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Quality Digest
Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt recently announced of a national private-public collaboration to advance the use of electronic health records and interoperability through established standards. The American Health Information Community will aid in the nationwide transition to…
Quality Digest
P-Wave Inc. and Promium recently formed an alliance to offer environmental labs a unique document and data management solution. The partnership integrates LabCORE, P-Wave’s laboratory document management system, with Promium’s ELEMENT data system, a laboratory information…
Quality Digest
SAFE-BioPharma Association recently announced that INC Research has become its first contract-research organization member. INC Research will deploy the SAFE infrastructure to equip its internal teams and physician investigators with electronic identity standards. “We adopted the SAFE digital…
Quality Digest
A new survey reveals that past failures and bad habits often get in the way of executing successful strategies. The April Leadership Pulse sampled more than 4,000 executives, focusing on how they execute strategies. In the report, 308 worldwide professionals indicated that the top items mostly…
Quality Digest
The National Committee for Quality Assurance recently released its 2004 annual report, which calls for the expansion of pay-for-performance programs and a more-digitized health care system.“The Future in Focus” includes numerous examples of industry leaders who have successfully adopted leading-…
Quality Digest
Executives who wish they had a more practical and detailed outline for implementing and sustaining their lean management system, may benefit from David Mann’s recently released book. Creating a Lean Culture—Tools to Sustain Lean Conversions (Productivity Press, 2005), provides leaders with a lean…
Quality Digest
The Coordinate Metrology Systems Conference 2005, to be held July 18-22 in Austin, Texas, will present 15 white papers written by metrology experts and scientists from all over the world. The selected white papers cover a wide range of 3-D industrial-measurement applications and topics that cater…
Quality Digest
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, administrator of the Baldrige Award, has released the application summaries of the award’s 2004 winners. The application summaries reveal how: The Bama Co. increased sales by 72 percent while the overall frozen baked goods industry remained…
Quality Digest
As concerns about food safety and bioterrorism become increasingly prevalent in the food industry, the National Frozen and Refrigerated Foods Association and RQA Inc. have announced an alliance to offer discounted quality assurance services. The service will provide a dedicated RQA account manager…
Quality Digest
Executives from Automated Engineering Corp., a small electronics design and manufacturing firm in Florida, knew that to land lucrative subcontracting opportunities, the company needed to implement established quality methods, but couldn’t afford the necessary training. That’s where the Florida…
Quality Digest
Albertson’s Inc. recently attributed Six Sigma as one of the causes to its significant profit increases for the first quarter of 2005. The company reported net earnings from continuing operations rose 93 percent to $107 billion, compared to $56 million in the first quarter of last year. Total sales…
Quality Digest
Bechtel Communications recently received the Most Innovative Six Sigma Project Award honorable mention for a process improvement technique using its Virtual Survey Tool for network deployment. Bechtel uses the VST in its alternative site selection process improvement process, enabling the…
Quality Digest
CenterBeam recently completed another phase of an ambitious Six Sigma training plan. The IT outsourcing company is training all of its staff in the fundamentals of lean and Six Sigma. While everyone in the company has received Six Sigma training, about 15 percent of its staff has graduated as lean…
Quality Digest
A new Six Sigma book outlines the use of the methodology with an up-to-date approach to enhance the produce development cycle. Graham Wilson’s Six Sigma and the Product Development Cycle (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2005), looks at the common steps companies follow to create the companywide culture that…
Praveen Gupta
I had to catch a 6:10 a.m. flight the other day. The day before, I’d returned from work, done the normal stuff, prepared for the flight and finally had gone to bed so I could get up early the next morning. I got up around 3:00 a.m., got ready and went to the airport. As expected, traffic on road…
Quality Digest
Statit Software recently released several enhanced versions of its statistical process control software. Statit e-QC R3.3 is a dynamic Web-based application that serves as a quality information portal, while providing a centralized SPC application organizationwide. The release includes an improved…
Quality Digest
Project Management Institute and DNV Certification have formed an alliance to market PMI’s Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3). OPM3 is a new standard developed to determine the maturity of a project management application enterprisewide. Unlike PMI’s…
Joseph A. DeFeo
Once the transformations described in the first of this two-part series have occurred, all organizations should follow a roadmap to achieve and sustain major, organizationwide and beneficial change. The result is a series of separate, different types of breakthroughs in various functions and…
Quality Digest
Smarter Solutions CEO Forrest Breyfogle recently received the Crosby Medal at the American Society for Quality’s World Conference. Breyfogle, a Quality Digest contributor, was honored for his cutting-edge approach to traditional Six Sigma in the second edition of his book, Implementing Six Sigma (…
Quality Digest
Few companies have undergone the quality transformation that Hyundai Motor Co. has seen in recent years.The Korean automaker has gone from producing some of the poorest-rated cars in the world to having its popular Sonata model named as one of Consumer Reports’ most reliable cars for 2005—all in…
Quality Digest
RABQSA International announced this month the transition of Singapore Accreditation Council-certified personnel to the RABQSA-accredited auditor certification schemes. RABQSA will transition all consenting auditors currently certified in quality management systems, occupational health and safety,…
Quality Digest
Endevco Corp. will offer a comprehensive course on shock and vibration measurement technology in July. The course will be held July 18–20 at Endevco’s facility in San Juan Capistrano, California. It will provide an in-depth look at shock- and vibration-measurement, new research findings,…
Quality Digest
PQ Systems Inc. recently released GAGEpack EZ, an easy-to-use gage calibration software program that includes many enhancements. New features in the GAGEpack EZ include a maintenance, calibration and R&R calendar that keep scheduled activities available at a glace. The calendar can be color-…
Quality Digest
Hexagon Metrology North America’s division, Sheffield Measurement Inc., recently acquired L.S. Starrett Co.’s coordinate measuring machine product division. The acquisition is limited to Starrett’s CMM product line only. No other products are included in the arrangement. Sheffield Measurement will…
Quality Digest
McBain Instruments, a provider of research, inspection and laboratory microscopy systems, recently celebrated its 40th anniversary in business. The company has served the industrial, biomedical and life sciences markets since 1965 from its San Fernando Valley location in Southern California. It was…