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Quality Digest
(Food and Drug Administration: Rockville, Maryland) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has unveiled a new Web page that will keep the public informed about the status of post-approval patient studies for certain recently approved medical devices. “FDA is committed to improving its medical…
Researchers Mark Prausnitz and Robyn Schlicher use a confocal microscope to study cells whose membranes have been opened by the application of ultrasound. Georgia Tech Photo: Gary Meek Researchers have shown how ultrasound energy can…
Thomas R. Cutler
Food quality and safety are priorities for consumers, and from Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) to the Bioterrorism Act to lot traceability, food manufacturers are responding. Reputations and brands are at risk when safety concerns and product recalls are front-page news. There…
Thomas R. Cutler
Food quality and safety are priorities for consumers, and from Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) to the Bioterrorism Act to lot traceability, food manufacturers are responding. Reputations and brands are at risk when safety concerns and product recalls are front-page news. There…
Quality Digest
(Schneider Electric: Palatine, Illinois) -- Global power and control specialist Schneider Electric has received the 2007 Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Innovation for North America in the field of power quality (PQ) and energy management solutions. In 2005, Schneider Electric…
Quality Digest
(Intel Corp.: Santa Clara, California) -- Intel Corp. recently announced the 10 winners of the company’s most prestigious award for suppliers, the Supplier Continuous Quality Improvement award. The award, for outstanding commitment to quality and performance excellence in 2006,…
Quality Digest
(Accelper Inc.: Chicago) -- Business executives, entrepreneurs, chief innovation officers, product and business development professionals, investors, creative directors, human resources professionals, and media and marketing leaders are cordially invited to an evening focused on…
Quality Digest
(Airline Quality Rating: Washington, D.C.) -- Hawaiian Airlines has taken the top spot in the 17th annual national Airline Quality Ratin study. This is the first year that Hawaiian Airlines has been included. Jet Blue, which had been ranked first for the past three years, slipped to…
Quality Digest
(IQPC: Iselin, New Jersey) -- International Quality & Productivity Centre will present its fourth annual Canadian Six Sigma Summit May 30–June 1 in Toronto. The event will feature 16 real-world presentations of lean and Six Sigma applications, five interactive workshops, roundtable…
Quality Digest
(Minitab Inc.: State College, Pennsylvania) -- Minitab Inc., the leading global provider of software and services for quality improvement and statistics education, recently announced the opening of Minitab Pty Ltd, its new subsidiary in Australia. The full-service office is located in…
Quality Digest
(Oriel Inc.: Madison, Wisconsin) -- SigmaFlow, a provider of enterprise performance improvement software, and Oriel Inc., a productivity consulting and training organization, have announced an joint offering that integrates Oriel’s lean training content with SigmaFlow’s Project…
Quality Digest
(Instantis: Santa Clara, California) — Instantis, a provider of software for managing top-down performance improvement initiatives like Six Sigma, announced today that it has completed and made available the results of a ground-breaking study on Six Sigma adoption patterns and maturity…
Steven Ouellette
The end is near! Well, at least the end of the Top Ten Stupid Six Sigma Tricks (SSST) countdown. The Heretic soldiers on until his appointment with the stake. This month, we arrive at Stupid Six Sigma Trick #2: Neglecting Daily Management. In this SSST, companies get so starry-eyed over the fancy…
Some folks like to use control charts to analyze gauge study results. When using a control chart in this manner, one can assume that the chart should represent a series of gauge studies conducted over a period of time. In this example, let’s say that each morning a gauge is verified by…
Craig Cochran
A few years go I had the good fortune of doing some consulting with B&C Specialty Products in Hopeulikit, Georgia. B&C does light manufacturing, primarily plastic molding and assembly, and they also distribute imported products produced by companies in the Far East. They have about 150…
Quality Digest
(Department of Commerce: Washington, D.C.) -- Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez is seeking nominations for the 2007 National Medal of Technology, the nation’s highest honor awarded by the President to America’s leading inventors and technological innovators.“The face of competition…
Quality Digest
(American National Standards Institute: New York) -- James Hill, a recognized leader in the building and fire industries, has been selected by the U.S. Celebration of World Standards Day Planning Committee as the 2007 recipient of the prestigious Ronald H. Brown Standards Leadership…
Quality Digest
(American National Standards Institute: New York) -- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently released federal regulations aimed at strengthening the security of chemical facilities nationwide. The final rule, issued April 2, establishes comprehensive risk-based performance…
Quality Digest
(National Institute of Standards and Technology: Gaithersburg, Maryland) -- The Commerce Department’s Advanced Technology Program recently opened a new competition for cost-sharing awards to support high-risk industrial research and development projects. The program offers funding for specific…
Quality Digest
(Delcam Inc.: Salt Lake City) -- Delcam has expanded its reseller network for its FeatureCAM family of CADCAM software in the United States by extending its agreements with two of its most experienced resellers—Cad Cam Systems from Rockford, Illinois, and Programming Plus of New Berlin, Wisconsin—…
Quality Digest
(Hexagon AB: Sweden) -- Hexagon subsidiary ROMER Inc. and FARO Technologies Inc. have reached agreement to settle all outstanding disputes between them. Under the terms of the settlement, patent suits pending in California and Florida, and a lawsuit involving claims of false advertising, will be…
Quality Digest
(National Institute of Standards and Technology: Gaithersburg, Maryland) -- The National Institute of Standards and Technology is hosting a meeting in Gaithersburg, Maryland on April 23 from 1 to 5 p.m.. The meeting will debate the organization of a semiformal consortium of the various consortia…
Fred Mason
A metrologist wants to know that any variations in measurements are the result of variations of the parts being measured, not variations in the measuring devices or their users. Subjective interpretation of inspection or measurement devices is a complex variable that can influence the quality of…
Richard Curtis Ph.D.
The speed, convenience and cost benefits of microliter volume, air displacement pipettes drive the frequent use of these precision instruments. However, pipettes, like all mechanical instruments, are subject to failure, and this—along with the technique of operators—can have a significant effect…
Denise Robitaille
Many of you have probably had the occasional insane day when you thought: “This job would be so much easier if we didn’t have customers to deal with.” Apart from the demands for price concessions and the requests for unreasonable deliveries, there are a whole group of customer traits that can drive…
