All Features
Dennis Bradley
Europe’s Reduction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive identifies six hazardous substances and their maximum permissible levels within electrical and electronic equipment. RoHS imposes upon producers of such goods responsibility for knowing whether their finished products contain…
Quality Digest
(RABQSA: Sydney) -- Worldwide standards in asset and personnel security management systems are about to improve dramatically with the launch this week of an internationally recognized Security Management System (SecMS) Auditor Certification Scheme. The scheme provides international recognition for…
Quality Digest
Dozens of standards developers from around the world met in San Francisco recently for the annual meeting of the International Accreditation Forum’s technical and executive committees. The meeting, held March 24–30, included day-long breakout sessions for several of the technical committee’s work…
Quality Digest
(LRQA: Coventry, England) -- Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance has been awarded Designated Operational Entity status by the Clean Development Mechanism executive board related to validation for an additional seven scopes. The Kyoto Protocol requires that to be eligible for emissions credits, a CDM…
Quality Digest
(CyberShift: Parsippany, New Jersey) -- CyberShift, a provider of global workforce management and expense management software and services, was recently selected to the 2007 START-IT 125, an annual list of the most influential manufacturing technology providers as determined by the editors and…
Michel Podevyn
In the old days at Soliant LLC in Lancaster, South Carolina, employees pushed 275-lb drums filled with acrylic resin powder to a scale for weighing and adding to a mix. Once the powder was weighed out, two employees manually scooped 1.5 lb at a time from the drums to the mixing vessel, the…
Quality Digest
(University of Maryland: College Park, Maryland) -- The University of Maryland, along with U.S. Senators Barbara Mikulski and Benjamin Cardin, today recognized nine high-performing organizations with the Maryland Performance Excellence Awards.The awards, Maryland’s highest distinction given for…
Bruce Rayner
(Technology Forecasters: Alameda, California) -- It seems everyone is trimming down these days. A soon-to-be-published study conducted by Technology Forecasters Inc. and Electronics Supply & Manufacturing, revealed a wealth of insight on the state of lean in electronics. Among the…
Quality Digest
(Sutherland Global Services: Chennai, India) -- The Indian Statistical Institute, in association with the Quality Council of India and the National Institution for Quality & Reliability, recently named Sutherland Global Services the 2007 All India Six Sigma Contest winner for…
Quality Digest
Conference organizer WCBF will host its 4th annual Six Sigma in Financial Services Conference in May in New York City. The event will address challenges for leadership and senior executives in the financial services industry, and feature case studies and interactive workshops designed…
Quality Digest
Cummins Inc. will highlight a selection of its best Six Sigma projects at an upcoming expo that will be held May 8 in Columbus, Indiana. The Six Sigma Project Expo is an opportunity for employees—and the public—to get an inside look at how Cummins’ employees are pushing for process and…
Steve Wise
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 recording…
Praveen Gupta
Most of us spend our time being busy. We expect a lot, compare our belongings with those of others and feel miserable about the miss-outs. We complain about the way life treats us. While thinking about my New Year’s resolution for 2007, I looked for an opportunity for self-improvement.I…
Quality Digest
(Embry-Riddle: Daytona Beach, Florida) -- The Center for Professional Education at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is offering certified Six Sigma Green Belt and Black Belt online courses in association with the American Society for Quality, that prepare individuals for ASQ’s…
Quality Digest
(Linetec: Wausau, Wisconsin) -- Linetec has won the 2006 Wisconsin Manufacturer of the Year Grand Award for overall outstanding achievement in the large company category. Linetec is one of the nation’s largest paint and anodize finishers and one of just four companies in the state, and…
Quality Digest
(Georgia Oglethorpe) -- Georgia’s highest honor for organizational performance excellence—the Georgia Oglethorpe Award—will be presented on Sept 26–27 at the Loudermilk Center in downtown Atlanta.The event recognizes many Georgia organizations for their journeys and achievements in…
Quality Digest
(International Organization for Standardization) -- The world’s leading international standards organizations have adopted a harmonized approach to address the inclusion of patented technology in standards. The International Electrotechnical Commission, International Organization for…
Quality Digest
(The American National Standards Institute; Washington, D.C.) -- From air quality to children’s toys and from alternative sources of energy to security and privacy on the Internet, standards and conformity assessment programs have become the tools that bolster social progress and…
Quality Digest
The International Register of Certificated Auditors has announced the launch of its new information technology (IT) service management systems auditor certification program, developed in response to the release of the international standard ISO/IEC 20000, the first worldwide standard…
Bill Kalmar
Recent department store sales figures in the Wall Street Journal are interesting and intriguing. Despite a slow economy in parts of the nation and frigid February weather in some states where several retailers experienced a decrease in sales, some high-priced retailers had exceptional results. What…
Quality Digest
(Sparta Systems Inc.; Holmdel, New Jersey) Sparta Systems Inc., the maker of TrackWise, and an enterprise quality and compliance process management software provider, has released the Beta version of the TrackWise eMDR Submission Manager software. The add-on software enables medical…
Quality Digest
Five pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities scattered around the globe recently received Facility of the Year awards for significantly advancing the industry’s efforts to produce higher-quality medicines at lower costs. The winners are: Cook Pharmica—Facility of the Year for Facility…
Quality Digest
(Underwriters Laboratories Inc.; Northbrook, Illinois) -- Underwriters Laboratories Inc., a world leader in product safety testing, and certification and management system registrations, recently unveiled a service for the medical device industry that streamlines the regulatory…
James M. Anderson
An ABC News/Washington Post survey in 2003 found that for the first time, 54 percent of Americans were dissatisfied with the overall quality of health care in the United States. In 2006, the Commonwealth Fund released results of an international survey that measured 37 areas of quality…
Quality Digest
(Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Inc., Vancouver) -- Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Inc., global specialty pharmaceutical and medical device company, recently announced the appointment of Victor Diaz as senior vice president, global manufacturing and supply chain management.“With his significant…
