All Features
Christopher Allan Smith
This series is about planning for the worst that can face us.
It’s jumping-off point is the National Institute of Standards and Technology publication, “A Case Study of the Camp Fire—Fire Progression Timeline,” an epic and thorough study about the wildfire that changed the lives of my family,…
Gleb Tsipursky
When the Covid pandemic swept through the country last year, companies rapidly transitioned employees to working from home (WFH). However, this shift led to growing challenges of WFH burnout and Zoom fatigue.
Unfortunately, organizations treat these issues as day-to-day challenges, instead of…
Quality Digest
(AW-Lake: Oak Creek, WI) -- AW-Lake Process Flow Measurement introduces its Next-Generation Gear Meter Series that offers greater efficiencies in operation with tighter tolerances, higher resolutions, higher standard pressure ratings (6000 psi), improved accuracy, wider turndowns (100:1), and a new…
Jason Spera
In a customer-centered world, meeting customers’ needs is more demanding and business-critical than ever. Simultaneously, manufacturers struggle to reduce operating costs as margins compress and the competitive landscape intensifies. This dichotomy and a pressure to “choose” between reducing costs…
Jim Benson
No matter who you are or what you do, you create systems and live in the systems of others every day. But for some reason, we’re never actually taught lean systems thinking. We think it is natural, that we just sort of “get it.”
On a personal level, we are most often governed by cognitive biases…
Jon Speer
Demonstrating identification and traceability in all quality system processes is a must for medical device companies to comply with FDA regulations. To satisfy this compliance need, companies will need to connect related processes within their quality system to close the loop between related pre-…
Donald J. Wheeler
For more than 40 years it has been common to use the precision to tolerance ratio (P/T ratio) to compare the standard deviation of measurement error with the specified tolerance for a particular product. The purpose of this comparison being an assessment of the utility of the measurement process.…
Caroline Zimmerman
With big data and artificial intelligence (AI) transforming business, it’s almost certain that every executive will need to leverage these technologies at some point to advance their organization—and their career. However, doing so carries a heavy intimidation factor for most leaders, and this is…
Quality Digest
(Allied: Fort Worth, TX) -- Schneider Electric and Allied Electronics & Automation are offering a new limited-feature set of high-quality motor control and protection products priced right for smaller panel builders, OEMs, system integrators, industrial contractors, and more.
The Easy TeSys…
Wade Schroeder
Medical-device usability testing and validation are critical tasks leading up to a medical device’s debut on the market. “Usability” looks at how the user interacts with your device and forms a key component of overall risk management and safety.
If there’s any “spoiler alert” to this article, it’…
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Plastics are a part of nearly every product we use on a daily basis. The average person in the United States generates about 100 kg of plastic waste per year, most of which goes straight to a landfill. A team led by Corinne Scown, Brett Helms, Jay Keasling, and Kristin Persson at Lawrence Berkeley…
Alessandro Messina
A challenge that occurs with the latest generation of electric motors is optimization of the component manufacturing in terms of efficiency, quality, and costs.
Electric motors are a critical factor in the unprecedented global growth trend toward e-mobility. This fast diffusion of electric…
Benjamin Kessler
Suddenly, supply chains are in the spotlight. The practical details of how products arrive on supermarket shelves, for example, gained unwelcome relevance amid last year’s wave of panic buying caused by Covid-19 disruption. At the same time, the environmental damage wrought by wasteful industrial…
Merilee Kern
In many ways, being an effective leader boils down to your ability to influence people—a proficiency that is driven by one’s emotional intelligence (EQ). Leadership is more about soft skills—the ability to inspire, persuade, guide, sway, and communicate in a way that’s “heard” rather than just “…
Manufacturing Expert Predicts Manufacturing as a Service to Emerge From Manufacturing Transformation
LMA Consulting Group
(LMA Consulting: Claremont, CA) -- Manufacturing and supply chain expert, Lisa Anderson, president of LMA Consulting Group Inc., predicts manufacturing as a service (MaaS) will emerge as a result of that manufacturing transformation that is replacing the more traditional manufacturing model. LMA…
(Freedom: Cincinnati) -- Freedom IoT’s latest shop floor software release brings new voice-of-the-customer features and enhancements, including new artificial intelligence (AI) functionality and a self-help video library.
The AI feature notifies users and other systems of adverse machine and…
James Wells
I was talking recently with a friend who runs an academic program at a major U.S. university. She was telling me about solving a problem in her department and how the solution was obvious so she just did it. She then related how one of her colleagues protested that she should have used some Six…
Eric Brown
This story was originally published by MIT News.
Blade Kotelly is a senior lecturer at MIT on design thinking, user interfaces, and innovation. His enthusiasm for cars is intertwined with his passion for innovative design. But despite Kotelly’s love affair with the internal combustion engine, he…
Christopher Allan Smith
By 6:25 a.m., my fate was sealed.
That morning, 10 miles from my front door in Paradise, California, a poorly maintained power line owned by Pacific Gas & Electric arced, dropping molten metal into the brush at its base and starting a fire.
At the time, I was rousing myself and my high-school-…
Enterprise Minnesota
Based in Winona, Minnesota, Alliant Castings is a foundry manufacturing abrasion and impact-resistant castings for a variety of heavy-duty industries. Utilizing the latest technologies, they create custom, proprietary materials to meet their clients' needs for demanding and extreme performance. In…
Quality Digest
(Orange Photonics: New London, NH) -- Orange Photonics is pleased to announce that the LightLab 3 Cannabis Analyzer now reports Delta-8 THC (D8-THC), an increasingly popular cannabinoid found in hemp-derived cannabis products. In addition, Orange Photonics is releasing a new Mobile Monitoring…
(Zetec: Snoqualmie, WA) -- Zetec Inc., a global leader in nondestructive testing solutions, today introduced EMERALD, an advanced compact, industrial phased array ultrasonic testing (PAUT) system with the most powerful and versatile total focusing method (TFM) image processing capability in its…
Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, Knowable Magazine
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
Working from home—formally known as telework—is here to stay. A 2021 survey of approximately 30,000 Americans concluded that, after the pandemic, 20 percent of all work days may continue to take place at home, vs. just 5 percent before.…
Judah Levine
Frequency was originally considered to be the province of musicians. The pitches or frequencies of the notes in a musical scale are defined by ratios—octaves, for example, where the frequency of the higher note is twice the frequency of the lower one.
The 12 notes between octaves in Western music…
Isaac Maw
The ongoing pandemic has pushed many jobs to virtual settings and home-based working environments. In industries outside manufacturing, it can be seen how the pandemic has affected business. For example, take a look at Zoom stock, the price of which quadrupled during the five months following March…
