All Features
Matt Fieldman
Up and down busy streets nationwide, the same six-word banners stand outside in front of hundreds of businesses. Affixed to poles on front lawns or hanging above entrance doors, these inescapable banners, while the numbers may vary, almost always have the same wording: “Now Hiring! $18/hour, plus…
Sara Adams
Corrective and preventive action (CAPA) is often a thorn in the side of medical device manufacturers. Problems with CAPA top the list of reasons for 483s and warning letters from the FDA year after year, and many companies struggle to identify when they should even initiate a CAPA.
When companies…
Harry Hertz
Hybrid workspace, societal well-being, and productivity: On the surface, these three concepts aren’t obviously related. But permit me to explore each of them in the context of our current environment, and then conclude with a proposal for organizations to consider that could improve organizational…
Quality Digest
(Thomson: Wood Dale, IL) -- Thomson Industries, a leading manufacturer of linear motion-control solutions, has added a polymer bushing to its line of ball bushing bearings. It expands the company’s extensive bearing portfolio, providing design engineers with a new option that helps them avoid…
(Wanner International: Church Crookham, UK) -- Wanner International can reduce the total energy use by up to a half for some industries that rely on pumps for their processes. Focusing on the importance of reducing energy consumption in the wake of COP26—the most recent annual UN climate change…
Gleb Tsipursky
‘I don’t see how we can replace the serendipitous idea generation of hallway conversations,” said Saul, the director of quality management for a 1,500-employee enterprise software company, during a planning meeting about the company’s post-vaccine return to the office. “If we don’t return to the…
Barnaby Lewis
Harran blinks in the sunlight, adjusting his eyes. He’s an inquisitive child, enthusiastic for all things new, yet still he struggles to understand what he’s looking at. A man is pressing marks—triangles or wedges—into a piece of clay, explaining that in this way he can speak to people, even when…
(Neurala: Boston)—A leader in AI software, Neurala has announced new detection technology to find and identify objects in a field of view to improve the quality inspection process for manufacturers.
Neurala’s new detection feature adds to its existing classification and anomaly recognition…
David Dewhirst
Digital transformation initiatives that aim at getting manufacturers to Industry 4.0 have been around a while and will assuredly continue to be with us for quite a while longer. But what can often get lost by manufacturers in the push to digital transformation are the reasons why one would want to…
Mikhael Khaimov
Today thousands of technologies and solutions help businesses improve efficiency, create better products, evolve faster, and so on. A digital twin is a technology that deserves a closer look, especially if your goal is to improve business performance and reduce costs.
What’s a digital twin, and…
Knowledge at Wharton
Most managers dread giving feedback. Offering a blend of praise and criticism is supposed to help your team members do more of what they’re good at and improve in areas where they’ve missed the mark. But research shows it rarely works that way. In her book How to Change (Ebury Digital, 2021),…
Adriana Lynch
If there’s anything the last decade has taught us—and the Covid-19 pandemic has punctuated in grand fashion—it’s that businesses must get digital or they may become invisible. Branding, formerly an exercise that involved plastic signs, billboards, and newspaper print ads, has now firmly taken up…
(Michigan Metrology: Livonia, MI) -- A live, in-person, two and one-half-day class and workshop in surface texture, friction, and wear will be held in Livonia, Michigan, on May 4–6, 2022. The class will include both lectures and hands-on equipment demonstrations, to help students expand their…
(Teledyne FLIR: Wilsonville, OR) -- Introducing the latest addition to Teledyne FLIR’s polarized Blackfly S GigE camera lineup—the BFS-PGE-123S6P-C. This new 12MP model is well suited for applications dealing with reflective or challenging lighting conditions. Ideal for use cases like traffic…
Grant Ramaley
The IAF Medical Device Working Group has updated one of the most important documents that supports the medical device quality system ISO 13485. IAF MD9:2022—“Application of ISO/IEC 17021-1 in the field of medical device quality management systems (ISO 13485)” provides the mandatory requirements for…
Rodney Rohde
Medical laboratory professionals form the backbone of healthcare and the public health system. They conduct some 13 billion laboratory medicine tests annually in the United States. As of February 2022, these individuals had also performed more than 900 million Covid-19 tests and counting during the…
Quality Digest
(NewTek: Pennsauken, NJ) -- NewTek offers a customized version of its High Temperature LVDT Position Sensor for material testing in environments with extreme pressures and high/low cryogenic temperatures. Configured to operate in temperatures exceeding 1000°F (538°C), the NT-HT-1000 Linear…
Ryan E. Day
ISO 9001:2015, Clause 6.1 introduces the term “actions to address risks and opportunities,” as a replacement for the standard’s previous term, “preventive actions.” The juxtaposition of “risks” and “opportunities” seems to imply a relational nature between the two concepts. But is it still…
Shannon Karels, Kathy Miller
Many tools and concepts can be applied when implementing a transformation in a business. But what makes the transformation meaningful? What is the thing that will drive the transformation’s success?
It’s not how well standard work is written or the number of pull cards in the loop, although it’s…
Quality Digest
(Emerson: Marshalltown, Iowa) -- Emerson has introduced the Fisher WhisperTube Modal Attenuator for noisy gas or vapor applications in a wide range of industries. The modal attenuator is a full-bore device offering 15-decibel sound suppression to reduce pipe noise produced by sources upstream, such…
Georgia Institute of Technology
This country’s semiconductor chip shortage is likely to continue well into 2022. Now, a Georgia Tech expert predicts that the United States will need to make major changes to the manufacturing and supply chain of these all-important chips to stave off further effects. That includes making more of…
Sana Kazilbash
The 3MF Consortium recently announced its latest volumetric design extension for encoding geometrical shapes and spatially diverse properties through a volume-based description. The organization, which seeks to advance a universal specification for 3D printing, is currently calling for public…
(Alluxa: Santa Rosa, CA) -- Alluxa, a global leader in high-performance optical coatings and filters and thin-film deposition technologies, has introduced a groundbreaking capability in extending spectral optical-coating performance. The SIRRUS plasma physical vapor deposition (PVD) platform now…
Michael Naber
The automotive industry is a critical part of the global economy, and the quality of the products it produces is essential for its success. Consumers demand high-quality vehicles that meet their needs, and companies in this industry must ensure that their products meet rigorous safety and…
Jennifer Helgeson, Maria Dillard
In September 2018, a North Carolina city’s long road to recovery from Hurricane Matthew two years earlier became even longer. Lumberton, a small but diverse city of 21,000 people, 96 km (60 miles) inland from the coast, unfortunately found itself in Hurricane Florence’s sights. The Lumber River,…
