All Features
Timothy Lozier
Compliance is a broad term. It can mean compliance to financial obligations, quality and safety, or general compliance to any regulation that is driving the organization. When you look at the current state of quality management and safety management with respect to compliance, most of the…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- A standard for quality management systems specific to the medical devices industry is under review and has just moved a step closer to completion.
We take it for granted that devices used in hospitals or medical centers are of high quality and up to scratch, but for manufacturers…
Jeffrey Phillips
I’ve written before (and often) about how challenges with clarity and consistency introduce difficulties when corporations try to create new products and services. Notice that for a blog about innovation, I didn’t use the “I” word. That’s because I think corporations confuse the ends with the…
Mark Whitworth
Layered Process Audits (LPAs) offer companies tremendous potential benefits, but they’re also more involved than other audits. They task all of a plant’s personnel - including multiple levels of management—and cover all key areas at varying intervals. Creating an LPA system that is truly effective…
Kevin Meyer
“If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted.” —Thomas Merton, Love and Living
Sometimes there are dots just waiting to be connected....
I was rather surprised when Pope Francis mentioned Thomas…
Craig Cochran
ISO 9001:2015 does a lot of things right, but using clear language isn’t one of them.
One of the most glaring examples is the transformation of the word “records” into “retained documented information.” That's right, the standard’s updaters took one word and turned it into three. And the three…
Michael Causey
A new FDA guidance calls on the medical device community to be more proactive when it comes to developing a solid set of cybersecurity controls to ensure safety and efficacy for users.
However, the agency isn’t putting the entire onus on medical device manufacturers. The FDA “recognizes that…
Harry Hertz
Business schools today have a renewed emphasis on teaching leadership. Dawn Bailey explored this topic in a recent Blogrige post. One of the principles behind this shift, she explained, is intended to cause a deep dive into values. And values-centered leadership is, in my opinion, a critical…
Thermal chambers have found a place in the psyche of test, quality, and production engineers—and for good reason. Chambers have been a staple for testing and conditioning materials and electronics for many decades.
First developed as passive conditioning tools, chambers have become standard fare…
Sonal Sinha
In a recent poll, employees (22.9%) were identified as the top source of supply chain fraud risk, followed by vendors (17.4%) and other third parties (20.1%), including subcontractors and their vendors. In calling new attention to the old cliché of “an inside job,” the statistics may prove to be…
Douglas C. Fair
Sponsored Content
Statistical process control (SPC) software has been around for decades, used by manufacturers across industries to help monitor process behavior and control quality on the shop floor. Like any technology, the software has evolved over the years into something much more than a…
Fred Schenkelberg
Why do so many avoid confronting the reality of failure? In plant asset management, we are surrounded by people who steadfastly don’t want to know about nor talk about failures. Yet failure does happen; let’s not ignore this simple fact.
The blame game
Unlike a murder mystery, failure analysis (…
Michelle LaBrosse
In past articles, we’ve written on the value of project management professional (PMP) certification for helping you advance in your career and earn a higher salary. (Yep, it’s still true that project managers who hold the PMP certification earn, on average, 17 percent a year more than project…
Wiley
(Wiley: Hoboken, NJ) -- Process Simulation Using WITNESS teaches basic and advanced modeling and simulation techniques to both undergraduate and postgraduate students and serves as a practical guide and manual for professionals learning how to build simulation models using WITNESS, a free-standing…
Randall D’Amico
Sponsored Content
Relationships between an organization and its suppliers have traditionally been characterized by adversarial activities and posturing in which at least one, and often both, parties lose. Rather than working together to find ways to create a win-win outcome, buyers use their…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
How do you help leaders understand they need to delegate? I often hear this question, and it was the focus of a recent letter I received.
“Hello Jesse: What have you found are the most effective ways to engage business owners in the need to delegate? Are there particular pain points that make…
Visual Workplace Inc.
(Visual Workplace: Byron Center, MI) -- Visual Workplace Inc. offers “Visual Management Techniques to Define Organized, Productive, Safe Territories and Work Areas,” a free, downloadable PDF to help employers assess their facilities and create a safe workplace using visual management techniques.…
Arun Hariharan
When I visited one of the world’s most advanced car manufacturing plants at Toyota City, Japan, one of the many things about the manufacturing process that struck me as remarkable was that from start to finish, whether molding steel sheets into body parts or fitting those various parts together,…
Brian Maskell
I work with companies that are serious about being lean organizations. Most of them use lean accounting. It’s not about changing your accounting system. It’s about embracing lean principles and methods. Lean changes the way people look at management accounting. Here are 10 things to think about.…
Kelly Graves
Dave hadn’t been evaluated in 25 years, and neither had the other employees of this multimillion-dollar business. Things had gotten very loose with the company. Production targets weren’t being met, there was poor accountability and responsibility, and employees were arriving late and not calling…
Eckel Industries
(Eckel: Cambridge, MA) -- Bismarck, North Dakota, might not be as famous as Fargo with its namesake movie-turned-TV series, but as the state capital and home to Bobcat Co.’s Acceleration Center, it’s got its own claims to fame. The center is a flagship research, design, and engineering facility.…
NIST
Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Intel have reported success in using an X-ray scattering technique to accurately measure features on a silicon chip to within fractions of a nanometer, or about the width of a single silicon atom.
The achievement could…
LNS Research
(LNS: Cambridge, MA) LNS Research, a technology research firm focusing on the industrial space, has released its Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) Research Library. Comprising research-based best practices and thought leadership publications, the library’s intent is to continuously educate…
GBMP
(GBMP: Newton MA) -- GBMP, a licensed affiliate of The Shingo Institute, is accepting registrations for eight Shingo Institute workshops. With two dates to attend each of the four workshops, GBMP is proud to be able to help hundreds of lean practitioners gain access to all of the important…
Tim Lozier
We recently passed a milestone moment in the hearts and minds of fantasy fan boys like myself. October 21, 2015, marked the day that Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett Brown traveled back to the future in the highly successful sequel, Back to the Future II.
When we took our first glimpse into the future…
