All Features
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Those of us who care about communication accuracy in the workplace—which should be all of us—cringe at the idea of using something like Facebook or Twitter to communicate with co-workers. We look at how those platforms in particular get abused outside of business and can’t imagine a corporate world…
Dave Crenshaw
According to a poll conducted by Harris and the University of Phoenix, 59 percent of American workers wish they were in a different career. For employees in their 30s, that number is right around 73 percent. Employees disliking their jobs may be nothing new, but pushing to make the workday more…
Stanislav Shekshnia, Veronika Zagieva, Alexey Ulanovsky
During the last decade, we studied CEOs of companies that thrive within some of the most challenging business environments on the planet. Though very different in many respects, these CEOs share leadership behaviors and attitudes that strongly parallel those of top athletes. We further theorize…
Sharona Hoffman
CVS operates 9,700 pharmacies and 1,000 MinuteClinics. A decade ago, it also purchased Caremark and now operates CVS/Caremark, a pharmacy benefits manager (PBM), a type of business that administers drug-benefit programs for health plans. CVS/Caremark is one of the three largest PBMs in the United…
Michael Moldover
How tall are you? How old? How much do you weigh? Do you care? Is it important to you that the measurements for height, age, and weight are accurate? What about the measurement of the gasoline that you pump into your tank? Is it important that the 12 gallons you pay for are truly 12 gallons?…
L.S. Starrett Co.
(L.S. Starrett: Athol, MA) -- The L.S. Starrett Co. has introduced the HVR100-FLIP, an innovative large field-of-vision (FOV) benchtop vision measurement system that can be used in either a vertical or horizontal orientation. It features a high-resolution digital video camera and minimal optical…
Vip Vyas, Diego Nannicini, David Sherman
In an era of volcanic Twitter accounts, devastating disruptions, seismic shifts toward de-globalization, and widespread corporate uncertainty, is your organization trapped in fear, or is it reaching out to the future? In short, are you “forwarding” your business?
Against the current backdrop,…
Ismael Belmarez
Workplace safety is a vital concern for every organization. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2.9 million nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses were reported by private industry employers in 2016, costing employers tens of billions of dollars.
In March of this year, the leading…
Scott Gottlieb
Twice a year the federal government publishes the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions (Unified Agenda), which provides the American public with insight into regulations under development or review throughout the federal government. For the U.S. Food and Drug…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Our Jan. 12, 2018, episode of QDL looked at smart manufacturing, remanufacturing, pants-on-fire bosses, and five things your QMS needs.
“Impatient With Colleges, Employers Design Their Own Courses”
Microsoft, Amazon, and others are teaming up with third-party online courseware providers to…
Jason Stoughton
Frequented by more deer than people, the NIST stone test wall lives a fairly isolated existence. Out among the trees and the grass on the south end of the Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus, it cuts an imposing and visually bizarre figure. Set in the mortar of its technicolor face are more than 2,000…
Carrie Van Daele, Ronee Franklin
The key to being an explorer lies in what you do with your creative thinking and attitude, which allow you to consider different points of view. Like the explorer, you look for probabilities and possibilities. This is what is known as creative thinking skills: having the ability to create…
Michael Huda
We frequently get calls from customers who can’t figure out why their color measurements vary, even when they’re using maintained devices. Why would a sample read one way one day, then slightly different another? Many times the culprit is thermochromaticity, and it becomes an even bigger problem…
Cullen Hilkene
We’ve turned the corner and arrived in 2018. What will this year hold for 3D printing technology?
First, the arrival of extrusion metal printing. Today’s extrusion printers are the most prevalent and, arguably, the most user-friendly 3D printers on the market. Now, after years of there being zero…
Abdesalam Soudi
Recently, while on my way to the University of Pittsburgh’s campus, I made a quick “Pittsburgh left”—taking a left turn just as the light turns green—while facing a driverless car.
Instead of jolting forward or honking as some human drivers would be tempted to do, the car allowed me to go. In…
Jennifer V. Miller
Are there any positive leadership stories out there anymore? Anyone? Anyone?
Sometimes, I feel like Ben Stein’s economics teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, casting about for any story that sheds a positive light on the ability to lead with character. Within one week I heard three stories of…
Jenna Gallegos, Jean Peccoud
Biology is becoming increasingly digitized. Researchers use computers to analyze DNA, operate lab equipment and store genetic information. But new capabilities also mean new risks, and biologists remain largely unaware of the potential vulnerabilities that come with digitizing biotechnology.
The…
Debashis Sarkar
We all know the famous quote, “The customer is always right.” It was coined more than a century ago. In the United States, it was popularized by Marshall Field during the early 1900s. In the United Kingdom, it was popularized by Harry Gordon Selfridge of luxury retailer Selfridge’s fame. Since…
Steven Brand
The manufacturing industry in the United States is ripe for a new industrial revolution, and artificial intelligence and robotic automation are set to play a key role in that change. Because manufacturing is a major driving force in a nation’s economic prosperity, it is especially important that…
Richard Harpster
The concept of risk-based thinking has been implicit in previous editions of ISO 9001 through requirements planning, review, and improvement. But ISO 9001:2015 requires companies to use risk-based thinking to manage their business.
If you want to implement an ISO 9001:2015-compliant quality…
Marlene Chism
Many new leaders silently struggle in their leadership role. They avoid difficult conversations about performance because they do not have the confidence or the skill to coach others or facilitate change. Or, they do not have the critical skills to determine the root problem of poor performance,…
Markus Grau
Industry 4.0, cyber-physical systems, or the internet of things (IoT): the paradigm shift in the production economy is cheerfully progressing under various names. What they all refer to is the digitalization and networking of production processes and environments. The idea is by no means new. The…
Mike Richman
Last Friday’s episode of QDL welcomed the new year with our usual original take on featured editorial content, plus a great Tech Corner. In case you missed it, here’s what we covered:
“Most ‘Innovations’ Are Mere Novelties” In this article, author Helen Barrett exposes the myth of the lone-wolf…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
I was recently reminded of a fundamental statement about continual improvement. In Out of the Crisis (Massachusetts Institute Center for Advanced Engineering, 1986), W. Edwards Deming stated, “I should estimate that in my experience, most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to…
Donald J. Wheeler, Geraint W. Jones
The precision to tolerance ratio is commonly used to characterize the usefulness of a measurement system. While this ratio is appealingly simple, it overstates the damage due to measurement error. In this paper we show how to compute honest precision to tolerance ratios that correctly describe…
