All Features
Thomas R. Cutler
Manufacturing firms intent on capturing and distilling rich streams of data will find them. Companies will often look at a capability maturity model (CMM) in rows and columns—a format common across many industries and many applications—in Excel. Most data dumped from a database end up in a grid,…
Sutherland Global Services
(Sutherland Global Services: Rochester, New York) -- Sutherland Global Services, a multinational business process outsourcing (BPO) provider, received top honors in the 2008 Six Sigma case study presentation contest held by the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) and the Quality Council of India…
Thomas R. Cutler
Manufacturing firms intent on capturing and distilling rich streams of data will find them. Companies will often look at a capability maturity model (CMM) in rows and columns—a format common across many industries and many applications—in Excel. Most data dumped from a database end up in a grid,…
Bill Kalmar
It seems that not a day goes by that some politician, government official, or CEO of a major company has to retract a misspoken remark or admit that a previous message was either exaggerated or wasn’t factual. Despite the seriousness of the transgression, we as a forgiving society, are prepared to…
Ron Sachs, Consolidated News Photos (NIST: Washington) -- Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez recently presented five U.S. organizations with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest honor for organizational innovation and performance excellence. This…
APICS--The Association for Operations Management
(APICS: Chicago, Illinois) -- The Association for Operations Management recently completed the relocation of the association’s corporate headquarters from Alexandria, Virginia, to Chicago to better serve its 43,000 members. Chicago’s labor force boasts a large number of operations management and…
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(ASQ: Milwaukee, Wisconsin) -- In the world of quality improvement, achieving certification is viewed as a major source of personal accomplishment as well as a stepping stone to job advancement and higher salary. This year, the American Society for Quality (ASQ) celebrates its 40th year of…
Carolyn M. Clancy M.D.
If you’ve ever watched the popular “MythBusters” program on the Discovery Channel, you know that many supposed truths are based on old, incomplete, or simply incorrect information.The same can be said about beliefs about the quality of health care in America. How many times have you heard that more…
(CMS: Baltimore, Maryland) -- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is taking steps to encourage physicians and other eligible professionals to take part in the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI), a program designed to improve the quality of care provided to Medicare…
American College of Physicians ACP
(American College of Physicians: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) -- More than a dozen U.S. specialty health-care organizations joined the four major primary care physicians’ professional groups to endorse the seven-point Joint Principles of the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH).The PCMH offers…
(OHSU: Portland, Oregon) -- A recent study, “Telehealth and Healthcare Informatics,” by William Hersh, M.D., professor and chair of the department of medical informatics and clinical epidemiology at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), says a 40 percent hike in information…
Society of Manufacturing Engineers
(SME: Dearborn, Michigan) -- The Society of Manufacturing Engineers will present the Montreal Manufacturing Technology Show, an industrial and educational showcase for manufacturing innovations and trends, at Place Bonaventure on May 12, 13, and 14, 2008.
The Montreal Manufacturing Technology…
(ANSI: Washington) -- The American National Standards Institute and the Certification and Accreditation Administration of the People’s Republic of China (CNCA) came together recently to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU), making a formal commitment to cooperation in conformity assessment…
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(ISO: Geneva) -- The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. (IEEE) have signed an agreement to increase their cooperation in developing international standards. The agreement initially focuses on the subjects of…
Douglas C. Fair
Never say “never”? I guess I overlooked that memo. In case you missed it, the last two columns were written about what you should never do with control limits. These three nevers, if avoided, will ensure that your control charts are useful, reliable tools.
The first two nevers of control limits are…
Ken Peterson
From the perspective of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory agencies, corrective and preventive action (CAPA) is viewed as the central component that affects all control points including design controls, production and process controls, records and documents change controls,…
CRO Completes Multinational Training Program for Principal Investigators from China, Duke University
Clinical Research Consulting Inc.
Lisa Mazurka and the clinical investigators involved in the training is available
(Clinical Research Consulting Inc.: Boston, Massachusetts) -- Clinical Research Consulting Inc., a contract research organization (CRO) specializing in clinical monitoring, project management, education and…
Pharmaceutical Technology Magazine
(Pharmaceutical Technology Magazine: Iselin, New Jersey) – QPEC’s Annual Quality and Process Excellence Conference will be held from July 21-23 at the Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, Virginia. The conference is sponsored by Pharmaceutical Technology Magazine. This case study-driven…
(Research and Markets: Dublin, Ireland) – A Frost & Sullivan research service titled “Automation and Control Solutions in the European Pharmaceutical Market” provides an analysis of the various factors driving and restraining the market, revenue forecasts, geographic trends and…
Sen. Chuck Grassley Press Office
(Washington, D.C.) — Republican senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa has asked for an independent assessment of how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) follows up on the effects of medicines that it approves based on narrowly defined benefits.“The way things have turned out with drugs like…
Zimmer Holdings Inc.
(Zimmer Holdings Inc.: Warsaw, Indiana) -- Zimmer Holdings Inc. has recently taken a number of actions to improve quality systems at its Dover, Ohio, facility, which manufactures Zimmer Orthopedic Surgical Products (OSP). Zimmer recently conducted a review of quality systems at the Dover, Ohio…
David A. Marshall
Not long ago many manufacturing companies considered accidents and the resulting costs part of the expense of doing business. Today’s companies are creating better safety programs that benefit the financial health of the organization and significantly improve the protection provided to individuals…
the Minnesota Council for Quality
(MCQ: Minnetonka, Minnesota) -- The Minnesota Council for Quality recently announced the recipients of the 2007 Minnesota Quality Award. Nine organizations received recognition this year: • Achievement Level o Winona Health (Winona) • Advancement Level o Benedictine Health System, Long-Term…
(ISO: Geneva) -- Organized in association with ASQ, the International Conference on ISO 9001 will occur March 9 and 10, 2009, in Orlando, Florida, with workshops held on March 8.The 2009 conference theme is ISO 9001 and ISO 9004 revisions. The deadline for submitting an abstract is August 29, 2008…
ISO
(ISO: Geneva) -- ISO recently published a new version of the SI Guide, a small manual for the use of the International System of Units (SI [Système International d’Unités]).The SI is a comprehensive metric and decimal system based on units and derived units. The seven base units are length, mass,…
