All Features
William A. Levinson
People often ask for examples of benefits from implementing ISO 9001-compliant quality management systems (QMS). Such examples are often difficult to provide, at least in terms of immediate results. The reason is that the effects of ISO 9001 and its automotive counterpart ISO/TS 16949 are largely…
Vickie L. Milazzo
For many college graduates, the slowly recovering economy has made that first step into the real world a real doozy. The bottom line is that many grads are lucky to find any job, let alone a job that pays what they hoped they’d be making right out of college. The Associated Press reports that 53.6…
NIST
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- The 25th anniversary year of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award will see 39 organizations vying for the honor of becoming an award recipient. Applicants for the Baldrige Award, the nation’s highest recognition for organizational performance excellence through…
Gorur N. Sridhar
Story update 6/18/2012: A couple of confusing references to Taguchi methods were removed.
During new product development, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is often used in the design stage to simulate such things as the effect of air flow on cooling. The problem with CFD is that it can take a…
Umberto Tunesi
Back in the early 1990s, there was a saying, loudly heralded by one global registrar: “Certify your company, and the export markets will open their doors to it.” Well, the actual wording was a bit more rude, to get the message across to small companies.
I guess this slogan still holds true,…
Stanley H. Salot Jr.
Editor’s notes: The HSF Mark was inadvertently truncated on the issue of Quality Digest Daily released on Tuesday, June 12th, 2012. The full and complete logo can be found below. Author Stan Salot will be the guest this week on Quality Digest Live, airing Friday, June 15, at 11 a.m. Pacific.
We…
Ryan E. Day
“Stop!” Our shop’s trade-school intern froze in mid-swing. A 5-lb hammer clutched in his right hand, he was attempting to disassemble a spindle unit from a late model Mazda. More than likely, our newbie would have ruined the spindle in the process. I suggested he would be better served using a…
The Conference Board
The first analysis of 2011 corporate giving data, the most recent data available, reveals a majority of corporations worldwide have increased their giving year over year. According to the annual Corporate Giving Standard (CGS) survey, conducted by the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (…
ISO
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published an international standard addressing business continuity management to help organizations in both public and private sectors become more resilient.
ISO 22301:2012—“Societal security—Business continuity management systems—…
ISPE
(ISPE: Tampa, FL) -- The International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) has released the latest volume in the Product Quality Lifecycle Implementation (PQLI) series, Change Management System as a Key Element of a Pharmaceutical Quality System. The guide, which is part three of the PQLI…
Creaform Inc.
(Creaform: Lévis, Québec) -- Creaform, a leader in portable 3-D measurement solutions and 3-D engineering services, has unveiled its redesigned and optimized website, as part of its 10th anniversary celebrations. The new website has been aligned with Creaform’s revitalized visual identity and will…
Jossey-Bass
(Jossey-Bass: San Francisco) -- Social Business by Design: Transformative Social Media Strategies for the Connected Company, by Dion Hinchcliffe and Peter Kim (Jossey-Bass, 2012), is the definitive management book on how to rethink the modern organization in the social media era. Based on…
Donald Jasurda
Quality itself is no longer a differentiator among manufacturers. High quality is expected and achievable. With enough time and money, any manufacturer can produce a high-quality product. The focus of manufacturing quality has shifted to a discussion about the cost of quality and how to manage it.…
ASQ
(ASQ: Milwaukee) -- H. James Harrington was honored by the American Society for Quality (ASQ) when it presented him with the Ishikawa Medal on May 20, 2012. He was selected to receive the medal in recognition of his many contributions in promoting the understanding of process improvement and…
National Instruments
(National Instruments: Austin, TX) -- Experience NIWeek, August 6–9, 2012, is the 18th annual global conference and exhibition on graphical system design from National Instruments (NI), developer of software and hardware solutions for engineering. Join more than 3,000 decision makers from…
ASTM International
(ASTM: West Conshohocken, PA) -- In many testing laboratories, it can be necessary to qualify a new test method, instrument, or the lab itself with respect to one or more performance characteristics. One such characteristic is bias, or mutual agreement of average test results run on the same…
Qualitest USA LC
(Qualitest: Fort Lauderdale, FL) -- The 2000kN Universal Testing Machine, Q2000, by Qualitest, a developer and manufacturer of high-technology testing products and solutions, is fully loaded with many advanced technical features and state-of-the-art design. It meets the highest demands for quality…
Underwriters Laboratories UL
(UL: Northbrook, IL) -- UL Knowledge Services, a business unit of Underwriters Laboratory (UL) and an authorized educational partner of The Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence, is offering a two-day workshop on the Shingo model and the principles behind the Shingo Prize philosophy and approach…
CRC Press
(CRC Press: Boca Raton, FL) -- For almost every sensationalized media report of product failure, a closer look often determines these failures occurred due to inadequate reliability theory and methodology. Current theories and practices cannot solve these problems, mainly because test…
The word kanban means “sign” or “signboard” in Japanese and is often used in conjunction with lean or just-in-time principles for scheduling and manufacturing. Kanban is a “pull” system, whereby product, parts, or inventory move forward based on customer demand, thus eliminating inventory, waste,…
MIT News
The manufacturing sector, its advocates note, is burdened by negative stereotypes. Outsiders often mistakenly think that manufacturing consists of jobs that are “dumb, dirty, and dull,” as MIT President Susan Hockfield said during a recent conference on the subject.
Many people also view…
Miriam Boudreaux
So, you think you’ve got them all figured it out, and then, bam! Somebody else comes up with a new quality acronym to throw you off your game. But don’t give up too soon. Acronyms are confusing, but they all boil down to continual improvement. The trick is to decide, along with your company, which…
GDO BV
(GDO: Eygelshoven, Netherlands) -- GDO BV is a designer and builder of production automation and visual inspection systems based in The Netherlands. In 2007 a major European stent manufacturer came to GDO with a request: Could the company develop a system to automate stent inspection?
Out of this…
Cognex Corp.
(Cognex: Natick, MA) -- Cognex, the a global supplier of machine vision systems, has released SensorView 2, a smart display for Checker machine vision sensors. With SensorView 2, production engineers can fully configure, test, and monitor Checker 4G vision sensors without a PC being required at any…
Donald J. Wheeler
Editor--Part 2 of this article can be found here.
In some industries a few test batches will be produced prior to going into production. When this happens, a critical question is: “Are all of the test batches alike?” With only one value per batch, how can we compare a set of three or more values to…
