All Features
InnovMetric
(InnovMetric: Québec City, Canada) -- A talisman is “an object considered to possess magical powers,” and InnovMetric Software has announced that PolyWorks V. 12 will offer a talisman of its own for users of laser-scanning and tactile-probing devices who need to operate 3-D metrology hardware away…
Norm Spitzig
Why is it that relatively few general managers can work—and succeed—in the same company for a long period of time, while the majority cannot and do not? Conversely, why is it that a good number of businesses, given their history, tradition, culture, or governance structure, cannot keep—or choose…
National Standards Authority of Ireland NSAI
(NSAI: Dublin, Ireland) -- The National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI) is teaming up with the Kelmac Group to hold a quality management system (QMS) auditor/lead auditor training course certified by the International Register for Certified Auditors (IRCA) and based on the International…
Renishaw
(Renishaw: Gloucestershire, UK) -- Mike Sullivan founded Future Advanced Manufacture Ltd. (Future AM) 30 years ago and realized immediately that competing on price was not the way forward. “There’s always a ‘Fred in the shed’ down the road who will offer to do any job cheaper,” he…
Lisa Lupo
Companies aren’t perfect, and neither are the people who work for them. Since this is a fact rather than a judgment, it’s reasonable to expect errors in manufacturing and process management. When an audited company continues to show a flawless record for, say, a food-safety audit, chances are it…
John Schultz
Problem solving is much more than arriving at an elegant solution. It is a twofold progression that includes problem resolution and solution implementation. Six Sigma and process improvement methods are examples of this sequenced approach to developing and deploying a remedial action that improves…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
Story update 4/13/2011: We corrected a misquote regarding who first said, “As goes GM, so goes the nation.”Every day, it seems, business as usual gets a bit more unusual. I’ve been haunting the news portals and blogs, curious to see how experts are viewing potential supply shortages following the…
Siemens PLM Software
(Siemens: Plano, TX, and Hanover, Germany) -- Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Industry Automation Division and a global provider of product life-cycle management (PLM) software and services, has launched the Teamcenter Mobility mobile-device application (app) for instantly…
Boothroyd Dewhurst Inc.
(Boothroyd Dewhurst: Wakefield, RI) -- Boothroyd Dewhurst Inc. will host the 26th annual International Forum on Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) to be held June 13–15, 2011, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island. This year’s theme is “Manufacture Success: Meeting the…
Olympus
(Olympus NDT: Waltham, MA) -- Olympus NDT Inc. announces the launch of its instrument rental program in the United States. Olympus NDT, a global leader in the manufacture of nondestructive testing equipment, now has available an extensive inventory of rental equipment that includes flaw…
AIA
(AIA: Ann Arbor, MI) -- Sales of machine vision components and systems in North America soared 54 percent in 2010 to nearly $1.8 billion, according to new figures released by the Automated Imaging Association (AIA), the world’s largest machine vision trade group.
The AIA “Quarterly Machine Vision…
Process Excellence Network PEX
(PEX: London) -- The Process Excellence Network (PEX) has united a group of top business process excellence (BPE) professionals from around the United States to help deliver a focused and highly relevant event. Following months of industry research, the Business Process Excellence for Telecoms and…
Harrington Institute
(Harrington Institute Inc: Los Gatos, CA) -- The Harrington Best TQM Thesis Award was presented this year to Dr. Vinod Prabhu at the opening ceremony of the Quality Congress 2011 for his paper “Six Sigma Report on Reduction of Medication Delivery Turnaround Time for Newly Admitted In-Patients.”…
Mark Graban
I was in Los Angeles on Tuesday, and I had a little extra time on my way to the Burbank airport, which meant a rare treat—lunch at the famed In-N-Out Burger. I don’t mean to be that guy who tweets what he eats, but my lunch is pictured at right.
The main picture I wanted to share is a simple…
SICK
(SICK: Minneapolis) -- SICK, a global leader in manufacturing sensors, safety systems, machine vision, and automatic identification products for factory and logistics automation, has launched the Inspector Viewer. The Viewer is a compact, real-time, touch-screen monitor that provides advanced…
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.
(Thermo Fisher: Waltham, MA) -- Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., a global leader in serving science, notes that its FT-IR spectrometer instrumentation can provide scientists with increased confidence in their results during quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) testing. This means they…
Smarter Solutions Inc.
(Smarter Solutions Inc.: Austin, TX) -- There’s a lot of discussion about the applicability of traditional capability metrics: Cp, Cpk, Pp, and Ppk. Although these metrics are popular in some areas, not everyone truly understands what the metric is trying to communicate about the process. In…
HEIDENHAIN Corp.
(HEIDENHAIN: Schaumburg, IL) -- HEIDENHAIN Corp. has now coupled its ACANTO absolute length gauge with the established and versatile ND 2100G GAGE-CHEK metrology readouts.
This gauging package is a great solution for many fixed gauging applications. The ACANTO absolute length gauge with EnDat 2…
Joseph A. DeFeo
How many times have you heard, “Lean is in and Six Sigma is out” from a colleague? The funny thing about this is that I used to hear the same thing 23 years ago. Only then it was, “Lean is in, and quality improvement teams are out.” Little has changed since then. Everyone is looking for a simple…
Mettler-Toledo
(Mettler-Toledo: Columbus, OH) -- Mettler-Toledo Inc. has introduced Quantos Q2 and QL2 powder- and liquid-dispensing auxiliary modules that can be added to any 0.1 mg or 0.01 mg XP Excellence Series analytical balance. The addition of automated powder- and liquid-dispensing functionality to…
NIST
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have for the first time used an apparatus that relies on the “noise” of jiggling electrons to make highly accurate measurements of the Boltzmann constant, an important value for many scientific…
Miriam Boudreaux
In my March 24th column, I discussed how you should handle audits that point out a minor or "Mickey Mouse" nonconformance. In this column, I am going to look at this from the auditor’s point of view, when it’s obvious that the auditee did not take a nonconformance seriously and didn’t bother to do…
The recent earthquake in Japan and evolving nuclear plant disaster have forced firms to triage their supply chains, adopting an emergency-room approach to responding to the crisis. Recent articles in the The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have discussed potential disruptions to supply…
Mark R. Hamel
Understanding a process’ cycle time is extremely important, especially in the context of takt time. In a mixed-model environment, cycle time can be a bit less straightforward. That’s where weighted averages may make sense.
Weighted-average cycle time, also known as “average weighted cycle time…
When it comes to packaged fish or meat, it’s nearly impossible to distinguish between fresh goods and their inedible counterparts. Researchers have now developed a sensor film that can be integrated into the package itself, where it takes over the role of quality control. If the food has spoiled,…
