All Features
Bill Kalmar
Not a day goes by that we don’t hear about the quality of our nation’s educational system. Test scores are lower. Enrollment in the sciences is not up to expectations. Our students are lagging behind students in other nations. Some schools are crumbling, while others have had their funding reduced…
NIST, North American Coordinate Metrology Association
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is hosting and co-organizing the 2013 North American Coordinate Metrology Association (NACMA) meeting, Aug. 27–30, 2013, at NIST in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
The NACMA @ NIST conference is focused on training for…
Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence
(Hexagon: North Kingstown, RI) -- Hexagon Metrology today officially unveiled HexagonMetrologyU, the first e-learning portal designed to engage and support the metrology industry. The interactive platform debuts over 30 online courses covering metrology fundamentals, basic and intermediate…
University of Michigan
The type of sensors that pick up the rhythm of a beating heart in implanted cardiac defibrillators and pacemakers are vulnerable to tampering, according to a new study conducted in controlled laboratory conditions.
Implantable defibrillators monitor the heart for irregular beating and, when…
NVision Inc.
(NVision: Coppell, TX) -- Lighting Science uses the HandHeld laser scanner from NVision to ensure the dimensional integrity of the extremely complicated castings it purchases and uses in its roadway light emitting diode (LED) fixtures. In the past, it was difficult to inspect the castings because…
University at Buffalo
Despite the awareness of workplace bullying and the resistance to it by employers and employees, many workplace bullies achieve high levels of career success, according to a new study from the University at Buffalo (UB) School of Management.
Published in the Journal of Managerial Psychology, the…
Kyle Toppazzini
One of the recurring sentiments I hear from business executives is that lean Six Sigma (LSS) simply takes too long to implement. Without senior management buy-in, implementing it is not only difficult, it’s also nearly impossible. What if there were an easier way that resulted in faster…
Alan Nicol
I write a great deal about the difference between lean, Six Sigma, and kaizen on the production floor and in the office. Despite the fact that many of us have figured out that the same tools can be used in those very different environments with some translation for context, the training in the…
Mike Richman
If you call any of us at Quality Digest today, you are going to go straight to voicemail. That’s because the entire team is taking a day away from our regular work to gather, plan, debate, eat, and strategize during the company retreat. This day—today—we step away from the phones, the emails, the…
Harry Hertz
I always take away gems of wisdom from the Baldrige Program’s annual Quest for Excellence conference. This year was no exception. The gem I will share today comes from Choe Peng Sum, the CEO of Frasers Hospitality Pte. Ltd. in Singapore. He spoke at the international plenary session that we hosted…
BYK-Gardner
(BYK-Gardner USA: Columbia, MD) -- BYK-Gardner USA is a member of the BYK Additives & Instruments division of ALTANA. BYK-Gardner, a manufacturer and distributor of quality control instruments for color, appearance, and physical properties testing, will hold the 7th BYK-Gardner user meeting, “…
Mehul Shah
Most people think quality is all about compliance, but it delivers operational benefits as well. From our research, it is apparent that companies that have taken an integrated, holistic approach to quality with technology such as enterprise quality management software (EQMS) considerably outperform…
James Andrews
T
ake a moment to consider some of the foods we find at the supermarket: eggs, tomatoes, coffee — maybe even chocolate chip peppermint brownie ice cream. Now, try to imagine all the steps and processes that the food went through to get all the way to those shelves.
Although the ice cream likely…
Jack Dunigan
Editor’s note: This continues Jack Dunigan’s series about unsung heroes in the workplace, and the 16 traits they all share.
M y woodshop in the Caribbean used a lot of mahogany. Lots and lots of it. In my business, Dunigan Designs (I sold the business a few years ago, but you can check out the…
Karl Stephan
Somebody was going to do it sooner or later. And we have Cody Wilson, a law student at the University of Texas at Austin, to thank for the fact that, when it was finally done for the first time, the news media learned about it right away. All the same, now that somebody has used a 3D printer to…
Artec 3D
(Artec: Palo Alto, CA) -- Artec, developer of 3D scanning and 3D facial recognition technology has announced a new generation handheld, 3D scanner—Spider—named for its many “eyes.”
Unlike other handheld scanners, Spider has been developed for scanning objects with many small details, such as…
Belinda Jones
(Coordinate Metrology Society: San Diego) -- The Coordinate Metrology Society (CMS) recently announced the Library of Congress has issued ISSN numbers for the print and online versions of The Journal of the CMSC. ISSN 2328-6067 has been assigned to the print version of The Journal of the CMSC, and…
(Quality Digest: Chico, CA) -- On April 16, 2013, Quality Digest columnist H. James Harrington was presented with an honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the Sudan Academy of Sciences. The Ph.D. was conferred on Harrington for his immense contributions, remarkable achievements, and…
Don't forget, this week is World Metrology Week (Monday was World Metrology Day in case you missed it). Quality Digest and the Coordinate Metrology Society have joined forces to bring you extra features, photos, games, contests, and prize drawings, all of which will appear in portions of the…
Alex Orlov
Some time back, I was working as a Six Sigma Black Belt within the customer service department of a credit card organization. Our processes included responding to customer emails and mail correspondence.
One fine day the general manager of my process called to say we were getting additional…
Jim Frost
In a previous post, I wrote about how the field of statistics is more important now than ever before due to the modern deluge of data. Because you’re reading this, I’ll assume that we’re in agreement that statistics allows you to use data to understand reality. However, I’d also bet that you’re…
Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence
(Hexagon Metrology: North Kingstown, RI) -- Hexagon Metrology has launched the Hexagon Metrology Support Center in conjunction with World Metrology Day, May 20, 2013. The online portal is a centralized resource for support of any Hexagon Metrology product. Customers will have 24/7 access to a…
American Customer Satisfaction Index ACSI
The annual report on the information industry sector from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) shows that customers are happier with telecommunication services and technologies than they were a year ago.
The information sector benchmark—the combined aggregate score for wireless…
Barbara A. Cleary
Bill Kalmar’s column (Working for Free) about internships and the tendency to exploit students’ availability by providing no compensation caused some reflection within my company, PQ Systems, about its own internship program. The company has offered paid internships for more than 20 years, and has…
Robb McIvor
Countdowns are usually reserved for events of significant importance, like the classic T minus 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, ignition, heard so many times from Cape Canaveral. Or a countdown to a momentous occasion like a wedding or a long-awaited product launch.
At the time of this writing, another countdown…
