All Features
Peter Tzaklev
The quality level of Bulgarian companies is far from the six sigma level, but so far they have been satisfying requirements. Many manufacturing firms in Bulgaria are registered to ISO 9001, especially those that are working for foreign customers in a sort of outsourcing. Every year,…
Quality Digest
(Stat-Ease Inc.: Minneapolis) -- Stat-Ease Inc.’s new workshop, “DEO for DFSS: Variation by Design,” is intended to help quality professionals create ideal products and processes that are robust to varying conditions and meet all specifications. This two-day computer-intensive class is a…
Quality Digest
(WCBF: Chicago) WCBF is launching its Global Six Sigma Awards 2007 program by issuing a call for entries from organizations across the globe that are implementing Six Sigma methodologies to secure business improvement. The Global Six Sigma Awards’ key objective is to identify the most…
Praveen Gupta
I first read about training in listening skills about 25 years ago. I didn’t really understand the difference between hearing and listening. I thought people had hearing problems. Now I get it.Everybody talks I see people talking loudly on cellular phones at airports, in shopping malls…
There’s a certain manufacturer that makes carbon-based friction material in the form of a disk. A press and die are used in the final manufacturing operation to cure the carbon material into a functioning friction pad. Peak temperature uniformity is a critical characteristic during the…
Quality Digest
(John Wiley & Sons Inc.: Hoboken, New Jersey) -- The principles and techniques of lean began more than 50 years ago at Toyota Motor Corp. Since then, lean has become known among industry people as the most consistently successful approach to organizing and operating a business or…
Quality Digest
(Ford Motor Co.: Dearborn, Michigan) -- Ford Motor Co. recently awarded its highest supplier honor—the World Excellence Award—to 55 of its global suppliers for their exemplary performance in 2006. More than 150 people, including Ford’s largest production and nonproduction global suppliers, attended…
Quality Digest
(National Institute of Standards and Technology: Gaithersburg, Maryland)—National Institute of Standards and Technology engineers, together with colleagues from industry and other standards organizations, have completed a five-part series of standards designed to evaluate the accuracy—…
Quality Digest
(KUKA Robotics: Clinton Township, Michigan) -- KUKA Robotics Corp., a global manufacturer of industrial robots, has announced that the Oak Park Knights 1216 of Oak Park, Michigan, sponsored by KUKA Robotics, recently won the San Diego regional competition and placed 30th out of 86 teams…
Quality Digest
The quality of Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles is virtually equal to that of Toyota and Nissan, according to the first quarter 2007 model-year Global Quality System report. Ford, Lincoln and Mercury brand vehicles are at 1456 TGWs (things gone wrong), compared with Nissan at 1457 and Toyota at…
Quality Digest
(SAS: Orlando, Florida) -- SAS Enterprise Intelligence Awards were recently presented to Whirlpool Corp. and JPMorgan Chase at SAS Global Forum (formerly known as SAS Users Group International) in Orlando, Florida. SAS, a provider of business intelligence and analytical software and services,…
Bill Kalmar
Recently, the AAA organization named its annual list of Five Diamond restaurants. As experienced travelers and faux epicureans, as I consider myself, my wife and I have become accustomed to seeing quality proclamations and awards on a yearly basis, but I didn’t actually know what…
Quality Digest
(TAGSYS: Cambridge, Massachusetts) -- TAGSYS, a provider of item-level radio frequency identification (RFID) infrastructure, has announced its unprecedented RFID “Six Sigma Performance Program” for pharmaceutical manufacturers. Six Sigma is a quality-of-service performance guarantee of…
Quality Digest
(ITI Global: Milford, Ohio) – Hitachi Medical Corp. has received from its parent organization, Hitachi Ltd., the 2006 Innovation Award recognizing the most innovative product and process developed for the year. Hitachi Medical received the award for the multimodality console product…
Quality Digest
(Food and Drug Administration: Rockville, Maryland) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has unveiled a new Web page that will keep the public informed about the status of post-approval patient studies for certain recently approved medical devices. “FDA is committed to improving its medical…
Researchers Mark Prausnitz and Robyn Schlicher use a confocal microscope to study cells whose membranes have been opened by the application of ultrasound. Georgia Tech Photo: Gary Meek Researchers have shown how ultrasound energy can…
Thomas R. Cutler
Food quality and safety are priorities for consumers, and from Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) to the Bioterrorism Act to lot traceability, food manufacturers are responding. Reputations and brands are at risk when safety concerns and product recalls are front-page news. There…
Thomas R. Cutler
Food quality and safety are priorities for consumers, and from Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) to the Bioterrorism Act to lot traceability, food manufacturers are responding. Reputations and brands are at risk when safety concerns and product recalls are front-page news. There…
Quality Digest
(Schneider Electric: Palatine, Illinois) -- Global power and control specialist Schneider Electric has received the 2007 Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Innovation for North America in the field of power quality (PQ) and energy management solutions. In 2005, Schneider Electric…
Quality Digest
(Intel Corp.: Santa Clara, California) -- Intel Corp. recently announced the 10 winners of the company’s most prestigious award for suppliers, the Supplier Continuous Quality Improvement award. The award, for outstanding commitment to quality and performance excellence in 2006,…
Quality Digest
(Accelper Inc.: Chicago) -- Business executives, entrepreneurs, chief innovation officers, product and business development professionals, investors, creative directors, human resources professionals, and media and marketing leaders are cordially invited to an evening focused on…
Quality Digest
(Airline Quality Rating: Washington, D.C.) -- Hawaiian Airlines has taken the top spot in the 17th annual national Airline Quality Ratin study. This is the first year that Hawaiian Airlines has been included. Jet Blue, which had been ranked first for the past three years, slipped to…
Quality Digest
(Minitab Inc.: State College, Pennsylvania) -- Minitab Inc., the leading global provider of software and services for quality improvement and statistics education, recently announced the opening of Minitab Pty Ltd, its new subsidiary in Australia. The full-service office is located in…
Quality Digest
(Oriel Inc.: Madison, Wisconsin) -- SigmaFlow, a provider of enterprise performance improvement software, and Oriel Inc., a productivity consulting and training organization, have announced an joint offering that integrates Oriel’s lean training content with SigmaFlow’s Project…
Quality Digest
(Instantis: Santa Clara, California) — Instantis, a provider of software for managing top-down performance improvement initiatives like Six Sigma, announced today that it has completed and made available the results of a ground-breaking study on Six Sigma adoption patterns and maturity…
