All Features
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
When I was 13, I had dreams of being a rock and roll star. For my birthday, I asked my parents for a guitar, and lessons to play it. My parents hired a staid instructor, and I was uninspired by the folk tunes she was teaching me. She was clueless about Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Kiss... even Black…
Esteve Garriga
There are many important issues to be considered in the food industry, such as consumer tastes, environmental impact, and economic aspects, but the most important is food safety.
Although current food safety management system (FSMS) certification schemes around the world are highly effective, I…
Mark Schmit
During the Sept. 18, 2020, session of the “National Conversation with Manufacturers,” our three West Coast manufacturing leaders on the panel kept coming back to their critical need for skilled workers.
The conversation was one in a series of 11 virtual listening sessions hosted by the National…
Lucca Henrion, Duo Zhang, Victor Li, Volker Sick
One of the big contributors to climate change is right beneath your feet, and transforming it could be a powerful solution for keeping greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.
The production of cement, the binding element in concrete, accounted for 7 percent of total global carbon dioxide emissions…
Gregg Profozich
Welcome to the third installment of our series on lean and Six Sigma. As we saw in the first article, lean and Six Sigma are complementary continuous improvement methodologies that reduce the overall waste and variability, respectively, in production processes. The second article went into some…
Jason V. Barger
Too many teams and leaders operate in thermometer mode. Without clarity of the type of culture they are trying to create and leaders they need to be, the culture they end up experiencing is purely reactionary. The temperature just goes up and down, depending on who is in the room or what is…
Quality Digest
(PGMA: Cleveland) -- Portable generators are vital to the building trades, acting as a convenient, easy-to-move source of spot power on job sites. But, like any tool, safe and proper use is critical to a safe outcome. With portable generators, that means never operating a generator indoors or in…
James Wells
When is a product “good enough” to accept? This is the classic challenge of quality. High customer expectations demand that suspect products be thoroughly scrutinized and a high standard set for their release. Customers expect this, and quality staff strive to achieve it.
The other side of the tug…
Andrew Schutte
Industrial engineers design, develop, test, and evaluate integrated systems for managing industrial production processes. Functions include quality control, human work factors, inventory control, logistics and material flow, cost analysis, and production coordination. These and other facets are…
(ASM: Suwanee, GA) -- With its ASM Factory Equipment Center, ASM is now offering a powerful, integrated software-based solution for companywide asset and maintenance management. You can plan, control, execute, support, and document the maintenance and repairs of all ASM and non-ASM machines,…
(Mahr: Providence, RI) -- Mahr, a global manufacturer of precision measurement equipment used for dimensional metrology, introduces its MarForm MMQ 500, which extends Mahr’s benchtop form-tester portfolio with new levels of speed and flexibility. The MMQ 500 features optimized machine design and…
Quality Digest
(Wall Colmonoy: Madison Heights, MI) -- Wall Colmonoy introduces high-quality ColWear Plates that are ideally suited for high-demand industrial fans due to its wear protection, as well as resource and energy efficiencies.
ColWear Plates are used in the manufacture and repair of industrial fans to…
Jennifer V. Miller
As the parent of two teens, I’ve become quite accustomed to the Eye Roll. This ocular straining happens most often when I request that a previously agreed upon task be completed by said teen. Me: “Hey, it’s time to empty the trash. Trash pick up is tomorrow.” Teen: “Ugh,” with a healthy helping of…
Annette Franz
In 2019, I wrote about a marketing phenomenon that I kept hearing about, that customers are in control, that they have all the power. I never felt like that was right.
In that post, I wrote: “So, when you see those headlines about customer control and customer power, what are they really talking…
(Optical Gaging Products: Rochester, NY) -- Cygnus Manufacturing Co. (CMC) is a leading manufacturer and supplier of high-precision products and components for the medical device, transportation, energy, and aerospace industries. CMC provides full-service manufacturing from prototype through…
(Exact Metrology: Cincinnati) -- Exact Metrology, a comprehensive 3D metrology service provider and hardware sales company, sells Raytech Measuring Systems.
These are shop-floor dimensional measuring machines like the single-axis and the three-axis table for industrial manufacturers. The company…
Yoav Kutner
Like business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce, business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce allows customers to purchase parts and supplies via an online portal. The difference is that in B2B e-commerce, both the customers and suppliers are businesses, and the customers may or may not be the end users of the…
Nicholas Wyman
It’s a new year, with a new president and new opportunities to boost modern apprenticeship programs in the United States that can help get people back to work and stimulate the economy.
Getting people into apprenticeships has never been more vital, as job losses caused by the pandemic continue to…
Bruce Hamilton
At the tender age of 21, living in a universe with far too many parallels to present day, I took a job—which turned out to be more than a job—to support myself in college by working as a caregiver, cook, driver, and constant companion to a man who as a young adult had been infected by the awful…
(Brunson Instrument Co.: Kansas City, MO) -- Completing a 21-year career at Brunson Instrument Co., general manager Richard Powell will retire later this year. The company has initiated a vigorous search for Powell’s replacement, and he will continue in his current capacity until the position is…
Quality Digest
(Interfacial: Prescott, WI) -- Interfacial Consultants (Interfacial), a Wisconsin-based innovator in advanced materials, has recently released two disruptive, highly filled masterbatch technologies, to be distributed by its sister company Nagase Specialty Materials (NSM).
These novel, proprietary…
Gleb Tsipursky
Stakeholder engagement is one of the more critical aspects of leadership, whether you’re a team leader or a member of a cross-functional team trying to lead team members to focus on quality. Stakeholders can be anyone from your colleagues to suppliers to business partners, and your relationship…
Tamela Serensits
Quality managers have a problem. The success of their quality program hinges on one thing. It’s not KPIs, and it’s not methodology. It isn’t even employee engagement or customer satisfaction. The one thing a quality manager needs most is leadership buy-in.
Quality programs fail because they do…
Fred Schenkelberg
There is a type of error that occurs when conducting statistical testing: to work very hard to correctly answer the wrong question. This error occurs during the formation of the experiment.
Despite creating a perfect null and alternative hypothesis, sometimes we are simply investigating the wrong…
Jose Luis Alvarez
Alexander Hamilton, one of the United States’ founding fathers, famously called energy the most important characteristic of the executive branch of government. “A feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of the government,” he said in the Federalist Papers. “A feeble execution is but another…
