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Quality Digest
(SME: Dearborn, Michigan) -- The Society of Manufacturing Engineers, the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, and the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing have conferred upon Jeff Lytle, lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt at OMNOVA Solutions Inc., the first-ever lean Gold…
Quality Digest
(WCBF: New York) -- Worldwide Conventions and Business Forums’s 5th Conference on Successfully Implementing Six Sigma in Financial Services, taking place Sept. 25–27, 2007 in New York, will enable participants to benchmark and network with peers, listen to business leaders, and hear practical…
Quality Digest
(JMP: Cary, North Carolina) -- SAS, a provider of business intelligence and advanced analytics, has closed an agreement with publishing group W.H. Freeman to bundle JMP Student Edition, a streamlined version of its JMP statistical discovery software, with leading statistics textbooks sold through…
Quality Digest
(NCQA: Washington) -- The National Committee for Quality Assurance, in collaboration with Pfizer Inc., recently released a new publication profiling strategies and recommendations for improving the quality of care through wellness and prevention initiatives.Quality Profiles: The Leadership…
David Schwinn
We recently lost two great American authors, Kurt Vonnegut and David Halberstam. I liked them because they told the truth. At least their truth agreed with my truth, and it seems like the truth of a great many other people.I first became aware of Kurt Vonnegut in my late teens, a time when I…
Quality Digest
(Hewlett-Packard: Cupertino, California) -- Hewlett-Packard has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SPI Dynamics Inc., a provider of Web-application security assessment software and services.Application quality management ensures that business systems, such as E-commerce Web sites or…
Quality Digest
(Dyadem: Toronto) -- Dyadem recently announced an enterprise solution that helps manufacturers manage quality throughout the life cycle of a product. Stature is enterprise-quality life-cycle management software that allows stakeholders from design to manufacturing to collaborate in real time and…
Quality Digest
(ACSI: Ann Arbor, Michigan) -- Citizen satisfaction with federal Web sites registered a slight improvement, according to the second quarter report from the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index E-Government Satisfaction Index. The E-commerce and transactions…
Quality Digest
(ARTEL: West Brook, Maine) -- Yellowstone National Park has been selected as the location for Mission No. 2 of the ARTEL’s Extreme Pipetting Expedition. At Yellowstone, ARTEL will test how pipetting liquids at a temperature different than the pipette (thermal disequilibrium) affects delivered…
Quality Digest
(Sypris: Orlando, Florida.) -- Sypris Test & Measurement Inc., a subsidiary of Sypris Solutions Inc., has partnered with Tektronix to provide onsite calibration services for products from multiple vendors. The combined offerings of the two firms provide onsite calibration support for more…
Quality Digest
(Beamex: Marietta, Georgia ) -- Computer-aided calibration management is becoming more and more common for managing calibration information and calibration assets in the process industry. Tough requirements set by regulatory authorities and quality systems, the need for improving calibration-…
Fred Mason
In last month’s column, I talked about the format of accuracy specifications for video measuring machines. The following is a typical format for a single axis accuracy specification: Ex = ±[k + (multiplier * L)/1000] μm And this is an example of an actual specification (linear accuracy in the X-…
Last month, I shared some perspectives about the current state of the hazardous-substance-free movement and trends that are propelling its influence. This month I’d like to discuss what I think these trends mean to industry and the potential usefulness of QC 080000 IECQ HSPM.The European RoHS and…
Quality Digest
(IEC: Geneva) – The International Electrotechnical Commission, the global body for electrical energy standards, is recruiting experts from around the world to develop international standards for wave and tidal energy technology that will help establish this promising source of renewable energy…
Denise Robitaille
What data are the best to gather? What processes should you be tracking? What are your metrics telling you? In observing various organizations’ attempts to fulfill ISO 9001 requirements around subclause 8.4—“Analysis of data,”–I’ve noticed a recurring problem. Companies allow the requirements of…
Quality Digest
The new European chemicals legislation—registration, evaluation, authorization, and restrictions of chemicals (REACH)—has started and with it the new European Chemicals Agency has begun operations in Helsinki. The REACH regulation will significantly improve protection of human health and the…
Quality Digest
NIST experiment to replicate an office fire in the World Trade Center. Tests such as this helped validate computer models of the spread rate and intensity of the fires initiated by jet fuel and fed by the office furnishings and other combustibles. NIST (…
Quality Digest
(Logitech: Fremont, California) -- Carl Zeiss, an optics company, and Logitech, a manufacturer of webcams, recently announced an exclusive collaboration to deliver unparalleled image quality for video calling and sharing.Carl Zeiss has been driving optical innovation since the earliest days of…
Quality Digest
(CyberShift: Parsippany, New Jersey) -- CyberShift, a provider of workforce- and expense-management software and services, recently announced that their enterprise-class Workforce Management 3G solutions are now integrated with the BlackBerry wireless platform. Used by thousands of…
Quality Digest
(Georgia-Pacific: Atlanta) -- Forty market-selected corrugated box manufacturing operations in Georgia-Pacific’s packaging business have earned Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) certification and are authorized to use the SFI Certified Sourcing product label. Based in Atlanta, Georgia-…
Quality Digest
The Global Six Sigma Awards, organized by WCBF, recently announced that Tim Solso, chairman and CEO of Cummins Inc., has been named 2007 Six Sigma CEO of the Year. Solso will be presented with the award at The Global Six Sigma Awards & Summit Gala Dinner on October 24 in Las Vegas, where he…
For nearly 20 years, the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence have proven themselves time and again to be a path to exceptional organizational performance. Used in more than 70 countries around the world, the seven categories of the criteria are often seen as essential for excellence.
What’…
Quality Digest
(Lean Enterprise Institute: Cambridge, Massachusetts) -- The classic management book The Machine That Changed the World (Free Press, 2007), which was recently reissued in paperback, has been named to an executive reading list compiled by The New York Times.The newspaper described the “…
Quality Digest
(CoorsTek: Grand Junction, Colorado) -- CoorsTek Inc., a technical ceramics manufacturer and a long-time supplier to the electronics industry, has received an Outstanding Supplier Award for the second consecutive year from global sensor components manufacturer Kavlico Corp.Every Kavlico…
Praveen Gupta
I’m surprised how quickly we blame a methodology for a business’s lack of performance. We’re always looking for some silver bullet to cure all ills. In contrast, Six Sigma integrates many methodologies to achieve sustained profitable results. When Motorola practiced Six Sigma under the leadership…