All Features
On December 29, 2006, passengers of American Airlines’ Flight 1348 were confined in a parked aircraft for eight hours. By this time, “The toilets on the American Airlines jet were overflowing. There was no water to be found and no food except for a box of pretzel bags.” This fiasco was…
Fred Mason
Last month, I talked about vision vs. video and brought up the possibility of confusion between inspection and measurement. Some think that inspection is qualitative and measurement is quantitative. I can’t say I’ll put the matter to rest, but I’ll present a few different…
NIST
(National Institute of Standards and Technology, Washington, D.C.) -- A new report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), An Assessment of the United States Measurement System: Addressing Measurement Barriers to Accelerate Innovation, details results of the agency’s first…
Quality Digest
(Reno, Nevada) -- Think you have an interesting metrology project or issue that would make a good presentation? Write it up and get it to the Coordinate Metrology Systems Conference organizations, who are accepting presentation proposals for the CMSC’s annual conference until April 10. The CMSC…
Quality Digest
(College Français de Metrologie, Lille, France) -- The 13th annual International Metrology Congress will be held June 18–29 in Lille, France. The event is organized by the College Français de Metrologie with several international organizations from Europe and North America. It is a meeting…
Quality Digest
(Austin, Texas) -- One of the world’s leading providers of advanced memory and image sensor solutions, Micron Technology Inc., has joined the International SEMATECH Manufacturing Initiative, bringing its overall membership to 14 companies. Micron will participate in ISMI programs that…
Quality Digest
(ARTEL, Maine) -- ARTEL’s 2007 Pipetting Olympics will happen during National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week, April 22–28, 2007. In the health care industry, pipetting affects test results and patient diagnoses. The mission of the Pipetting Olympics is to improve pipetting technique…
Quality Digest
(International Organization for Standardization, Geneva) -- ISO has just launched a CD-ROM containing a collection of 24 ISO/IEC standards and one amendment on radio frequency identification (RFID). A wireless technology enabling communication between interrogating devices and embedded…
In a previous column, we discussed the importance of the IECQ quality assessment systems for electronic components, a certification scheme of the International Electrotechnical Commission. The IECQ mission is to provide a business-to-business quality certification scheme that serves industry by…
Quality Digest
(American National Standards Institute, Washington, D.C.) -- A project underway at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory is truly out of this world. Teams from NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—the research arm of the U.S.…
Denise Robitaille
How do we conclude that a nagging, recurring blip has become serious enough to justify taking action? How do we assess the significance of anomalies—isolated occurrences and scattered, seemingly unrelated events? Can we objectively distinguish those factors that suggest an escalating…
Quality Digest
Think Europe’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) was tough? Meet China RoHS. Phase One of China RoHS takes effect March 1, and while it has an intent similar to the European Union’s (EU) RoHS, the approach is different. Like RoHS in Europe, China RoHS (officially known as Management…
Quality Digest
(International Organization for Standardization-Geneva) -- A newly published document in the ISO 22000 series gives the requirements for the bodies that carry out auditing and certification of food safety management systems (FSMS). ISO technical specification ISO/TS 22003:2007 provides…
Quality Digest
Jonathan Spector will become the 10th president and CEO of The Conference Board, a research and business membership organization, on April 16. “Jon Spector has excellent credentials to lead The Conference Board forward,” says Douglas R. Conant, a trustee of The Conference Board, CEO of…
Quality Digest
Executives from leading companies will share tactics and strategies for managing and retaining key talent, knowledge and intellectual capital with Global Benchmarking Council members at the conference on Human Capital Management: Facing the Challenges of the 21st Century Workforce, May 30–…
Craig Cochran
Last year 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…
Quality Digest
Mtech’s new Internet-based Quality Inspection Console uses hand-held devices to interface with a hotel’s property management system and automate its quality inspection processes. “Quality inspections, when hotel housekeeping departments inspect the work that room attendants do, have the…
Quality Digest
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission recently accredited SysTest Labs and iBeta Software Quality Assurance to certify and test voting systems software and equipment against the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines. The VVSG are federal standards developed in 2002 by the Technical Guidelines…
Quality Digest
Six Sigma is a powerful tool for driving incremental process improvement, but it’s not the silver bullet many organizations make it out to be. That’s the word from The Hackett Group, which recently released research showing that too many executives try to implement Six Sigma to create…
Praveen Gupta
Businesses have lately been focusing on profit and process improvement. However, profit improvement at any cost to make the upcoming quarter look bright has a price. It appears that most improvement effort leads with efficiency measured by head-count reduction. Improvement shouldn’t be measured by…
Quality Digest
Several Mexican manufacturing organizations were winners in the recently announced Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing Business Program. The Shingo Prize, called the “Nobel Prize of manufacturing,” recognizes achievements in lean process improvement programs in North America.…
For the last Brain Teaser, in an interesting spin, sample size was defined as a time window. A is the correct response. The underlying data type falls into the category of defect counts (complaints) within a constant area of opportunity (one hour). These data, of course, follow the…
Quality Digest
Frost & Sullivan, a growth consulting company, recently recognized CTS Corp. with its 2006 Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Quality Leadership. The award was in recognition of CTS’ products for the aerospace and defense markets, which have attracted increasing numbers of buyers…
Quality Digest
Heritage Valley Health System, located in Beaver, Pennsylvania, recently opened its region’s first fully automated clinical laboratory. The hospital’s comprehensive lean and Six Sigma programs, which emphasize automation for patient safety, helped create the state-of-the-art laboratory…
Quality Digest
The Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) recently awarded a total of $85,900 to 22 Green Bay-area manufacturing organizations for training and Six Sigma projects, and there is more money available. The Green Bay Press Gazette reports that the money originates with the…