All Features
Mike Richman
If you missed the news story “Baldrige Program Chooses New Name to Reflect Its Mission” published earlier this week in Quality Digest Daily, allow me to reiterate. What was formerly known as the “Baldrige National Quality Program,” the program behind the Baldrige Award, will now be referred to as…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
A favorite media lament these days concerns the lack of high-school graduates prepared to go forth into design, engineering, or technology. That’s why we have seen so much push recently on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) programs for our schools. Industry is clamoring for…
The QA Pharm
We hear much about the importance of listening to customers and meeting their needs. Lean Six Sigma devotees say that metrics from the customer’s vantage point are at the center of their philosophy.
Many pharmaceutical companies embed their high view of the professional community and patients…
Cognex Corp.
One of Maclean Vehicle Systems’ (MVS’s) many automotive fastener products is stainless steel capped wheel nuts. The nuts are assembled on an index machine that processes two parts simultaneously at each station. The fasteners must be inspected to verify the nuts are properly threaded. MVS…
CRC Press
(CRC Press: Boca Raton, FL) -- The A3 format was developed by Toyota for telling the story of improvement. It provides a way of communicating a proposed idea or a problem on a single A3-sized sheet of paper, encouraging efficiency, clarity, and disciplined thinking. A3 problem solving identifies a…
Direct Dimensions Inc.
“The Awakening” is a 70-foot sculpture by J. Seward Johnson that depicts a man struggling to free himself from the earth. The installation, which has been a landmark for nearly three decades in Washington D.C.’s Hains Point, is comprised of five aluminum body parts: a right foot, a left knee, a…
AIA
(AIA: Ann Arbor, MI) -- Sales of machine vision components and systems in North America jumped 60 percent in the second quarter of 2010 over the same period in 2009, according to new statistics from the Automated Imaging Association (AIA), the industry’s trade group.
Second quarter sales were…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- To ensure that medical devices do not irritate the skin or eyes, or cause other adverse reactions, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published a testing standard for checking their safety prior to marketing and use.
ISO 10993-10:2010—“Biological…
Geodetic Systems Inc.
(GSI: Melbourne, FL) -- Geodetic Systems In. (GSI), a global designer and manufacturer of industrial 3-D measurement systems, recently added a new line of V-STARS systems based on its new series of “DynaMo” cameras.
The new “V-STARS/D” systems incorporating the DynaMo retain all the features…
Jon Gordon
With the recession finally in our rearview mirror (so they say), most companies are beginning to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and at least try to get back to business. But the past year has left its mark: Employees are in a funk. They are fearful, overworked, distrustful, and have less…
HEIDENHAIN Corp.
(HEIDENHAIN: Schaumburg, IL) -- With the new TS 249, HEIDENHAIN Corp. offers an extremely compact touch probe primarily for use in numerical-controlled grinding machines and lathes. This small device is based on well-proven HEIDENHAIN sensor technology, providing immediate connection to all common…
Raissa Carey
Story update 10/7/2010: We edited the last sentence of the first paragraph to reflect an amendment from the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program.
Known for the past 23 years as the Baldrige National Quality Program, the nation’s public-private partnership dedicated to performance excellence…
FARO
Editor’s note: Quality Digest’s Technorazzi Live will be presenting a live video broadcast demonstrating the capabilities of this new product on Oct. 20 at 1 p.m. EDT. If you are interested in watching the live broadcast, please click here.
(FARO: Lake Mary, FL) -- FARO Technologies Inc., a…
David L. Chandler
You can check a person’s vital signs—pulse, respiration, and blood pressure—manually or by attaching sensors to the body. But a student in the Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Health and Sciences Technology program is working on a system that could measure these health…
100 Customer Service Tips by Larry Williams
Editor’s note: This is the first of a series of columns from Larry Williams, author of the soon-to-be-released book Customer Service A to Z. In this series, Williams gives us 100 tips on what employees can do to look better and perform better in the eyes of their customers. These are actions and…
Pilgrim Quality Solutions
(Pilgrim Software: Tampa, FL) -- Pilgrim Software Inc., a global provider of enterprise risk, compliance, and quality management (ERCQM) software solutions, is the recipient of business analyst Frost & Sullivan’s 2010 North American Best-In-Class Customer Value Enhancement Award in the ERCQM…
Buker Inc.
(Buker Inc.: Antioch, IL) --The Lean Manufacturing Assessment, a new booklet produced by Buker Inc., offers manufacturing companies the opportunity to benchmark themselves in their lean efforts against the “best in class” lean manufacturing standards. The Lean Manufacturing Assessment focuses on…
Spectronics Corp.
(Spectronics Corp.: Westbury, NY) --The MAXIMA ML-3500 series ultraviolet lamps use advanced micro-discharge light (MDL) technology, plus a unique filter and bulb/reflector, to deliver up to 10 times the UV-A (365 nm) output of conventional high-intensity discharge (HID) inspection lamps. With…
Six Sigma Management Institute
(Six Sigma Management Institute: Scottsdale, AZ) -- Business leaders, improvement experts, Six Sigma professionals, and consultants are cordially invited to attend “The Social Convergence of Six Sigma,” a two-day leadership event to be held Oct. 27–28 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Discover new…
(Summit Optimization Group LLC: Lizella, GA) -- Summit Optimization Group LLC (Summit OG), a woman-owned consulting firm specializing in the implementation of process improvement methodologies, has announced HEART and HEARTRx for change management with new deployment strategies and leadership…
Aly Fields
Editor’s note: Several weeks ago, a young woman by the name of Aly Fields contacted us wanting to learn more about “quality” in general and Six Sigma in particular. A recent college graduate, Aly had taken it upon herself to earn a Six Sigma Yellow Belt. Why? Read her own words below. What…
Mark R. Hamel
I recently experienced the pain associated with coaching a team with poor chemistry. It happened within a kaizen event team, so the pain was finite, being that a kaizen event is a rapid improvement of a limited process area. It was, however, an opportunity to learn a few team-formulation lessons,…
ASTM International
(ASTM: West Conshohocken, PA) -- Three-dimensional laser scanning is an emerging technology that holds great promise for capturing dimensionally accurate information about an object or scene by collecting millions of dense measurements quickly. ASTM International Committee E57 on 3-D imaging…
ZWSOFT
(ZWSOFT: Guangzhou, China) -- ZWCAD Software Co. Ltd. (ZWSOFT), a provider of computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software, announces the release of ZW3D 2010, a complete 3-D CAD/CAM suite that provides ease of use, performance, and super-fast modeling functionality…
Paton Professional
(Paton Professional: Chico, CA) -- Thousands of aerospace manufacturers and engineers around the world use AS9100 as a guide to making quality parts and a way to comply with governmental regulations, but the upcoming revision to the standard—revision C—is still somewhat of a mystery. In this…
