All Features
Daniel Blake, Caterina Moschieri
Pulling out of a country is an expensive proposition for a multinational firm, but it is sometimes required for the corporate bottom line. If the host country changes laws or even expropriates a subsidiary, it is often time to leave or divest.
Divestiture—pulling out assets or closing down part…
Thomas R. Cutler
Two words no manufacturing organization wants to hear: product recalls. By their very nature, product recalls are unpredictable events.
The cost to a company transcends potentially expensive litigation and settlements. Product recalls and the effects that product failures have on companies that…
Katherine Watts
While at the National MACRA MIPS/APM Summit in Washington, D.C., I heard much discussion centered on how to create and implement strategies that pay physicians fairly, while controlling spending in the Medicare program. It’s a question we’ve wrestled with for almost 20 years and a challenge we…
Jessica Gabel Cino
Forensic science has become a mainstay of many a TV drama, and it’s just as important in real-life criminal trials. Drawing on biology, chemistry, genetics, medicine, and psychology, forensic evidence helps answer questions in the legal system. Often, forensics provides the “smoking gun” that…
Mike Richman
Before I dive into this column, a quick programming note: You may have noticed some formatting changes in today’s issue of Quality Digest. Starting today, on each Thursday we will present a special edition of our newsletter, with a pair of particularly thought-provoking articles from our library…
Fred Schenkelberg
If you have been a reliability engineer for a week or more, or worked with a reliability engineer for a day or more, someone has asked about testing planning. The questions often include, “How many samples?” and, “How long will the test take?” No doubt you’ve heard the sample-size question.
What…
Pat Toth
They say opposites attract. Although my husband and I have many important things in common, we are complete opposites in one area. He’s a “risk taker,” and I’m... well, not so much. Rather than being labeled as “risk averse,” I prefer the term “caution giver.”
I’m a federal employee. I come from…
Penelope B. Prime
Chinese goods seem to be everywhere these days. Consider this: At the Olympics in Rio this summer, Chinese companies supplied the mascot dolls; much of the sports equipment; the security surveillance system; and the uniforms for the volunteers, technical personnel, and even the torch-bearers.
Do…
Tannaz Mirchi
With airfares at their lowest point in seven years and airlines adding capacity, this year’s holiday air travel is slated to be 2.5 percent busier than last year. The system we use to coordinate all those flights, however, is decades old, and mostly depends on highly trained air traffic…
Greg Fox
It’s that time of year again. The time when eggs get nogged, pudding gets figgy, and it becomes socially acceptable to speak in rhyme. So on that note, and with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore, I bring you this timely and heartfelt public service announcement. Enjoy.
’Twas the week before…
Michael A. Witt
Editor’s note: This is part two of a two-part series. Read part one here.
While globalization has benefited humanity in many ways, its continued progress is in serious doubt. As I wrote previously, the two leading political science theories, liberalism and realism, both predict that globalization…
Kara Baskin
Care.com co-founder Donna Levin played a key part in that company’s growth, and the passion was personal. Levin’s work plans were curtailed when her son was 11 weeks old and had a seizure following a difficult pregnancy. Tests were inconclusive. Her daycare situation evaporated; she and her…
Sponsored Content
Manufacturers often hold suppliers to a rigid quality process that dictates tight controls on all raw materials. Nonconforming material can potentially halt the production line, wasting time and money. Unfortunately, material mix-ups are a reality in critical manufacturing…
AssurX
Life sciences companies around the world should make sure their corrective and preventive action (CAPA) plans are in good shape before a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspector comes calling. Looking at a deep pool of letters issued this year domestically and internationally, it’s clear the…
Knowledge at Wharton
There were no Olympic medals up for grabs when Sim Yi Hui and Jane Lee, the co-founders of the Singapore Women’s Everest Team, set out to recruit team members to climb the world’s tallest mountain in 2004. “When we first formed the team my goal was just to climb the mountain,” Sim Yi Hui told me…
ASQ
Sponsored Content
When flood waters ravaged portions of Colorado in September 2013—killing crops, inundating homes, and buckling many miles of roadways—countless federal, state, and municipal government workers sprang into action helping citizens. State and federal government agencies spent…
The United State Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that $60 billion is lost annually from workplace injuries and illness. Using the administration’s $afety Pays Program calculator, 20 carpal tunnel syndrome injuries will cost a company $1,260,000 in direct and indirect…
Sudeep Pasricha
American mining production increased earlier this decade as industry sought to reduce its reliance on other countries for key minerals, such as coal for energy and rare-earth metals for use in consumer electronics. But mining is dangerous—working underground carries risks of explosions, fires,…
Michael Causey
It’s time to get your compliance programs in order to meet some looming international regulatory compliance demands, experts including former Food and Drug Administration officials say. Having a firm grip on quality management processes—especially document management and change control—will be…
Ryan E. Day
Handheld X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyzers are proven analytical tools commonly used for the fast, easy, accurate, and nondestructive identification and analysis of metals and alloys. Common applications include metal alloy identification for quality control, scrap sorting and positive material…
Rodney Petersen
Acronyms. The world, and especially the government, is overflowing with them. You’d be hard-pressed to pick a favorite. People might even look at you funny if you suggested that you had one. I’m lucky enough to have my favorite one on my business card: NICE—the National Initiative for…
Brooke Pierce
When Congress passed the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), “risk” moved front and center as a feature of provider reimbursement models. These days, terms such as “at risk” and “risk-based” are used more and more, but what do they really mean? And why should healthcare…
The business environment is fraught with more threats and opportunities than three years ago, due to disruptive technologies, the internet of things, more demanding customers, and increasing regulations. Organizations, which must keep pace with these developments, are concerned with their ability…
Dawn Bailey
Should an organization embrace risk or spend millions of dollars a year to avoid it? How do you know when a particular strategy is best?
Considerations for such thinking are covered in the Baldrige Excellence Framework, and the topic was recently explored by Brennan McEachran in an Innovation…
Marci Crane
Of the myriad ways in which the Earth’s inhabitants could potentially be destroyed, a zombie apocalypse is undoubtedly one of the least impressive. Though a zombie apocalypse is decidedly scary, unpleasant, and would “get the job done” as the unromantic expression goes, it tends to lack the…
