All Features
Kelly Graves
Most everyone has read the maxim, “Plan your work and work your plan.” This is simple and effective advice—when it’s followed. Unfortunately, it can also be overwhelming when it comes to ensuring that everyone in the organization knows what the strategic plan is and how they can directly support…
Edward Herceg
Position feedback sensors for hydraulic or pneumatic cylinders have used one of three traditional technologies: magnetostrictive, variable resistance, and variable inductance sensors. Occasionally other sensor technologies have been used successfully in this application, but the focus of this…
Mike Richman
Editor's note: This week, Quality Digest Daily will be looking at some of the key technologies on display at the Coordinate Metrology Society's annual conference (CMSC). The CMSC, taking place this year July 20–24 in Hollywood, Florida, is the gathering place for users, service providers, and…
Ryan E. Day
True, “Marco Polo” is a great tag game played in a swimming pool, but Marco Polo the man is probably better known in connection with the trans-Asiatic trade route known as the Silk Road. That, however, was the old Silk Road. Yes, there is a new Silk Road, and no, it shouldn’t be confused with the…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
“If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.”
—Margaret Mead
This month’s article comes from the…
Gary Confalone
Editor’s note: This week, Quality Digest Daily will be looking at some of the key technologies on display at the Coordinate Metrology Society's annual conference (CMSC). The CMSC, taking place this year July 20-24 at the Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood, Florida, is the gathering place for users,…
Brian Maskell
T here are three ways in which a standard costing system is typically used in a manufacturing company:
1. Performance measurement 2. Decision making 3. Inventory valuation
From an accounting perspective, performance measurement and decision making are part of a company’s management accounting…
Annette Franz
How do we ensure that everyone in the organization is on the same page when it comes to customer experience?
I’m thinking about a quote I stumbled upon the other day from Edmund Wilson: “No two persons ever read the same book.”
Wow! Isn't that the truth?
Think about books you’ve read; think about…
Michael Causey
We, and others, like to take the FDA to task for missing deadlines or behaving in ways that are sometimes difficult to fathom. So it’s only fair to give equal space to something when they seem to get it right. Take the agency’s Unique Device Identification System (UDI).
Readers of this column…
Harry Hertz
Given the challenge, I can relate any three topics to each other. However, in the case of change management, social media, and CEOs, there’s a strong relationship that is reinforced by concepts in the Baldrige Excellence Framework. Two studies by Leslie Gaines-Roth et al. of Weber Shandwick, a…
John Flaig
The classic version of FMEA is an engineering tool for quality and reliability improvement through project prioritization. It was formally released by the U.S. government with MIL-P-1629 in 1949 and updated in 1980 as MIL-STD-1629A. The classic FMEA methodology has proven to be reasonably…
Brandon Henning
Today, consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers are under intense pressure to deliver quality products while keeping costs down. The push to globalize to meet customer demand, coupled with increasing mergers and acquisitions, makes it almost impossible for CPG companies to cost-effectively…
Mike Richman
3D printing. The Internet of Things. Big data. Outsourcing. Reshoring. A graying workforce. The skills gap. The wage gap. For manufacturers, these factors and countless others are creating a revolution, albeit a quiet one, whose effects are still not fully understood. They will, however, be felt…
Delcam
(Delcam: Birmingham, UK) -- Delcam has made the Learning Zones for its full range of CADCAM software available as a free app for iPads. The app can be downloaded from the Apple App store.
The Delcam Learning Zone App comprises tutorials for the latest releases of all Delcam software, including…
Greg Goodwin
Regardless of where you look across manufacturing industries, you’re likely to see that the knob on operational speed has been steadily turned up during the past decade. As trends such as increased automation, mobility, cloud solutions, the Internet of Things (IoT), and enterprise manufacturing…
Marc Dominus, Douglas Montgomery
The key challenge for risk professionals is no longer how to establish an enterprise risk management (ERM) program, but how to sustain its effectiveness. Often, ERM programs get off to a great start but soon lose their momentum because of certain missteps that occur.
Misstep 1: Assuming that the…
William A. Levinson
Engagement, according to the Mercer report “Engaging Employees to Drive Global Business Success,” is a decisive competitive advantage, “a psychological state in which employees feel a vested interest in the company’s success and are both willing and motivated to perform to levels that exceed the…
Fred Schenkelberg
Control charts provide an ongoing statistical test to determine if a recent reading or set of readings represents convincing evidence that a process has changed from an established stable average. The test also checks sample-to-sample variation to determine if the variation is within the…
(Council on Competitiveness: Washington, D.C.) -- The Exploring Innovation Frontiers Initiative (EIFI) is a national, public-private effort to accelerate future transformative innovation models that will drive U.S. competitiveness during the coming decades. Building on the council’s nearly three…
Chris Thorne
When we talk about how a company is perceived, we can talk about the numbers in terms of worth and wealth, or we can talk about how the customer perceives the worth of a business in terms of its enrichment or the value it adds to that customer’s life or to society in general.
Both measures…
Quality Digest
When asked a direct question, telling the truth is always a good option, so is giving a direct answer. That being said, sometimes a parable is worth a thousand words.
“The kind of seed sown will produce that kind of fruit. Those who do good will reap good results. Those who do evil will reap evil…
Katie Takacs
Capture kids’ attention at a young age, and it can inspire their futures. You often hear kids say they want to be a doctor, athlete, lawyer, policemen, or fireman. They associate these jobs with prestige and the “cool factor.” But how often do you hear a kid say that she wants to work in…
Harry Hertz
Every year, I return from the Baldrige Program’s Quest for Excellence Conference energized and full of pride in the success that can be achieved by people working together. And every year, I try to synthesize what I’ve heard into some key themes that reflect the best practices of the United States…
AMETEK
(AMETEK: Allerod, Denmark) -- The Versitron Rockwell Hardness Testing System from AMETEK Test & Calibration Instruments has long been considered an industry workhorse for laboratory and shop floor hardness testing. The latest version carries the CE mark and offers an updated user interface…
Alexandra Brown
Being a hospital leader is more difficult than ever in today’s changing healthcare environment. It can be easy to stray off course while dealing with regulatory compliance and financial constraints. It’s vital that a leader remembers he is responsible for one of the most precious and fragile…
