All Features
Bill Kalmar
Recent department store sales figures in the Wall Street Journal are interesting and intriguing. Despite a slow economy in parts of the nation and frigid February weather in some states where several retailers experienced a decrease in sales, some high-priced retailers had exceptional results. What…
Quality Digest
(Sparta Systems Inc.; Holmdel, New Jersey) Sparta Systems Inc., the maker of TrackWise, and an enterprise quality and compliance process management software provider, has released the Beta version of the TrackWise eMDR Submission Manager software. The add-on software enables medical…
Quality Digest
Five pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities scattered around the globe recently received Facility of the Year awards for significantly advancing the industry’s efforts to produce higher-quality medicines at lower costs. The winners are: Cook Pharmica—Facility of the Year for Facility…
Quality Digest
(Underwriters Laboratories Inc.; Northbrook, Illinois) -- Underwriters Laboratories Inc., a world leader in product safety testing, and certification and management system registrations, recently unveiled a service for the medical device industry that streamlines the regulatory…
James M. Anderson
An ABC News/Washington Post survey in 2003 found that for the first time, 54 percent of Americans were dissatisfied with the overall quality of health care in the United States. In 2006, the Commonwealth Fund released results of an international survey that measured 37 areas of quality…
Quality Digest
(Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Inc., Vancouver) -- Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Inc., global specialty pharmaceutical and medical device company, recently announced the appointment of Victor Diaz as senior vice president, global manufacturing and supply chain management.“With his significant…
Quality Digest
(Pilgrim Software, Tampa, Florida) -- Pilgrim Software, a provider of enterprise compliance and quality management software solutions, has been named 2007 North American Enterprise Compliance & Quality Management (ECQM) Company of the Year within the life sciences industry by Frost…
Mike Micklewright
Question:What do you call a root cause analyst?
Answer: A whys guy!
I had been summoned from my Chicago suburban home and office to visit a company in Wisconsin—Land of Cheese—to discuss the possibility of providing some lean training requested by the director of operations, Brent Favor. This was a…
Quality Digest
(ANSI, New York) -- Global manufacturers are facing mounting pressure from the expansion of domestic and foreign chemical controls and regulations such as REACH, RoHS, WEEE and GHS. According to the United States Mission to the European Union, REACH alone is expected to disrupt tens of…
Quality Digest
(IRCA, London) -- The International Register of Certificated Auditors is delighted to announce the launch of its new Information Technology Service Management Systems Auditor certification program, developed in response to the release of the international standard ISO/IEC 20000, the…
Quality Digest
(Kellogg School of Management, Southfield, Michigan) -- The Manufacturing Business Conference is hosted by the Master of Management and Manufacturing program, a joint degree program between the Kellogg School of Management and the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.The MBC…
Quality Digest
(AIAG, Southfield, Michigan) -- The Business Continuity Planning seminar and workshop highlighting AIAG’s new publication, Business Continuity Planning Toolkit for the Automotive Supply Chain, features presentations and case studies to help organizations survive and thrive in the event…
Quality Digest
(Valeo, Paris) -- Valeo has earned five awards from Toyota Motor Europe, including the Superior Performance Award in Quality. The awards, presented at the Toyota’s Annual Business Meeting in Brussels, are the following: A Superior Performance Award, in the quality category, given to the…
Steven Ouellette
I had a lot of feedback from interested readers in regards to Stupid Six Sigma Tricks #5, which I jokingly called “Pop Stars Without Clothing,” and which was about the frequent misuse of statistics in the Six Sigma world. Taking heart from this response to what might have been viewed as dusty old…
Quality Digest
(Hyperion, Santa Clara, California) -- Hyperion, a leading global provider of performance management software solutions, recently announced that it has agreed to be acquired by Oracle Corp. through a cash tender offer for $52.00 per share, or approximately $3.3 billion.“Requirements for…
Quality Digest
(WCBF, Chicago) -- Edward Hanway, CEO of CIGNA Corp. will receive the top honor as Lean Six Sigma CEO of the Year for his vision and leadership in initiating lean Six Sigma to achieve a financial impact of $110 million per year and potential savings of another $200 million per year for…
Quality Digest
(SigmaQuest Inc., Santa Clara, California) -- SigmaQuest Inc., a leading provider of business intelligence software solutions that help global manufacturers build higher quality products, today announced the availability of SigmaSure 6.0 that features a new Repair Insight module. With the…
Quality Digest
The city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, used to be typical of a lot of Rust Belt cities: too many boarded-up buildings, insufficient infrastructure, a 37-percent population drop over 50 years, and a flagging downtown area that was in desperate need of revitalization. That all changed in 2000,…
Quality Digest
(American National Standards Institute, Washington, D.C.) -- The American National Standards Institute is inviting leaders of the U.S. standardization community to participate in the third Conference on U.S. Leadership in the International Organization for Standardization and the International…
Quality Digest
(ANSI, New York) -- On June 11–12, U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Carlos M. Gutierrez will host the inaugural Americas Competitiveness Forum in Atlanta. The forum will provide a venue for government ministers from the Western Hemisphere to come together with leaders from the private sector…
Quality Digest
(Tejari, United Arab Emirates) -- Tejari, the Middle East’s premier online business-to-business service, has become the world’s first e-marketplace to be certified to ISO 9001. The company was audited by Lloyds Register Quality Assurance Ltd., to assess Tejari’s adherence to a…
William A. Levinson
On December 29, 2006, passengers of American Airlines’ Flight 1348 were confined in a parked aircraft for eight hours. By this time, “The toilets on the American Airlines jet were overflowing. There was no water to be found and no food except for a box of pretzel bags.” This fiasco was…
Thomas R. Cutler
More than 13 hours per week creating documents and nearly seven hours per week organizing documents are common among small and midsize engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturers; four hours per week are spent managing document routing and another 10 hours per week searching for information. All this…
On December 29, 2006, passengers of American Airlines’ Flight 1348 were confined in a parked aircraft for eight hours. By this time, “The toilets on the American Airlines jet were overflowing. There was no water to be found and no food except for a box of pretzel bags.” This fiasco was…
Thomas R. Cutler
More than 13 hours per week creating documents and nearly seven hours per week organizing documents are common among small and midsize engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturers; four hours per week are spent managing document routing and another 10 hours per week searching for information. All this…
