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Harish Jose
In today’s column, I will be looking at process validation and the problem of induction. Yesterday, I looked at process validation through another philosophical angle by using the lesson of the Ship of Theseus.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defines process validation as “the…
Pat Toth
Recently a segment on my favorite morning news program stopped me in my tracks. The young and attractive hosts (why are they always so young and attractive?) were demonstrating new appliances, among them a smart refrigerator. The fridge was equipped with all kinds of high-tech features including…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
In our July 7, 2017, episode of QDL we look at apprenticeships, the Antikythera mechanism, and risk-based thinking in operations.
“Demand-Driven Education to Close Skills Gap”
Speaking at the National Association of Manufacturers Summit in Washington, D.C., Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta and…
Capture 3D
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Companies strategically adopt cutting-edge solutions to help solidify their position within a competitive marketplace. Years ago, blue-light 3D scanning technology was implemented to help product development and alleviate coordinate measuring machine (CMM) bottlenecks. Today,…
Donald J. Wheeler
The simplest type of process behavior chart is the chart for individual values and a moving range. It allows us to plot a point every time we get a value, making it perfect for data that occur one value at a time. A brief history of this simple chart follows.
In the 1920s, Walter A. Shewhart…
Ruth P. Stevens
As marketing advances, most professionals are well aware by now of the importance of retention and reactivation in optimizing the value of the customer base. The facts are clear: We know that it costs far less to reactivate a dormant customer than to acquire an entirely new one; we know that…
Michael O’Shea
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Opportunities are becoming more frequent to apply metrology to adaptive robot control for many applications. There are many different techniques to accomplish this, from regular calibration to real-time feedback, using anything from laser trackers to optical devices in order to…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
More than 2,000 years ago a huge ship crashed beneath the cliffs of Antikythera, a small island off the coast of Greece. Later discovered in 1900, the wreck yielded a trove of antiquities, including an amazing geared mechanism that, just for starters, predicted eclipses and the location of the sun…
X-Rite
Would you choose a beverage off the store shelf if the same brand sitting next to it was a different color? The Bacardi Bottling Corp. knows the answer is probably no, which is why the company incorporates strict color standards into its Bacardi Mojito production process.
Bacardi Mojito is a mix…
MIT Sloan School of Management
There are few executives today who don’t wish they could be more productive. Even the most successful individuals are looking for new and better ways to get more accomplished while maintaining or increasing their quality of life.
“Regardless of location, industry, or occupation, productivity is a…
Amie Whittington
Is your governmental hospital exempt under Section 501(c)3? If you have a 403(b) plan, the answer is yes, but even if you don’t, you need to check.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is ramping up compliance audits of governmental hospitals that are exempt under 501(c)3 (dual status). The…
Tim Lozier
The dynamic of risk management and compliance seems to be experiencing a shift toward risk management in operations, and learning to pay attention to detail in order to leverage it.
The biggest question often asked is, “I’m aware my company needs to pay great attention to the detail of risk, but…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
The one complaint—the one problem—that nearly every company puts at (or very near) the top of its list of challenges is communication. George Bernard Shaw, the famous Irish playwright, sets us straight on this when he said: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has…
Annette Franz
What motivates you to go to work every morning? What drives you to do good work every day? What motivates you to want to work for your employer every day? What are the things that your manager and your executives do that encourage you to work hard for them every day?
What motivates your staff? Do…
Ian Haydon
There’s a revolution happening in biology, and its name is CRISPR. CRISPR (pronounced “crisper”) is a powerful technique for editing DNA. It has received an enormous amount of attention in the scientific and popular press, largely based on the promise of what this powerful gene-editing technology…
Mike Richman
The June 30, 2017, episode of QDL offered a wrinkle in time, of sorts: not only orbiting debris and medieval medicine, but moments in the here and now such as our interview with Keith Bevan of the Coordinate Metrology Society and the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, and an on-the-go version of…
Mike Richman
If there was one key takeaway from Hexagon’s impressive and impressively large user conference, styled “HxGN Live,” which took place earlier this month, it’s that finding actionable information, not merely acquiring mountains of data, is the key to developing a truly smart factory. “It’s always…
Erin Connelly
For a long time, medieval medicine has been dismissed as irrelevant. This time period is popularly referred to as the “Dark Ages,” which erroneously suggests that it was unenlightened by science or reason. However, some medievalists and scientists are now looking back to history for clues to…
Harry Hertz
The title to this column probably has you thinking about some life-changing transition or a big vacation to refresh, or maybe a new exercise regimen. If that is the case, I am sorry to disappoint you.
I’m actually about those renewal reminders for annual donations you make to a charity or to…
NETL
Contrary to that old cooking adage, “a watched pot never boils,” keeping a careful eye on things—in the kitchen or in the laboratory—can be essential to making a useable (or edible) final product.
Take chocolate, for instance, that foundational block of the food pyramid. An important part of…
Intertek
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As widely useful and broadly applicable as it may be, the ISO 9001 standard covering general requirements for quality management systems (QMS) cannot address all stakeholder needs in every sector. Component functions and operations of discrete industries often require additional…
Kevin Meyer
Before you can improve something, you must first have a very clear understanding of what its current state is. Don’t assume you know what it is. Go to the gemba, be it the factory floor, the shipping and receiving area, your office, or even take a minute to focus on yourself, and observe what is…
Intertek
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For organizations within the aerospace sector, certification to the AS9100 family of standards—including AS9110 for aerospace maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) organizations; and AS9120 for aerospace warehouse and distribution operations—is a necessity for doing business.…
Intertek
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Organizations that build, supply, design, or maintain products, parts, or services for the aerospace industry generally must be certified to the AS9100 family of standards (including AS9110, which is specifically for aerospace maintenance, repair, and overhaul [MRO] organizations…
Douglas C. Fair
Plant-floor quality issues tend to focus on a company’s technical resources. When products fall out of spec, alarms sound and all hands are immediately on deck to fix things. Despite large technology investments to monitor and adjust production processes, manufacturers are still bedeviled by…
