All Features
Mike Micklewright
Fourteen months ago, I changed careers. I had been an independent consultant for 17 years (I still do public speaking), built a good practice and then gave it all away to go back into the corporate world as a vice president of global continuous improvement and supplier development for a high-growth…
Mettler-Toledo
(Mettler-Toledo: Greifensee, Switzerland) -- Following its acquisition by Mettler-Toledo, Pharmacontrol Electronic GmbH (PCE), specialists in intelligent vision inspection solutions, is expanding the reach of its track-and-trace technologies in Europe, the United States, and Asia. With the…
Jay Arthur—The KnowWare Man
Although Quality Digest often has in-depth articles about the nuances of control charts, I’ve found that many beginners are at a loss to figure out how to organize their data, especially in service industries such as health care, hotels, and food. They complain that the examples are all…
Reverseengineering.com
(ReverseEngineering.com: La Jolla, CA) -- ReverseEngineering.com, developer and marketer of CAD integrated 3-D reverse engineering, scanning, and inspection software, now supports a high-speed, binary database software add-in for point-cloud processing for SolidWorks Standard and SolidWorks Premium…
Siemens PLM Software
(Siemens: Plano, TX) -- Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Industry Automation Division and a developer of product life-cycle management (PLM) software and services, has announced a new product in the Teamcenter software portfolio called Active Workspace, an intuitive, highly…
Donald J. Wheeler
Last month in “Exact Answers to the Wrong Questions” we looked at how we can compute useful limits with as few as six to 10 values. In this column I would like to consider the question of how to use the limits on a process behavior chart to understand the underlying process. In order to do this, we…
Institute for Healthcare Improvement IHI
(IHI: Cambridge, MA) -- The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), an independent organization that cultivates concepts and knowledge sharing for improving health care worldwide, and the BMJ Group, an organization committed to improving quality and safety in health care, are hosting the 17th…
MoreSteam.com
(MoreSteam.com: Columbus, OH) -- On April 18, 2012, MoreSteam.com, a global provider of online lean Six Sigma training and blended learning technology, will sponsor a one-day continuous improvement conference in Seeheim, Germany for education and networking. This no-cost event is open to process…
Jossey-Bass
(Jossey-Bass: San Francisco) -- Continuous improvement, understanding complex systems, and promoting innovation are all part of the landscape of overcoming the challenges that today’s companies face. Amy Edmondson shows that organizations thrive, or fail to thrive, based on how well the small…
Georgia Institute of Technology
In a busy laboratory at the Fuller E. Callaway Jr. Manufacturing Research Center, a researcher from the Georgia Tech School of Mechanical Engineering is using a novel digital technology to cast complex metal parts directly from computer designs, dramatically reducing both development and…
(NTOCC: Washington, D.C.) -- The National Transitions of Care Coalition (NTOCC), an organization dedicated to improving patient transitions through the health care system—i.e., when the patient leaves one care setting and moves to another care setting—has launched a new tool to facilitate the…
Mark R. Hamel
Lean transformations might be easier if we possessed some measure of the sixth sense—extrasensory perception (ESP).
Sort of like in the 1999 psychological thriller film, The Sixth Sense, we might be inclined to whisper repeatedly that, “We see concrete heads.” You know, that lean euphemism for…
Mahr Inc.
(Mahr Federal: Providence, RI) -- Mahr Federal, designer and manufacturer of production dimensional measuring technology, will be featuring the addition of an economical and powerful new skidless surface evaluation system to its MarSurf line of mobile surface metrology systems at Manufacturing 4…
IBM
(IBM: New York) -- Small businesses, which are catalysts for the U.S. economy, have been given access to the supply chains of 15 large corporations through a free website called Supplier Connection. This portal is similar to the Universal College Application, where a potential vendor need only fill…
Thomson Reuters
(Reuters: New York) -- A program to pay hospitals bonuses for hitting key performance measures, or dock them if they miss, failed to improve the health outcomes of patients, according to a large, long-term study.
The study could lead to a reexamination of financial incentives in health care, as…
Wiley
(Wiley: Hoboken, NJ) -- Have you thought about using lean in your business or organization, but are not really sure how to implement it? Or perhaps you’re already using lean, but you need to get up to speed. Lean for Dummies, Second Edition, by Natalie J. Sayer and Bruce Williams (Wiley, 2012)…
Strategy
(Booz & Co.: New York) -- Confirming pessimism about the state of the pharmaceutical industry, a recent survey of U.S.- and European Union-based pharmaceutical sales and marketing executives reveals that 68 percent believe “the current business model is broken.” The survey, conducted jointly by…
Knowledge at Wharton
By now, the story is familiar: On Aug. 5, 2010, 33 miners were trapped 2,000 feet below ground at the San Jose mine in Chile’s Atacama Desert. During their first 17 days without contact with the surface and for weeks thereafter, the miners organized themselves for survival under the leadership of…
NSF International
(NSF: Ann Arbor, MI) -- All major plumbing codes are now requiring that plastic piping products comply with NSF/ANSI Standard 14—“Plastics piping system components and related materials,” including the Uniform Plumbing Code (UPC). The International Plumbing Code, International Residential Code, and…
To remain the valuable business system that it currently is, ISO 9001 needs to continue to evolve, ensuring that organizations of all sizes, complexities, and locations see a clear connection between their strategic objectives and their quality management system (QMS). It is not just about meeting…
Stewart Anderson
A new book on strategy recently crossed my desk, and I have to say it is an excellent read. It’s called Understanding Michael Porter, by Joan Magretta (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011). Porter’s ideas and concepts are foundational to the subject of competitive strategy, and it is always good to…
American National Standards Institute ANSI
(ANSI: New York) -- On April 25, 2012, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), coordinator of the private-sector-led U.S. voluntary standardization system, will host an exploratory meeting to examine the need for an Energy Efficiency Standards Panel (EESP) to develop a standardization…
ISSISSIPPI
(ISSISSIPPI: Columbus, OH) -- On April 1, 2012, International Six Sigma Institute and Secret Society for Imperious Professionals of Process Improvement (ISSISSIPPI) has announced its new Less-Than-Free MBB, a breakthrough online certification program for the process improvement marketplace.
Buoyed…
Banner Medical
Banner Medical is committed to an ambitious approach to quality assurance, one developed specifically for the evolving, critical needs of the medical device industry. The company believes this investment achieves multiple payoffs—in relationship-building with customers, in risk mitigation, and in…
CRC Press
(CRC Press: Boca Raton, FL) -- Oh, it’s new! I want it now. Ho-hum... what’s next? Consumers’ ever-growing appetite to acquire new products, and their short courtship with them, has kept manufacturers busy not only expending resources at an alarming rate, but also depleting these resources and…
