All Features
Lean Math With Mark Hamel
Container capacity (Cc) is one of the four basic variables within the generic kanban sizing calculation. However, Cc is often not treated as a variable but more as a constant, predetermined quantity, especially if the lean practitioner seeks to use existing supplier packaging, reusable dunnage, or…
TÜV Rheinland of North America
(TÜV Rheinland: Boxborough, MA) -- TÜV Rheinland of North America is offering certification services in functional safety (FS) and hazardous locations (HazLoc). The new business line will address the growing need for the services.
TÜV Rheinland of North America’s HazLoc/Functional Safety team is…
NIST
Given recent events--the Boston Marathon bombings and the huge fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas--the editors thought it would be interesting to highlight the recent efforts by NIST and others to improve the communications technology used by emergency responders, a huge problem during the…
NIST
When responding to fires in high-rise buildings, firefighting crews of five or six members—instead of three or four—are significantly faster in putting out fires and completing search-and-rescue operations, according to a multiphase study carried out by the National Institute of Standards and…
Michael Causey
The latest batch of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspection letters noting objectionable conditions, aka 483s, has a decidedly international flair: Italy, Japan, and Canada had the pleasure of hosting FDA inspectors in recent months. Three firms were found wanting by the agency in a number…
MIT News
Untitled Document
First responders, including firefighters and police officers, must often take action in potentially lethal situations. Bounce Imaging seeks to decrease the danger for these individuals with a throwable ball that can automatically detect potential dangers in advance. As the ball…
Matthew E. May
Innovation is at or near the center of nearly everyone’s radar screen. If you’re not looking for it in your work, you’re looking for it in your personal life, because stirring in each of us is the desire to employ our ingenuity. Thus, the potential to innovate is alive and well in everyone.…
Plex Systems Inc.
(Plex Systems: Troy, MI) -- Plex Systems Inc., provider of Plex Online, the cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for manufacturers, announces the upcoming videocast, “Technology in Automotive Manufacturing: Driving the Industry’s Future,” to be held on April 25, 2013, at 2 p.m. Eastern…
Alan Nicol
The lean tool known as 5S was conceived and developed in a manufacturing environment. It is a very effective tool at eliminating some of the most senseless and aggravating sources of wasted time and energy. Most commonly, it stops the wasted effort of searching for stuff that we need right now.…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
The Coordinate Metrology Society’s (CMS) efforts to deliver an industry-recognized certification to the profession of portable 3D metrology is now a reality.
This endeavor began with a vision and a request from industry to leverage the resources of the CMS membership to create such a program in…
Akhilesh Gulati
Editor’s note: This article continues the series exploring structured innovation using the TRIZ methodology, a problem-solving, analysis, and forecasting tool derived from studying patterns of invention found in global patent data.
Coffee cups filled, the council members sat down, interested to…
Eston Martz
In regression analysis, we look at the correlations between one or more input variables, or factors, and a response. We might look at how baking time and temperature relate to the hardness of a piece of plastic, or how educational levels and the region of one’s birth relate to annual income. The…
Samm Bowman, Ben Vickery
Reshoring sure has been in the news a lot. Perhaps you’ve been reading about the trend as an increasing number of North American firms move their manufacturing back to the United States.
You may have read about Caterpillar deciding to move its manufacturing operations from Japan to Georgia to…
Patrick Runkel
As we click, flip, and scroll through hundreds of sites and channels, cruising for our daily dose of e-thrills, it’s easy to forget there’s a beautiful, wild, creative universe right in our backyards.
I had the chance to experience a tiny part of that universe on a recent Saturday afternoon,…
Jack Dunigan
Editor’s note: This is the first of Jack Dunigan’s series about unsung heroes in the workplace, and the 16 traits they all share.
She was a hidden gem. Although she had a degree in business administration, she had taken a job as a server. She lived in a city where jobs weren’t easy to find. For…
Quality Digest
On March 28, 2013, the world lost a person whom many consider to be a major contributor to the world of industrial statistics: George E. P. Box. Relatively unknown outside the world of statistics, Box was certainly very well known by those who have studied or practiced industrial statistics.
His…
Arun Hariharan
Hi, I’m a sales order. You know—the piece of paper or computer file on which the customer describes what he wants to buy and for how much. We sales orders are quite common. I was born one morning when a customer wrote me out and handed me over to a salesman. Took about 30 minutes. “Thank you, sir,…
Delcam
Using Delcam’s CADCAM software to design and manufacture its custom orthotic insoles has allowed Salts Techstep to increase dramatically the number of devices that the company can produce. Over five years, the volume increased from about 50 pairs per month to more than 1,000.
Other benefits from…
Mark R. Hamel
Lean-oriented questions tend to be straightforward but not necessarily easy. The same goes for the four basic questions around the daily accountability process, the process by which leaders facilitate effective follow-through.
The follow-through that I am referring to concerns the…
James Er Ralston
The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program has evolved during its 25 years and continues to improve its performance by offering collaborative assessments. This new service assesses against the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence and provides timely, actionable feedback to improve…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Drive from San Francisco to New York in a 3D-printed car using just 10 gallons of biofuel. Not crazy and not science fiction. It’s the 2015 goal for Jim Kor and the team at Winnipeg, Manitoba-based KOR Ecologic. You may have heard about the company back in 2010 when its Urbee 1 (short for Urban…
Steve Vaughn
Since agile methodology is in the process of changing the way corporations work, it should come as no surprise that it is now changing the way we organize our personal lives as well. After all, our families and classrooms are also teams with which we work to accomplish common goals.
Using agile…
Umberto Tunesi
Spring has sprung, and as I was taught by my mother, it’s the time for major cleaning, preferably before Easter. My home’s floor and windows complain about my carelessness; Easter has passed, and they don't feel tidy. I told them that no resource is infinite, that I must proceed according to…
Gartner
Emerging and innovative technologies, including mobile, cloud, big data, and the Internet of Things, can improve operations and customer experiences, and even create new business opportunities. Hung LeHong, research vice president at Gartner, explains that although these technologies are…
Kyle Toppazzini
Many of us are familiar with change management models used in organizational change. What I find most interesting are the differences between the standard organizational change-management model and the psychological process an
Most change models incorporate the following six aspects: 1. Creating…
