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Quality Digest
Racal Instruments Inc. recently released newWave, a software toolset designed to facilitate compliance to the new signal definition standard, IEEE 1641. Developed to assist software and test developers use and implement the new standard, newWave enables signal definition exports into ATML, C++ and…
Quality Digest
Mark W. Hurwitz, president and chief executive officer of the American National Standards Institute, will retire from the organization at the end of the year. Hurwitz, 64, was appointed to the post in 1999. He cited his desire to spend more time with his family, and their plans to move from the…
Quality Digest
It was 25 years ago that Philip Crosby’s watershed book, Quality is Free, was published—a landmark that Philip Crosby Associates will celebrate all year long. At a time when peers such as Deming, Ishikawa and Juran were focusing on the highly technical aspects of quality measurement and control,…
Quality Digest
The largest North American trade show dedicated to innovation in manufacturing opens this week in Chicago. National Manufacturing Week features a Manufacturing Town Hall panel discussion with top government and trade officials, the National Association of Manufacturers’ 2005 Annual Survey and the…
Quality Digest
The National Committee for Quality Assurance and the American Board of Internal Medicine will offer a new program to physicians seeking to maintain their ABIM certification and the opportunity to more easily earn a new distinction: recognition from NCQA and its partners. The agreement will allow…
Quality Digest
Canada’s National Quality Institute will host an April networking event focusing on mental health and addiction in the workplace. The event, titled “Working Toward Mental Health and Excellence at Work in Canada,” will be held April 12 in Toronto. It will include a town hall-style panel and keynote…
Quality Digest
Omnex Systems LLC recently released EwQMS 2.0, a software suite aimed at allowing quality managers to quickly build, approve, manage and analyze critical quality documents for continual improvement. By using a centralized repository and interchangeable software modules, EwQMS users can tailor…
Quality Digest
The Performance Management Group recently announced plans to upgrade its management training boot camp to include team leadership, metrics and scorecard training. “Technical companies that have promoted new managers because of their technical skills find their new leaders lacking the requisite…
Quality Digest
The American Society for Quality announced the following quality leaders as ASQ Fellows: Dr. Inteaz Alli, professor of food quality assurance at McGill University G. Dennis Beecroft, president of G. Dennis Beercroft Inc. Ronald Gary Berglund, Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center quality…
Craig Cochran
Training is profoundly strategic. It’s a process aimed at improving the single most important resource in the organization: people. Nothing affects customer loyalty more than the behaviors and competencies of employees.
Training is the most effective way to communicate the correct behaviors and…
Praveen Gupta
If you’re considering opportunities for business improvement, dynamic growth and profitability, “plan,” “do,” “check” and “act” (PDCA) is a leading option. Walter A. Shewhart developed the PDCA cycle in the 1920s and W. Edwards Deming made it famous in the 1980s, even though he modified the PDCA…
Quality Digest
Excel Partnership Inc. will offer a Six Sigma training course for professionals who want to become familiarized with the methodology. Green Belts are defined as practitioners who spend 5–20 percent of their working hours in support of Black Belt or Six Sigma projects of their own. Course…
Quality Digest
Software developer iGrafx recently released Process for Six Sigma, its new suite for practitioners of the popular methodology.The solution includes features customized to Six Sigma, including design of experiments, data fitting, lean tools and value-stream mapping, hierarchical process maps and…
Quality Digest
Food & Drug Law Weekly recently reported that one of the largest hospitals in the Netherlands is using Six Sigma to improve its management of clinical trials. The Atrium Medical Center currently conducts about 70 clinical trials per year for major pharmaceutical companies. Its new system will…
Quality Digest
Owners and managers of small to mid-sized organizations will learn how to use Six Sigma to improve operations at a full-day workshop scheduled for next month in Moon Township, Philadelphia.The workshop, “Achieving Customer Focus Through Six Sigma for the Small and Midsize Organization,” will be…
Quality Digest
FM Solutions, a facility management consulting and technology company, recently added a lean Six Sigma contractor management function to its WorkOasis technology platform.The addition includes processes for sourcing service contractors, handling service requests and paying invoices. It combines…
Quality Digest
2005 marks the 125th anniversary of The L.S. Starrett Co.The company was founded in 1880 by Laroy Sunderland Starrett to market his innovative combination square tool, an item that has since become a standard in toolboxes worldwide. Starrett later developed innovative design variations to calipers…
Quality Digest
The Turkish Standards Association will host the upcoming 49th European Organization for Quality Annual Congress. The event will be held April 25–27 in Antalya, Turkey. The theme will be “Quality: The Way to Sustainability,” and will include 30 breakout seminars examining all aspects of quality,…
Quality Digest
Almost 60 percent of telecom executives surveyed reported that performance improvement efforts over the past three years were unsuccessful. However, the respondents judged 90 percent of the efforts to be a success. “The apparent contradiction between disappointing strategic business results and the…
Quality Digest
DVT Corp., a provider of innovative machine vision systems, recently upgraded its Intellect software to include new algorithms with simplified user interfaces for plant-floor technicians.The new algorithms include an application-specific toolset dedicated to bead tracking, as well as a fixed-font…
Quality Digest
The Juran Institute and i-Solutions recently released the Initiative Deployment Manager, a software program that allows users to monitor all business initiatives in real time.With a 360-degree view of business programs, the IDM can launch projects based on methodology templates; share plans and…
Quality Digest
Manufacturing industry analyst Bob Parker predicted in InformationWeek magazine that more manufacturing companies will combine lean and Six Sigma to improve efficiency and quality in 2005.Parker, vice president of the Manufacturing Insights group at the market research and advisory firm IDC, also…
Quality Digest
A Swiss software company recently added a new quality analysis tool to the popular Marketing Manager for Excel software.The tool, named Quality Manager, allows marketing agents and business analysts to monitor a wide range of activities, such as traffic at call centers, the quality of ongoing…
Quality Digest
The National Committee for Quality Assurance plans to honor several high-profile figures, including U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton and former U.S. Representative Newt Gingrich, for their contributions toward improving the quality of health care in the United States.The NCQA Health Quality Awards…
Quality Digest
Purdue Pharma recently started to integrate radio frequency identification (RFID) tags into its packaging to prevent drug counterfeiting.The company will use RFID products produced by Symbol Technologies Inc. for the pilot project, which began with the RFID tagging of 100-count bottles of OxyContin…