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Quality Digest
The Turkish Standards Association will host the upcoming 49th European Organization for Quality Annual Congress. The event will be held April 25–27 in Antalya, Turkey. The theme will be “Quality: The Way to Sustainability,” and will include 30 breakout seminars examining all aspects of quality,…
Quality Digest
Almost 60 percent of telecom executives surveyed reported that performance improvement efforts over the past three years were unsuccessful. However, the respondents judged 90 percent of the efforts to be a success. “The apparent contradiction between disappointing strategic business results and the…
Quality Digest
DVT Corp., a provider of innovative machine vision systems, recently upgraded its Intellect software to include new algorithms with simplified user interfaces for plant-floor technicians.The new algorithms include an application-specific toolset dedicated to bead tracking, as well as a fixed-font…
Quality Digest
The Juran Institute and i-Solutions recently released the Initiative Deployment Manager, a software program that allows users to monitor all business initiatives in real time.With a 360-degree view of business programs, the IDM can launch projects based on methodology templates; share plans and…
Quality Digest
Manufacturing industry analyst Bob Parker predicted in InformationWeek magazine that more manufacturing companies will combine lean and Six Sigma to improve efficiency and quality in 2005.Parker, vice president of the Manufacturing Insights group at the market research and advisory firm IDC, also…
Quality Digest
An upcoming conference focusing on stability testing will feature several major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The “Advances and Efficiencies in Stability Testing for the Pharmaceutical & BioTech Industry” conference will be held March 7–8 at the La Jolla Marriott in San Diego. It…
Quality Digest
The 6th annual Market Development & Outreach Multicultural Pharmaceutical Conference will be held March 17–18 in Iselin, New Jersey.The event is intended for pharmaceutical and health care companies that produce or develop products for diabetes, heart disease, cancer, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis and…
Quality Digest
The Regulatory Compliance Workshop Group will present the 2005 Pharma IT Compliance Week training event March 7–11, in Puerto Rico. The event will feature five one-day workshops, with topics including “Auditing Computerized Systems to Pass FDA and European Regulatory Standards,” “Understanding and…
Quality Digest
PTI International Inc., an accredited provider of online continuing pharmaceutical education, will offer several upcoming courses on compliance to 21 CFR Part 11. The course, “How to Develop and Implement Risk-Based Strategies,” is designed to help attendees improve compliance with regulatory…
Quality Digest
Purdue Pharma recently started to integrate radio frequency identification (RFID) tags into its packaging to prevent drug counterfeiting.The company will use RFID products produced by Symbol Technologies Inc. for the pilot project, which began with the RFID tagging of 100-count bottles of OxyContin…
Quality Digest
Thomson Scientific & Healthcare Corp., a provider of integrated information products for the health care industry, recently introduced a new pharmaceutical product labeling solution that complies with impending FDA regulations. Thomson is now offering outsourced label conversion using its…
Tamar June
Companies struggling to comply with the FDA’s myriad electronic recordkeeping regulations should take a deep breath and follow it up with a long, careful look at the FDA’s actual GxP and 21 CFR Part 11 rules. After a careful reading of the admittedly long and sometimes dry rules, it should become…
Quality Digest
The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award program will receive its 1,000th application in 2005, a milestone award administrators will celebrate all year long. Between 1998 and 2004, there have been 343 manufacturing applications (25 award recipients), 164 service applicants (13 recipients), 326…
Quality Digest
AssurX Inc., a supplier of enterprise quality and compliance systems, recently introduced CATSWeb Records Management, a solution designed to assist companies in complying with corporate record retention policies. Recent high-profile corporate compliance scandals have made record retention more…
Quality Digest
More than 1,000 health care quality experts will meet in San Francisco this week for the annual meeting of the American Health Care Quality Association.The two-day event starts Feb. 23 at the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero. It will feature keynote addresses from Don Berwick, president and CEO of the…
Quality Digest
A new study from Best Practices LLC shows that the best performance management and measurement tactics not only affect the bottom line, but also significantly enhance employee satisfaction. Companies that heavily invest in their employees reap the rewards of their investment. Some examples include…
Quality Digest
QualityWBT Center for Education and AQS Management Systems Inc. have partnered to offer a new ISO 9001 certified lead auditor class over the Internet. The RABQSA-approved class combines three days of training online and two days of face-to-face training. Students can access the online training at…
Quality Digest
The International Organization for Standardization recently launched an online survey to examine the value of ISO 14001 to small and medium-sized businesses. ISO encourages all sm all- to medium-sized businesses to participate, whether or not they have implemented ISO 14001 or another environmental…
Quality Digest
The National Committee for Quality Assurance recently praised the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services for launching a new pay-for-quality pilot project designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach in large medical groups. The 10 large medical groups participating in the program…
Quality Digest
PowerSteering CEO David Boghossian and Pitney Bowes Vice President of Six Sigma Nancy Tan recently addressed a Six Sigma summit in Miami. Titled “Using Six Sigma to Assess and Overcome Gaps in Performance,” the discussion focused on using the methodology to improve internal processes and customer…
Quality Digest
SBTI recently named Debby Sollenberger as its vice president of business development. Sollenberger has significant experience with Six Sigma. She is a Master Black Belt who led Six Sigma initiatives at GE’s aircraft engines sector and has trained more than 6,000 employees, 900 Black Belts and 60…
Quality Digest
ValueCurve Technologies Inc. recently released version 2.0 of its ValueDriver4 project performance management suite. The software provides a standardized process for justifying ERP, Six Sigma, new software development, and research and development projects to management. It includes project risk…
Tom Pyzdek
The headlines screamed, “Local Hospital Leads the State in C-Sections!” The gist of the story was that this hospital had more cesarean section births than any other hospital in the state. Indeed, it had led the entire Southwestern region for five years running. It’s well-established that C-…
Quality Digest
The Canadian Parliament will provide nearly $1 million to train companies in the rural Northumberland region in quality improvement skills. The skills development support will be funded by the Eastern Ontario Development Fund, a $10 million initiative designed to support economic renewal in eastern…
Quality Digest
Corporation Bank of India recently completed a Six Sigma project to make its business processes and operations more efficient. Wipro Infotech facilitated the project, which started in June 2004. Along with improving its internal processes, the project installed a culture of continual improvement at…
