All Features
Quality Digest
The Automotive Industry Action Group will host a conference on the development of interoperability standards for the automotive industry. The National Institute of Standards and Technology estimates that the automotive industry wastes $5 billion annually due to a lack of interoperability…
Quality Digest
The Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSIP) recently recommended the adoption of three interoperability specifications to the American Health Information Community. HITSIP is a multistakeholder group that develops data standards for American health care companies. The…
Quality Digest
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers recently announced a new standard relating to the skills required of pipeline workers. "ASME B31Q: Pipeline Personnel Qualification Standard" details the tasks typically performed by pipeline workers, and can be used to qualify pipeline…
Quality Digest
On Nov. 16 and 17 in Arlington, Virginia, the Identity Theft Prevention and Identity Management Standards Panel (IDSP) will start work on a comprehensive set of standards and guidelines that businesses and other organizations can use to prevent and respond to identity theft and fraud.…
Quality Digest
IBS America provides compliance management solutions and recently announced a strategic partnership with International Quality Consulting, a business and technology consultancy. IQC consultants will provide customers in the pharmaceutical, medical device and life sciences industries…
Quality Digest
Effective Oct. 30, Ellen Bovarnick became responsible for customer satisfaction, driving process improvements, establishing corporate quality standards and leading the implementation of Nortel’s Six Sigma initiative. “I’m excited to welcome Ellen to my team,” said Joel Hackney, Nortel’s…
Quality Digest
ThermoML, a project using Web-based technologies, has markedly improved the quality of data available to researchers and sped access to a lot of new scientific data.A partnership among the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry…
Quality Digest
The American National Standards Institute will provide a “Standards Resource Guide” and the P3 Web portal for the Environmental Protection Agency’s 3rd annual P3 award competition. ANSI is one of more than 40 industry, government and nongovernmental organizations helping to support the…
Quality Digest
Leading European research bodies and open source projects recently secured European Union money to assess the quality of open source software. Software Quality Observatory of Open Source Software will build tools to enable open source projects and software companies to benchmark the…
Bill Kalmar
As the cool, crisp air of autumn begins to make its annual appearance here in the Midwest, and the trees on country roads are aflame with color, it’s time to make some wardrobe decisions. Should I select the fur-lined parka over the Gore-Tex windbreaker? Are the Eddie Bauer boots warmer than the L.…
Praveen Gupta
Globalization has led to worldwide economic growth, shared resources and shared business functions. Some countries dominate manufacturing, others software or the service industry. The quality of manufacturing operations has been improving for decades, but the quality of service appears to be…
Quality Digest
George Eckes, who is widely credited with helping to formulate and clarify Six Sigma’s use in varied industries, recently joined the faculty of Villanova University’s online Six Sigma program. Eckes, founder and president of Eckes & Associates Inc., has more than 20 years of…
Quality Digest
The implementation of Six Sigma in financial services is the topic of a new book written by two leading consultants. Six Sigma for Financial Services: How Leading Companies are Driving Results Using Lean, Six Sigma and Process Management (McGraw-Hill, 2007), by Roland Hayler and Michael…
Quality Digest
Oriel Inc. recently published “Achieving Lean Success: A Pathway for Implementation,” which unites lean concepts with specific tools and techniques in a manner designed to make it easy to implement lean throughout an organization. The paper includes an “Ask an Expert” feature that’s…
Quality Digest
iSixSigma magazine recently named software from PowerSteering Software Inc. as the top solution for project tracking. The magazine cited PowerSteering’s best-in-class home page, multiple methodology support capabilities and feature-search capability as key performance indicators in the…
Quality Digest
True Opportunity software calculates the profit potential of manufacturing operations and breaks down this total by reason, allowing an organization to focus on the problems or opportunities that will realize the greatest results.“Our software evaluates opportunities in terms of profit,…
Quality Digest
Ipanema Technologies has launched a universal indicator of application performance over a wireless area network, Application Quality Score.AQS is a universal indicator that can be applied to all types of applications, data-transfer such as back-up, interactive such as Citrix or real-time…
Quality Digest
International Water-Guard Industries Inc., a Canadian aerospace company, recently got its AS9100 certificate of registration. The AS9100 standard specifies quality management system requirements for aerospace industry suppliers.“We had a good quality management system in place, and we were…
Quality Digest
Stabilix Health Companion’s primary objective is to simplify health care for individuals. It helps people track expenses and reimbursements, keep personal health records and manage their health care costs.“As the health care marketplace moves toward a consumer-directed model,…
Quality Digest
e-TQM College and the University of California at Berkeley’s Management of Technology new joint program will include staff exchanges, mentorship and executive education in total quality management. The Leadership Excellence and Advancement Program, started with $500,000 from e-TQM…
Douglas C. Fair
Last month’s column, “The Top 10 SPC Mistakes,” outlined five mistakes to avoid when building a successful statistical process control (SPC) system. Here they are:
10. Training everyone 9. Charting everything 8. Segregating control charts from manufacturing 7. “Pinching” the SPC coordinator 6…
A worsening epidemic of sophisticated antimalarial drug counterfeiting in Southeast Asia and Africa is increasing the likelihood of drug-resistant parasites, which yield false-positive results on screening tests and risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of malaria patients—mostly…
Quality Digest
LaBarge Inc., an electronics manufacturer for regulated technology organizations, recently achieved registration to ISO 13485. The certification was issued to the company’s Pittsburgh manufacturing facility, which is also registered to ISO 9001. The new registration to ISO 13485 will…
Quality Digest
An upcoming regulatory affairs conference will be held in Paris with focus on current registration procedures in the European pharmaceutical market. Key topics to be discussed at the event include centralized and decentralized procedures, mutual-recognition procedures, business-opportunity…
Quality Digest
AssurX Inc. recently released CATSWeb Complaints Management & Regulatory Reporting System, its next-generation suite for the medical device manufacturing industry. A comprehensive solution, CATSWeb Complaints Management & Regulatory Reporting features solutions for business-…
