All Features
Quality Digest
The American Health Quality Association has thrown its support behind the creation of a comprehensive system to measure and report on the performance of health care organizations and practitioners. The Institute of Medicine, a health care trade group, recently proposed creating the new system,…
Quality Digest
The New Jersey Technical Council recently awarded Gregory H. Olsen, chairman of Sensors Unlimited Inc., its John H. Martinson Technology Support Award. Olsen, the world’s third private space explorer and the first space tourist since the Columbia shuttle exploded mid-flight, recently returned from…
Peter Dickin
The use of probes on machine tools to assist in setting up jobs is well established. Recent developments in machining and inspection software mean that this equipment can now be used in a wider range of applications that are aimed at increasing overall equipment effectiveness, which consequently…
Quality Digest
ENDEVCO Corp. recently partnered with Cambridge Vibration Maintenance Service to provide calibration and repair services in the United Kingdom. Endevco, a designer and manufacturer of dynamic instrumentation for vibration, shock and pressure measurement, has many U.K.-based clients in the aerospace…
Quality Digest
Gagemaker recently introduced its CERTIFI gage-calibration program, a client-server solution that helps customers manage and control gage-calibration processes and documents. CERTIFI automates crucial activities for the calibration, tracking and reporting of measurement information in a…
Quality Digest
Intertek Systems Certification recently became one of the first registration bodies accredited to AS9120 in North America. The standard includes the requirements of ISO 9001 and defines additional quality requirements for aerospace-industry distributors. Many major aerospace manufacturers require…
Quality Digest
Metrologists recently used Leica Geosystem’s new T-Scan to examine a historic artifact from a ship that sank during the Civil War. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recovered the anchor from the USS Monitor from the underwater Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, east of Cape…
Quality Digest
iSixSigma, publisher of iSixSigma magazine, has announced an exclusive partnership with International Quality and Productivity Center. Through the partnership, iSixSigma will help shape and promote IQPC’s Six Sigma IQ conferences and provide input to the Six Sigma Excellence Awards, which recognize…
Quality Digest
Perot Systems Corp. and Six Sigma Advantage Inc. have teamed up to provide Six Sigma and software training, consulting and certification services. Perot Systems, a provider of collaborative information technology services, reports that together the companies will form a highly refined set of…
Quality Digest
SixNet Intelligence is the fastest-growing solution for the operational-excellence marketplace, according to recent market research. The results were released by Six Sigma Qualtec, which surveyed corporate performance improvement initiatives and the users of home-grown technology systems. The…
Quality Digest
Karen Reynolds is the new vice president of operations at StraightSource, a provider of recruitment-process outsourcing. Reynolds is a Master Black Belt and most recently was vice president of enterprise effectiveness for L3 Communications. Prior to that position, she held a series of leadership…
The purpose of process data analysis is to answer the question, "May the observed data fluctuations reasonably be attributed to common-cause variation?" The principal use of the Shewhart control chart is to guide efforts for process improvement by assisting in the discovery of peculiarities in the…
Quality Digest
ANSI/ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB) is developing an accreditation program for the recycling industry. The scheme, called the Recycling Industry Operations Standard (RIOS) is a comprehensive, integrated standard based on ISO 9001 and ISO 14001. It includes six components: general…
Quality Digest
ANSI/ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB) is developing an accreditation program for the recycling industry. The scheme, called the Recycling Industry Operations Standard (RIOS) is a comprehensive, integrated standard based on ISO 9001 and ISO 14001. It includes six components: general…
Quality Digest
Six very diverse organizations recently received 2005 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality awards. President George W. Bush and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez announced the award winners, which range from an automotive dealership to a community college and oil-industry business. It’s the first…
Quality Digest
Peter F. Drucker, one of the most influential management theorists of the 20th century, died Nov. 11 at his home in Claremont, California. He was 95. Drucker’s career as a writer, consultant and teacher spanned nearly 75 years. The author of 41 books that have been translated into 37 languages,…
Quality Digest
Although five of its six facilities bore damage from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, without compliance to ISO 14001, recovering from the storms could have been a lot worse for DynMcDermott Petroleum Operations. The company, a 2005 Baldrige Award recipient, is the sole management and operations…
Quality Digest
American consumers are more satisfied than ever with the quality of beer produced by the nation’s largest breweries, according to the American Society for Quality’s Quarterly Quality Report. This quarter, ASQ examined consumer ratings on the following manufactured nondurable goods: food and…
Thomas R. Cutler
Many organizations are turning to outside operations-expense management companies due to the recognition of billing scrutiny as a key quality control and quality assurance issue. “When performing bill-auditing and rate-analysis services, many utilities in the United States have errors on at least…
Quality Digest
Rockwell Automation Inc. recently acquired Datasweep Inc., a provider of manufacturing production-management software. Based in San Jose, California, Datasweep has customers in the pharmaceutical, high-tech, automotive and medical-device industries. Datasweep’s management team and employees will…
Quality Digest
The Department of Defense recently awarded the Navy’s NAVAIR Depot North Island with the departments’ first-ever Continuous Process Improvement Achievement Award. The award cited the depot, which is based in Coronado, California, for being at the forefront of the Navy’s AIRSpeed program since its…
Quality Digest
A new book shows how lean principals can be used to maximize training efficiency and improve job performance. Training Within Industry: The Foundation of Lean (Productivity Press, 2005), by Donald A. Dinero, shows how training within industry (TWI) was originally developed by the United States…
Quality Digest
Buffalo Rock, the largest single-family, privately owned Pepsi bottler in the United States, recently received a 2005 Alabama Quality Award. Buffalo Rock is a process-driven organization that has implemented a number of innovative management practices to allow employee-partners to become more…
Quality Digest
Missouri health care provider SSM Health Care recently received several quality awards. The awards were presented by the Excellence in Missouri Foundation, which administers the Missouri Quality Award and Missouri Team Quality Award programs. SSM St. Joseph Health Center, St. Charles; SSM St.…
Quality Digest
Solectron Corp. recently selected Statit Software Inc. to provide statistical process control and data analysis solutions to its manufacturing facilities all over the world. Solectron, an electronics manufacturer, operates on five continents in more than 20 countries. The implementation of Statit’s…
