All Features
Liz Uram
Have you ever dreaded having a conversation with an employee who wasn’t meeting performance expectations? Maybe you avoided it, hoping it would improve on its own? If so, you are not alone.
Most managers would agree that one of their least favorite tasks is talking to an employee about poor…
Gregg Profozich
The manufacturing world, across industry sectors, has witnessed significant improvements in productivity and competitiveness during the past couple of decades as a result of continuous improvement (CI) methodologies. Two of these methodologies that are recognized as having broad applicability are…
Henrik Bresman
Right now it seems far away, but a post-Covid world is coming. Is it closer to us than the start of the pandemic? We can’t say with any certainty, but we must think about how we will work in the future. The sudden changes of early 2020 showed us how we are capable of extraordinary transformations…
Quality Digest
(NewTek: Pennsauken, NJ) -- NewTek Sensor Solutions offers the RV series of rotary position sensors that measure and provide feedback on the rotary displacement of rotating elements in industrial benchtop and test and measurement applications. While featuring a full 360° mechanical range, these…
Adam Conner-Simons
This story was originally published by MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL).
Scatterplots. You may not know them by name, but if you spend more than 10 minutes online, you’ll find them everywhere.
They’re popular in news articles, in the data science community, and…
Knowledge at Wharton
A new study finds that productivity has remained stable or even increased for many companies that shifted to remote work during the coronavirus pandemic. However, innovation has taken a hit as both leaders and employees feel more distant from each other.
Businesses tend to spend less money and…
(University of Rochester: Rochester, NY) -- Researchers in Rochester are developing an optical chip on a disposable card that can detect exposure to multiple viruses within a minute—including the coronavirus that causes Covid-19—from a single drop of blood.
Led by University of Rochester Medical…
Gregg Profozich
In the first article of this series, we saw that Lean and Six Sigma are complementary continuous improvement methodologies that reduce the overall waste and variability in production processes, respectively. Although these two methodologies use different approaches and tools to drive improvements…
Jill Neimark
If you’ve ever stayed in a relationship too long or stuck with a project that was going nowhere, you’re not alone. Humans are generally reluctant to give up on something they’ve already committed time and effort to. It’s called the “sunk costs” phenomenon, where the more resources we sink into an…
Catherine Cooksey
New employees at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are often surprised to learn that our agency is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. How could this be? On the surface it seems that the missions of the two organizations couldn’t be more different. The Department of…
Clare Naden
Never have we been more acutely aware of the importance of reliability when it comes to laboratory testing. As the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted, the development of accurate diagnostic tests plays an important role in outbreak management.
Whether a laboratory develops its own test…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- ISO/IEC/IEEE 16085—“Systems and software engineering—Life cycle processes—Risk management” provides a universally applicable standard for practitioners responsible for managing risks associated with systems and software during their life cycle. It has recently been revised to align…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- ISO/IEC/IEEE 16085—“Systems and software engineering—Life cycle processes—Risk management” provides a universally applicable standard for practitioners responsible for managing risks associated with systems and software during their life cycle. It has recently been revised to align…
Vanessa Bates Ramirez
China’s star has been steadily rising for decades. Besides slashing extreme poverty rates from 88 percent to under 2 percent in just 30 years, the country has become a global powerhouse in manufacturing and technology. Its pace of growth may slow due to an aging population, but China is nonetheless…
Marlene Chism
New leaders often don’t realize that saying “yes” to leadership requires stepping out of the comfort zone. Avoidance is no longer a strategy.
As a leader, it’s up to you to navigate through the cultural politics, make difficult decisions, and resolve conflict between employees or co-workers.…
Nate Burke
Businesses are constantly looking for ways to improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations. And this will only become a more important focus as we continue to navigate the complex and volatile Covid-stricken commercial climate.
Fortunately, e-commerce is thriving. Unlike…
Renita Kalhorn
Steffen Heilmann is a firm believer in empowering his people and giving them opportunities to grow. During his early weeks as CTO at Aroundhome, he and his staff were heading into an important negotiation with their data center provider to take over responsibility of a mission-critical database.…
Bob Holmes, Knowable Magazine
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
It’s been a long year, but a vaccine against Covid-19 has started to roll out across the United States. There won’t be enough to vaccinate everyone right away, so public health officials will need to figure out how to manage the slow ramp-up…
Freedom
(Freedom: Cincinnati) -- Autocam Medical, a global contract manufacturer of high-precision CNC-machined surgical and medical components and devices, has ramped up its industrial internet of things (IIoT) footprint using Freedom’s Smart Manufacturing Platform. With the goal of improving productivity…
Bryan Christiansen
‘Little things make big things happen.” In just a few words, this cliché sums up MRO and its benefits. But what are these “little things,” and what effects do they have on your company’s bigger picture?
In the complex world of maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO), answers to these questions…
Bruce Hamilton
As we begin to take our approximately 4 1/2 billionth trip around the sun, I’m reflecting on the previous 525,600 minutes and looking ahead to the new decade. The decade (the ‘20s), by the way, began last month, not a year ago, a factoid noted in a short address by Hiroyuki Hirano in 1999 as the…
AMETEK
(Keene State College: Keene, NH) -- AMETEK Precitech has announced the shipment of a Nanoform X ultra-precision diamond turning lathe to Keene State College. The machine, which is used to make high-precision optical components, shipped to the Technology Design and Safety Center at Keene State…
AMETEK
(Keene State College: Keene, NH) -- AMETEK Precitech has announced the shipment of a Nanoform X ultra-precision diamond turning lathe to Keene State College. The machine, which is used to make high-precision optical components, shipped to the Technology Design and Safety Center at Keene State…
Dimensional Control Systems DCS
(DCS: Troy, MI) -- Dimensional Control Systems (DCS) announces the availability 3DCS Design Variation Modeler (DVM), a new addition to 3DCS Solution Suite. Along with 3DCS Viewer, 3DCS Mechanical Variation Modeler, and 3DCS Variation Analyst, the addition creates a scalable solution to tolerance…
Wayland Additive
(Wayland Additive: Huddersfield, U.K.) -- One of the challenges that has continued to frustrate users of metal additive manufacturing (AM) systems for production applications—in terms of quality and traceability—is capable and useful in-process monitoring (IPM).
From the outset, this issue has…
