All Features
ASQ
(ASQ: Milwaukee) -- Lean Six Sigma could help reduce the soaring national debt but faces some key challenges in government implementations, according to a new survey by the American Society for Quality (ASQ), the leading global network of quality experts. The biggest obstacle, survey…
Wiley
(Wiley: Hoboken, NJ) -- Addressing the need for the study of supply-chain management to evolve at the same pace as it’s real-world practice, Fundamentals of Supply Chain Theory, by Lawrence V. Snyder and Zuo-Jun Max Shen (Wiley, 2011) presents the methodology and foundations of the topic and…
Association of State and Territorial Health Officials ASTHO
(ASTHO: Arlington, VA) -- The Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) has launched the first national voluntary accreditation program for public health departments. As a founding organization of PHAB, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) believes accreditation will…
Edmund Optics
(Edmund Optics: Barrington, NJ) -- Edmund Optics Inc., supplier of the world’s largest inventory of optics and optical components to industry, has introduced Laser Speckle Reducers. These versatile devices are ideal for a variety of beam homogenization, 3-D scanning, metrology, microscopy, and…
Hamamatsu
(Hamamatsu: Hamamatsu, Japan) -- Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. has long been studying terahertz technologies as a part of its pursuit of opto-electronics possibilities. As a result, the company has developed an instrument for terahertz attenuated total reflection (ATR) spectroscopy that features its…
FIPA
(FIPA: Cary, NC) -- Commercially available standard rotary units can be too heavy for some applications. Every gram saved achieves better dynamics, particularly for grippers with several rotary units. FIPA Inc.’s newly developed miniature rotary unit has been reduced from around 900 g to 85 g…
University of Arizona
A University of Arizona (UA) engineering professor may have a solution to a U.S. infrastructure problem that’s growing deadlier each year. The National Gas Technology Institute (GTI) recently published a test report approving a new technology called PipeMedic, which uses carbon and glass…
American Management Association AMA
I
t’s easy to complain about the boss sometimes. Many of us are guilty of the “If I were running things, it would be different!” rant among co-workers. But, it’s not always easy being on top, and the boss likely doesn’t always associate you with blue skies and rainbows, either. Take the initiative…
Mark R. Hamel
I love simple questions. Specifically, I love questions that are ostensibly simple but can spur deep reflection about important stuff… and ultimately improvement.
I like the question, “So what?” Those two words seek to identify the “actionability” of things like performance metrics and…
Creaform Inc.
(Creaform: Lévis, Quebec, Canada) -- Creaform, a leader in portable 3-D optical measurement technologies, has introduced the MaxSHOT 3D optical coordinate measuring system.
The MaxSHOT 3D adds the accuracy and speed of photogrammetry to the wide range of applications already possible with…
Steven Ouellette
Yesterday in “Blocking Out the Nuisance, Part One,” we saw the results of an experiment done by That Guy Over There that didn’t control for the environmental variable of humidity. There was a lot of variability in that experiment, so we didn’t see a whole lot of improvement to be made. I also…
CRC Press
(CRC Press: Boca Raton, FL) -- The managerial practices that successfully drove industry for decades have become insufficient to support the rapidly changing business landscape. Companies around the world are being challenged to improve performance, reshape operations, and adapt swiftly to new…
Uson
(Uson: Houston) -- Quality engineers who use leak test instrumentation on production lines for inspecting seal integrity of products for accurate measurement of leaks or flow rates can now achieve both higher quality and more efficient operations through improved training offered free by Uson,…
Thomson Reuters
(Thomson Reuters: Ann Arbor, MI) -- Health care spending is 10-percent higher for hospital employees than it is for the general employee population, according to a recent study by the health care business of Thomson Reuters.
The gap is wider when employees’ dependents are factored in.…
SAE International
(SAE International: Troy, MI) -- A global group of aerospace companies has announced the formation of the International Aerospace Environmental Group (IAEG) to help develop understanding amongst the global aerospace industry of environmental requirements faced by the world’s supply chain.…
i-nexus
(i-nexus: Coventry, UK) -- Is nonvalue-added (NVA) activity draining your operational excellence resources? Are spreadsheets not as flexible and scalable as you need them to be? Do you need to find a more effective way to create the reports demanded by senior managers? The evidence is clear:…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
A few years ago I was surfing the Internet on a Friday afternoon and discovered a contest asking amateurs to make TV commercials for a famous ketchup brand. The prize was several thousand dollars, and your commercial would actually run on television. Instantly I had an idea for a romantic…
Johns Hopkins University
A digital dumping ground lies inside most computers, a wasteland where old, rarely used, and unneeded files pile up. Such data can deplete precious storage space, bog down the system's efficiency, and sap its energy. Conventional rubbish trucks can't clear this invisible byte blight. But two…
Steven Ouellette
No, I am not writing about going, “Lalalalala! I can't hear you!” when someone is trying to tell you bad news. In the last couple of articles, we have been exploring how to properly perform research in industry. In this one, we will take a look at how you can handle variables in the real world that…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the joint technical committee (JTC) ISO/IEC JTC 1—“Information Technology” of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) announced formal approval of a package of W3C web…
The Advisory Board Co.
In our current health care environment, hospitals face increasing urgency to strengthen relationships with physicians. Among the concerns are an aging population driving increased demand for health care (as well as a growing Medicare population), reimbursement reductions and changes, and…
Vickie L. Milazzo
In today’s world, we’re constantly sabotaged by nonproductive energy wasters. There are e-mails to read, Facebook statuses to update, receipts to locate for that already-late expense report, dishes to be washed, files to be organized, and on, and on, and on. These are the easy, albeit often…
Invensys Operations Management
(Invensys: Plano, TX) -- Invensys Operations Management, a global provider of technology systems, software solutions, and consulting services to the manufacturing and infrastructure operations industries, will host its annual series of international user and industry events. OpsManage 11, a…
American National Standards Institute ANSI
(ANSI: New York) -- The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) wishes to invite all interested parties to register for World Standards Week 2011 (WSW), to be held Oct. 11–14, 2011, in Washington, DC. Each year, WSW brings together members of the standards- and conformity-assessment…
IBM
(IBM: Armonk, NY) -- WellPoint Inc. and IBM announced an agreement to create the first commercial applications of the IBM Watson technology. Under the agreement, WellPoint will develop and launch Watson-based solutions to help improve patient care through the delivery of up-to-date, evidence-…