All Features
Denise Robitaille
Last month’s column dealt with how to effectively communicate a finding of nonconformity in an audit report. It’s pretty straightforward: Here’s the requirement; there’s the evidence. They don’t match. Observations, which are now often called opportunities for improvement (OFIs), aren’t so cut and…
Quality Digest
(OSHA: Washington D.C.) -- The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has announced the outcome of its lead-in-construction standard lookback review in a recent Federal Register.“Employers and employees in the construction industry stand to benefit from the results…
Quality Digest
(ANSI: Washington, D.C.) -- Filling a prescription is faster and more convenient than ever thanks to a new standard from ANSI-accredited standards developer the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs Inc. Providing general guidelines for developers of pharmacy or physician management…
Quality Digest
(ISO: Geneva, Switzerland) -- The new ISO 14121-1 standard on risk assessment for machinery will help designers and manufacturers reduce associated safety hazards. The use of machinery is key to the development of any country. However, accidents do occur and can cause irreversible damage or…
Quality Digest
H. James Harrington has been awarded the Simon Collier Quality Award by the Los Angeles section of the American Society for Quality. The award will be presented at a November 14 dinner meeting at the Holiday Inn Torrance Gateway in Torrance, California. Harrington will be honored for his…
Quality Digest
(NSF: Ann Arbor, Michigan) -- NSF International, an independent, not-for-profit organization committed to public health protection, recently announced the launch of a new air-emissions certification program. The program will initially certify for low volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions of…
Stephen C. Welch
Many companies view production maintenance as a necessary evil, and through the years, manufacturers have simply accepted maintenance as-is and made little little or no effort to improve it. But some forward-thinking manufacturers, committed to lean processes, and their outsourced maintenance…
American National Standards Institute ANSI
(ANSI: New York) -- The Swedish Standards Institute has submitted a proposal to the International Organization for Standardization for a new international management systems standard on the subject of road traffic safety.
According to a World Health Organization report, road traffic is the cause of…
Quality Digest
(NIST: Gaithersburg, Maryland) -- How do you measure something that is 14 times lighter than air and invisible? That’s just one of the tasks National Institute of Standards and Technology Weights and Measures Division staff have taken on to prepare the nation for the hydrogen economy.Under an…
Quality Digest
PowerSteering, an enterprise project portfolio management (PPM) software used to manage IT, operational excellence, business transformation and other strategic initiatives attracted a record number of customer attendees and strategic partners at its third annual Customer Leadership Conference…
Praveen Gupta
Six Sigma is being implemented at more and more corporations. After a significant investment in training, corporations initiate projects. Six Sigma Champions have told me that some companies have several thousand projects in the pipeline. Managing that many projects is a major task. How many…
Quality Digest
(Juran: Southby, Connecticut) -- Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) has improved the way senior executives at Masco Builder Cabinet Group view and manage their business. DFSS is a methodology that focuses on designing products or services in a manner than ensures cost-effectiveness and efficiency of…
Quality Digest
In a recent blog entry, Michael J. Webb, coauthor with Tom Gorman of Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way, says that an important management system for senior executives is one that measures the costs of production. Webb adds that executives must know not just the total cost of production, but…
Quality Digest
(North Carolina State University: Raleigh, North Carolina) – the North Carolina State University College of Textiles has teamed with MoreSteam.com to provide Web-based Six Sigma training as a flexible and affordable alternative to traditional classroom training methods. A complete suite of…
Quality Digest
(ANSI: New York) -- To better protect the public from lead contaminants in drinking water, NSF International recently released an update to its American National Standard for drinking water system components. The update to NSF Standard 61 reduces the allowable concentration of lead from 15…
Quality Digest
(ASQ: Milwaukee, Wisconsin) -- Instrumental in NASA’s efforts to rescue the astronauts of Apollo 13, retired Rear Adm. T.K. Mattingly will share his experience of teamwork and leadership at the American Society for Quality’s 2008 World Conference on Quality and Improvement, slated for May 5–7, 2008…
Quality Digest
(NCQA: Washington) -- The quality of care for more than 80 million people in the United States enrolled in 767 accountable health plans improved in 2006, according to a new report by the National Committee for Quality Assurance.The State of Health Care Quality 2007 reports that commercial health…
Bill Kalmar
Since 1994, the American Customer Satisfaction Index, under the auspices of the National Quality Resource Center at the University of Michigan, has been the standard for measuring consumer satisfaction. The index measures satisfaction with 200 companies in 43 industries and is the most…
Quality Digest
(NIST: Gaithersburg, Maryland) -- Recommendations for new requirements to make future voting systems in the United States more “secure, reliable, and easier for all voters to use” have been submitted by an advisory panel to the Election Assistance Commission.The recommendations are a rewrite of…
Quality Digest
(National Institutes of Health: Bethesda, Maryland) -- National Institutes of Health director, Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., has announced the expansion of a national consortium that is transforming how clinical and translational research is conducted at academic health centers across the country.…
Quality Digest
(Canon Communications: Los Angeles) Canon Communications LLC, a major producer of tradeshows and publications dedicated to the worldwide $220 billion medical device manufacturing market, is introducing a new show—Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) Midwest—for medical manufacturers…
Georgia Institute of Technology
For people with impaired mobility and reduced ability to sense injury, the risk is high for pressure ulcers that can develop when they sit or recline in one position too long or wear a poorly-fitted prostheses for an extended period.
Clinical data collection helps drive the researchers’…
Quality Digest
(Johns Hopkins Medicine: Baltimore, Maryland) -- Mandatory classes that aim to improve the quality of medical care seem to successfully teach doctors new concepts but don’t necessarily improve patient outcomes, suggests a thorough review of articles that examine quality improvement (QI)…
Quality Digest
(ASQ: Milwaukee, Winsconsin) -- As Food and Drug Administration regulations and quality system requirements tighten, manufacturers can’t afford the ramifications of unidentified risks in production. To help educate producers, the American Society for Quality is offering a one-day virtual course…
Quality Digest
(USGBC: Washington) -- Sheridan Stationside Village has been selected for a new nationwide pilot program designed to foster smart growth principles and environmentally friendly design. The mixed-use transit-oriented development in Hollywood, Florida, is one of six projects across the state…