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Quality Digest
(Marlin Steel Wire Products: Baltimore) -- Highlighted in a recent publication from the National Association of Manufacturers are stories about how various U.S. companies are handling the challenges of health care, energy costs and availability, Chinese competition, regulation, tort lawsuit…
Quality Digest
(ASQ: Milwaukee, Wisconsin) -- The American Society for Quality recently submitted a written statement for the record to a congressional subcommittee that is focusing on food quality and safety in the United States. The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and…
Quality Digest
(ANSI: New York) -- The American National Standards Institute recently announced the recipients of its 2007 Leadership and Service Awards. Recipients were recognized for their significant contributions to national and international standardization activities, as well as an ongoing commitment to…
Quality Digest
(AIAG: Detroit) -- New guidelines developed by the Automotive Industry Action Group aim to improve the quality of automotive parts, helping to lower warranty claims and reduce recalls. The automotive industry spent almost $12.8 billion in warranty claims in 2006, according to Warranty Week.AIAG…
Bill Kalmar
Being confined to a hospital bed can bring more discomfort than the malady that prompted the admission. Crowded rooms with other patients in various stages of illness, tasteless meals delivered with apathy, loud announcements for lost doctors, and a staff more concerned about planning their next…
Bill Kalmar
Being confined to a hospital bed can bring more discomfort than the malady that prompted the admission. Crowded rooms with other patients in various stages of illness, tasteless meals delivered with apathy, loud announcements for lost doctors, and a staff more concerned about planning their next…
Quality Digest
(ISO: Geneva) -- From shampoo to toothpaste to make-up and skin cream, hundreds of thousands of cosmetic products will now benefit from improved quality and safety, thanks to a new standard published by the International Organization for Standardization.Cosmetics are articles intended to be rubbed…
Douglas C. Fair
Just weeks after earning my industrial statistics degree, I hired on with a major aerospace company. My first “real” job entailed working with engineers and operators to deploy statistical process control (SPC) in a large machine shop. I quickly found out that the warm, coddling confines of a…
Quality Digest
(ASQ: Milwaukee, Wisconsin) -- How can education leaders ensure that schools reach their full potential and meet the needs of the business community? The 15th annual National Quality Education Conference explores solutions to these challenges through this year’s conference theme: “Building Better…
Quality Digest
(TÜV SÜD America: Danvers, Massachusetts) -- TÜV SÜD America Inc., a testing- and certification-services firm, was recently recognized as a notified body, able to perform all related services for EMC Directive 2004/108/EC. The European Commission acknowledged TÜV SÜD America as a valid organization…
Scott Deming
Today’s world is filled with savvy consumers. They know how to find the best deals. They’re up on all the latest trends. If there’s a hot new product on the market, they don’t want to miss it. (Remember those iPhone lines!). A remarkable blend of exuberance and skepticism leaves many business…
Quality Digest
(NCQA: Washington) -- Preferred provider organizations (PPOs), which cover nearly two-thirds of all privately insured Americans, will be required to report on the quality of care and service their members receive under standards that were released on Aug. 1 by the National Committee for Quality…
Quality Digest
(Commonwealth Fund: New York City) -- As health care quality and patient safety concerns rise, the latest Commonwealth Fund health care opinion leaders survey finds leaders united behind several key reform measures: more than half (56 percent) support the creation of a new public-private…
This figure shows the 3-dimensional dose distribution of the prostate upon completion of implanted seeds. Based on patient tests, Lee’s inverse planning system uses 15% fewer seeds. Photo by Eva Lee A California medical software company has launched…
Quality Digest
(FDA: Washington, D.C.) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently announced that manufacturers of certain drugs approved to treat Type 2 diabetes have agreed to add a stronger warning on the risk of heart failure, a condition that occurs when the heart does not adequately pump blood.…
Quality Digest
(HHS: Washington D.C.) -- As part of the efforts to design and establish a public-private partnership to succeed the American Health Information Community by fall 2008, HHS has issued the final white paper describing the vision for and attributes of a successor to the AHIC. The purpose of the…
Quality Digest
(ISO: Geneva) -- A new International Organization for Standardization technical report is aimed at reducing the number of patients harmed, or even killed, due to the misuse or malfunction of software for health care. In the past, health-related software was primarily applied to relatively…
Quality Digest
(Tufco Technologies: Green Bay, Wisconsin) -- Tufco Technologies Inc., a provider of contract manufacturing and business imaging services, recently announced that as of July 20, its employees had worked 2 million consecutive hours without a lost-time injury at its Green Bay facility.“We have…
Anthony V. Fasolo
As a regional director for loss prevention for the Marriott Corp. in the 1980s, I attended an “Insight To Time Management” seminar conducted by Charles Hobbs of Salt Lake City. The ideas in this article I got from that seminar and from more than 40 years of personal experience, with Marriott and…
Quality Digest
(ANSI: New York) -- Seven of the world’s leading retailers, including U.S.-based Wal-Mart, have agreed to rely upon food safety and quality management systems that have been certified as meeting rigorous standards for production, preparation, transport, storage, and handling. Agreed at a recent…
Quality Digest
(ISO: Geneva) -- A new ISO technical report is aimed at reducing the number of patients harmed or killed due to the misuse or malfunction of software for health care. These incidents have affected the reputations of health organizations and led to substantial legal damages.In the past, health-…
Quality Digest
(NIST: Gaithersburg, Maryland) -- Officials from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute recently signed a memorandum of understanding designed to expand significantly the scope of joint research and educational activities in…
Quality Digest
Mitch Matheny, top, and Jon Krug (Nexenergy: Columbus, Ohio) -- Nexergy, a designer, integrator, and manufacturer of battery packs and chargers, recently announced that two of its manufacturing and quality engineers have earned the Six Sigma…
Steven Ouellette
I spent my June and July articles beating up on the “sigma” index commonly associated with Six Sigma (and continue to do so over in my discussion board.) Let me sum up by saying that, while not wrong, “sigma” isn’t an efficient metric for accomplishing what we are trying to do in today’s business…
Quality Digest
(SigmaFlow: Dallas, Texas) -- SigmaFlow, a leading provider of best practice execution software, recently announced that The United States Internal Revenue Service’s Wage & Investment Division has selected SigmaFlow’s project portfolio…