All Features
Steven Ouellette
I seem to be thinking about the measurement phase a lot recently. I suppose it’s because I’ve seen some teams working hard on problems that turned out to be nothing more than problems with measurement. Let me give you an example.Once upon a time, I was responsible for a product that was frequently…
Quality Digest
(Washington: Army News Service) -- The Army has cut the time it takes to rebuild battle-damaged Humvees with a new assembly-line process at Red River Army Depot, Texas.Red River was recently one of 12 Army commands to receive the Shingo Prize Public Sector Award for Excellence in manufacturing…
Juana Bordas
Not only is the world getting flatter, it’s becoming more colorful. As globalization becomes a reality, more and more companies will employ people of every race, nationality, religious background, and age group. These people will work side by side in the same office building, others a hemisphere…
Quality Digest
(Catalyst: New York) -- Fortune 500 companies with the highest representation of women board directors attained significantly higher financial performance, on average, than those with the lowest representation of women board directors, according to Catalyst’s most recent report, “The Bottom Line:…
Quality Digest
(ARS: Washington) -- The Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has unveiled an Internet resource to help smaller companies answer food-safety questions and help food processors make science-based food-production decisions. The Predictive Microbiology Information Portal…
Quality Digest
(RWE Power: Ludwigshafen, Munich) -- The Linde Group, BASF, and RWE Power have agreed on the development of new processes for carbon dioxide (CO2) capture from combustion gases in coal-fired power plants today. The cooperation will comprise the construction and operation of a pilot facility at the…
Quality Digest
(NIST: Gaithersburg, Maryland) -- Materials researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, together with colleagues from IBM and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have pushed the measurement of thin films to the edge—literally—to produce the first data on how the…
Quality Digest
(Labsphere Inc.: North Sutton, New Hampshire) -- Labsphere Inc. is co-sponsoring a light measurement seminar in cooperation with its Halma sister company Ocean Optics, and its sales partner, Pro-Lite Technology.To be held at the Photonics Cluster in Birmingham, England, on Nov. 1, 2007, the…
William Tandler
What is GD&T, anyway? The Greatest Design Tool ever, or a whole bunch of Gol-Derned Trouble? Actually, geometric dimensioning and tolerancing is both, and worth every penny.
Only with the help of GD&T can we test and guarantee the functionality of parts and assemblies on the design…
Quality Digest
(Leica Geosystems: St. Gallen, Switzerland) -- By the end of this decade, four independent global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) will be operational. Today only the American GPS system is fully operational, and the Russian GLONASS system is rapidly approaching full operational status. These…
Quality Digest
The 2008 Measurement Science Conference welcomes Miguel Cerezo, of Amgen, as the President of the 2008 MSC. The MSC will be held at the Disneyland Hotel during the week of March 10 through 14, 2008, and will present the latest educational information available as in the previous conferences.
The…
Fred Mason
Many measurements assume that a measuring device performs in the same way throughout its measuring range. In other words, a 1 mm distance measured near the center of a machine will measure 1 mm at its periphery. But will it? This column discusses some of the factors that can cause nonlinear…
Quality Digest
(Laser Design Inc.: Minneapolis) -- York Technical College is a community college with associate degree and certificate programs. The Machine Tool Technology department has built a worldwide reputation for excellence on the merits of its 3-D center’s cutting-edge equipment and in-demand…
Quality Digest
(OSHA: Washington D.C.) -- The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has announced the outcome of its lead-in-construction standard lookback review in a recent Federal Register.“Employers and employees in the construction industry stand to benefit from the results…
Quality Digest
(ANSI: Washington, D.C.) -- Filling a prescription is faster and more convenient than ever thanks to a new standard from ANSI-accredited standards developer the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs Inc. Providing general guidelines for developers of pharmacy or physician management…
Denise Robitaille
Last month’s column dealt with how to effectively communicate a finding of nonconformity in an audit report. It’s pretty straightforward: Here’s the requirement; there’s the evidence. They don’t match. Observations, which are now often called opportunities for improvement (OFIs), aren’t so cut and…
Quality Digest
(ISO: Geneva, Switzerland) -- The new ISO 14121-1 standard on risk assessment for machinery will help designers and manufacturers reduce associated safety hazards. The use of machinery is key to the development of any country. However, accidents do occur and can cause irreversible damage or…
Quality Digest
H. James Harrington has been awarded the Simon Collier Quality Award by the Los Angeles section of the American Society for Quality. The award will be presented at a November 14 dinner meeting at the Holiday Inn Torrance Gateway in Torrance, California. Harrington will be honored for his…
Stephen C. Welch
Many companies view production maintenance as a necessary evil, and through the years, manufacturers have simply accepted maintenance as-is and made little little or no effort to improve it. But some forward-thinking manufacturers, committed to lean processes, and their outsourced maintenance…
Quality Digest
(NSF: Ann Arbor, Michigan) -- NSF International, an independent, not-for-profit organization committed to public health protection, recently announced the launch of a new air-emissions certification program. The program will initially certify for low volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions of…
American National Standards Institute ANSI
(ANSI: New York) -- The Swedish Standards Institute has submitted a proposal to the International Organization for Standardization for a new international management systems standard on the subject of road traffic safety.
According to a World Health Organization report, road traffic is the cause of…
Quality Digest
(NIST: Gaithersburg, Maryland) -- How do you measure something that is 14 times lighter than air and invisible? That’s just one of the tasks National Institute of Standards and Technology Weights and Measures Division staff have taken on to prepare the nation for the hydrogen economy.Under an…
Quality Digest
(Juran: Southby, Connecticut) -- Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) has improved the way senior executives at Masco Builder Cabinet Group view and manage their business. DFSS is a methodology that focuses on designing products or services in a manner than ensures cost-effectiveness and efficiency of…
Quality Digest
In a recent blog entry, Michael J. Webb, coauthor with Tom Gorman of Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way, says that an important management system for senior executives is one that measures the costs of production. Webb adds that executives must know not just the total cost of production, but…
Quality Digest
(North Carolina State University: Raleigh, North Carolina) – the North Carolina State University College of Textiles has teamed with MoreSteam.com to provide Web-based Six Sigma training as a flexible and affordable alternative to traditional classroom training methods. A complete suite of…
