All Features
Mark Graban
I was in Los Angeles on Tuesday, and I had a little extra time on my way to the Burbank airport, which meant a rare treat—lunch at the famed In-N-Out Burger. I don’t mean to be that guy who tweets what he eats, but my lunch is pictured at right.
The main picture I wanted to share is a simple…
SICK
(SICK: Minneapolis) -- SICK, a global leader in manufacturing sensors, safety systems, machine vision, and automatic identification products for factory and logistics automation, has launched the Inspector Viewer. The Viewer is a compact, real-time, touch-screen monitor that provides advanced…
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.
(Thermo Fisher: Waltham, MA) -- Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., a global leader in serving science, notes that its FT-IR spectrometer instrumentation can provide scientists with increased confidence in their results during quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) testing. This means they…
Smarter Solutions Inc.
(Smarter Solutions Inc.: Austin, TX) -- There’s a lot of discussion about the applicability of traditional capability metrics: Cp, Cpk, Pp, and Ppk. Although these metrics are popular in some areas, not everyone truly understands what the metric is trying to communicate about the process. In…
HEIDENHAIN Corp.
(HEIDENHAIN: Schaumburg, IL) -- HEIDENHAIN Corp. has now coupled its ACANTO absolute length gauge with the established and versatile ND 2100G GAGE-CHEK metrology readouts.
This gauging package is a great solution for many fixed gauging applications. The ACANTO absolute length gauge with EnDat 2…
Joseph A. DeFeo
How many times have you heard, “Lean is in and Six Sigma is out” from a colleague? The funny thing about this is that I used to hear the same thing 23 years ago. Only then it was, “Lean is in, and quality improvement teams are out.” Little has changed since then. Everyone is looking for a simple…
Mettler-Toledo
(Mettler-Toledo: Columbus, OH) -- Mettler-Toledo Inc. has introduced Quantos Q2 and QL2 powder- and liquid-dispensing auxiliary modules that can be added to any 0.1 mg or 0.01 mg XP Excellence Series analytical balance. The addition of automated powder- and liquid-dispensing functionality to…
NIST
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have for the first time used an apparatus that relies on the “noise” of jiggling electrons to make highly accurate measurements of the Boltzmann constant, an important value for many scientific…
Miriam Boudreaux
In my March 24th column, I discussed how you should handle audits that point out a minor or "Mickey Mouse" nonconformance. In this column, I am going to look at this from the auditor’s point of view, when it’s obvious that the auditee did not take a nonconformance seriously and didn’t bother to do…
The recent earthquake in Japan and evolving nuclear plant disaster have forced firms to triage their supply chains, adopting an emergency-room approach to responding to the crisis. Recent articles in the The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have discussed potential disruptions to supply…
Mark R. Hamel
Understanding a process’ cycle time is extremely important, especially in the context of takt time. In a mixed-model environment, cycle time can be a bit less straightforward. That’s where weighted averages may make sense.
Weighted-average cycle time, also known as “average weighted cycle time…
When it comes to packaged fish or meat, it’s nearly impossible to distinguish between fresh goods and their inedible counterparts. Researchers have now developed a sensor film that can be integrated into the package itself, where it takes over the role of quality control. If the food has spoiled,…
NeoMetrix Technologies Inc.
(NeoMetrix: Lake Mary, FL) -- Air Mobile Ministries (AMM) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that does disaster relief all around the world. Since its inception in 1978, AMM has traveled around the world many times bringing medical supplies, food, clothing, and now the Air Mobile Rescuer water…
American College of Physician Executives ACPE
(ACPE: Tampa, FL) -- The American College of Physician Executives (ACPE) and Thomas Jefferson University School of Population Health in Philadelphia are teaming up to offer an important new advanced degree aimed at physicians who want to improve the quality of health care.
The degree—a master…
MIT News
(MIT: MA) -- At a time when the Internet puts an untold amount of information at anyone’s fingertips, automated scientific experiments churn out data faster than researchers can keep up with it, and communications networks can include billions of people, even the simplest computational tasks…
American National Standards Institute ANSI
(ANSI: New York) -- According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a pet in your household can have a positive impact on your health by lowering blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglyceride levels; increasing exercise, outdoor activity, and socialization; and decreasing…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva, Switzerland) -- A free tutorial on the improved second edition of ISO/IEC 17021:2011, the international standard that sets new requirements for auditing management systems and for auditor competence, is now available on the ISO website.
The purpose of ISO/IEC 17021 is to increase…
Luxo
(LUXO: Elmsford,, NY) -- Luxo extends its industry-leading microscope line with a new series of variable inclination position (VIP) microscopes. Luxo’s new VIP series features an extended magnification range, 23 mm (.90 in.) optics system with a 186 mm (7.32 in.) working distance (0.5X lens,…
SAE International
(SAE: Troy, MI) -- James David Power III, founder of J. D. Power and Associates, will be honored at the 2011 SAE World Congress. Power will receive the first SAE International Subir Chowdhury Medal of Quality Leadership award to recognize his significant contributions affecting customer…
SAE International
(SAE: Troy, MI) -- James David Power III, founder of J. D. Power and Associates, will be honored at the 2011 SAE World Congress. Power will receive the first SAE International Subir Chowdhury Medal of Quality Leadership award to recognize his significant contributions affecting customer…
Birgit Albrecht
TVL (Toeleveringsbedrijf van Landuyt) in Wetteren, Belgium, has been finishing transmission housings for wind turbines for the past several years. When the company began, production numbered about 2,000 housings, which doubled by 2008, and its annual capacity continues to grow with each passing…
Digital Surveys Ltd.
The United Kingdom’s Channel 4 flagship television program Time Team, which has been uncovering the archaeological mysteries of the British Isles since 1994, has used 3-D laser scanning technology to create high-definition fly-through animations around Mont Orgueil Castle in Jersey.
Mont Orgueil…
Angelo Lyall
Story update 4/07/2011: A reference to Rick Nash was changed to John Forbes Nash.
In 1776 Adam Smith claimed that the best result comes from everyone in the group doing what’s best for themselves. During the early 1950s, John Forbes Nash revised Adam Smith’s claim and stated that the best result…
Productivity Quality Inc.
(PQI: Plymouth, MN) -- Productivity Quality Inc. (PQI) has partnered with the International Institute of Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (IIGDT) to present a series of seminars as part of an ongoing effort to promote geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) implementation among…
Productivity Quality Inc.
(PQI: Plymouth, MN) -- Productivity Quality Inc. (PQI) has partnered with the International Institute of Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (IIGDT) to present a series of seminars as part of an ongoing effort to promote geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) implementation among…
