines, software and various enhancement accessories.

July marked the 20th anniversary of the Coordinate Measurement Systems Conference, the only conference solely devoted to the users, services and OEM manufacturers of close-tolerance coordinate measurement systems, software and peripherals.

This year’s conference and exhibition was held in San Jose, California, and included products from more than 40 vendors, including FARO Technologies Inc., Leica Geosystems, Metrologic Instruments Inc. and Romer CIMCore.

The National Committee for Quality Assurance recently released the newest version of its comprehensive Quality Compass database.

For the first time, the database includes a measure of flu shots given to adults aged 50-64 last year. The metric is important, reports the NCQA, because influenza hospitalizes 120,000 older adults and kills 40,000 people annually.

ASI DataMyte was recently awarded a “People Make Quality Happen” award by General Motors.

The manufacturer received the award for its 501 Fit Gate program, implemented to check gap and flush and vehicle body panels during final assembly. The program replaced an inefficient “carrot stick” method of measuring gap and flush, which increased quality and decreased defective shipments.

The new version of AssurX’s CATSWeb Enterprise Quality Tracking System includes new features that increase user productivity.

The additions of CATSWeb dynamic forms and full-text search features are the centerpieces of the new release. Dynamic forms allows users to adapt based on prior inputs during the data entry process. Other features and typical uses include: