All Features
Michael King
Medical companies work in an environment of ever-increasing challenge and complexity. Global regulations continue to evolve with advancements in technology and variations in requirements from country to country. This brings unavoidable technical complexity to daily tasks of quality and regulatory…
Melissa Phillips
The levels of contaminants in our food supply are, generally, decreasing. That’s the good news.
But we still need to measure those contaminants and make sure our food is safe. And measuring tiny things (and big things) is what we do best here at NIST.
In our food safety program, we’re studying all…
Etienne Nichols
Medical device companies must have established risk management processes that comply with ISO 14971. It doesn’t matter whether you’re developing medical devices in the U.S., EU, Canada, or elsewhere. Every international regulatory agency you’ve ever heard of accepts ISO 14971.
ISO 14971 is a good…
Jake Mazulewicz
Wildland firefighters. Air traffic controllers. Flight deck crews of aircraft carriers. Operators of nuclear power plants and the national bulk electric grid. These are among the safest and most reliable work teams in the world. And they don’t try to eliminate all errors and surprises.
Decades of…
Harish Jose
I’m looking at a topic in statistics. I’ve had a lot of feedback on one of my earlier posts on OC curves and how one can use them to generate a reliability/confidence statement based on sample size (n), and rejects (c). I provided an Excel spreadsheet that calculates the reliability/confidence…
Martin Cottam
It’s tempting to attribute the increased profile now given to occupational health and safety (OH&S) to the Covid-19 pandemic. But while in many organizations the pandemic shone a spotlight on OH&S management, there are other issues that will keep OH&S at the fore throughout the next…
Ken Chapman, Tony Orlowski
‘Turning to the men around him, Dodge shouted, ‘Up this way!’ but the men ignored him. Dodge later stated that someone responded, ‘To hell with that, I’m getting out of here.’ The team raced past Dodge up the slope toward the ridge. Four men reached the crest, but only two, Bob Sallee and Walter…
Bryan Christiansen
With so many assets and projects to think about, facilities management is a huge and complex field. It’s easy to lose focus.
Luckily, there’s a simple and easy fix for this problem—facility management KPIs (key performance indicators). Outlining and tracking the most important ones will help you…
Kari Miller
Life science organizations depend on quality management systems (QMS) to improve products, minimize risks, ensure patient safety, and support regulatory compliance. When companies use a horizontal QMS that is not purpose-built for the life science industry, they must execute additional steps to…
Gleb Tsipursky
A ccording to a recent Monmouth University poll, 55 percent of Americans are worried by the threat of artificial intelligence (AI) to the future of humanity. In an era where technological advancements are accelerating at breakneck speed, it’s crucial to ensure that AI development is appropriately…
Stephanie Ojeda
Quality management and environmental health and safety (EHS) have traditionally existed as siloed processes and roles in most organizations. It’s easy to see why, given the forces that have shaped quality and safety during their history.
Modern quality management was born from the post-World War…
Bryan Christiansen
Functional failures are a problem in every industry. They’re a silent way to lose money, waste time, and squander precious manpower. You need to understand them—so you can prevent them. We’ll show you what functional failure is, explain the difference between functional and partial failures, and…
NIST
Here’s a pop quiz for cybersecurity pros: Does your security team consider your organization’s employees to be your allies or your enemies? Do they think employees are the weakest link in the security chain? Let’s put that last one more broadly and bluntly: Does your team assume users are clueless…
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
The Autonomous Systems group at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is in high demand as it incorporates remote sensing into projects needing a bird’s-eye perspective. When it comes to collecting data for environmental and national security research, the team sends its…
Bryan Christiansen
People often use the terms maintenance and reliability interchangeably. However, they are two separate concepts. Although there is some overlap, their scope and focus are quite different.
Understanding those differences, as well as how each concept affects the other, is a necessary step for…
Megan Wallin-Kerth
“The best is the enemy of good,” wrote French historian and philosopher Voltaire. Today that quote seems more appropriate than ever. A longitudinal meta-analysis study from 1989 to 2016 looking at data from more than 41,000 students across the U.S., U.K., and Canada revealed that perfectionism has…
Shawn Wasserman
MathWorks, creators of MATLAB and Simulink, and the embedded software safety and security company Green Hills Software have announced new features in Simulink that help engineers produce safety-related applications for Infineon’s AURIX TC4x family of automotive microcontrollers. Specifically,…
Akhilesh Gulati
Efrain entered his office on a bright, sunny morning, a smile on his face. He poured a cup of coffee and took his seat behind his desk. From his vantage point, he could see his staff walking in and settling down to the day’s work.
His executive placement firm had risen from a downswing and was…
ISO
Economic practices need to change. The environmental and social consequences of unsustainable growth strategies are becoming increasingly obvious. A circular economy offers a way to counteract the climate crisis, strengthen our adaptive capacity, and make society more sustainable and resilient.…
Rupa Mahanti
Data decay, or the aging of data, is data degradation over time—which results in bad data quality (Mahanti 2019).
There are some data, such as date of birth and place of birth, which are evergreen and not subject to decay; that is, if you have captured the data values correctly in the first place…
Gleb Tsipursky
One of the biggest challenges for companies in transitioning to remote work is their handling of layoffs. Having helped 21 companies transition to hybrid and remote work, I can attest that planning for the whole worker’s life cycle, from onboarding to offboarding, is critical as part of effective…
Todd Hawkins
Most companies face the challenge of managing the documentation they generate—those that are developed to control their business and processes (e.g., standard operating procedures—SOPs) and the associated records as evidence of compliance with those procedures. This may go a step further if the…
Etienne Nichols
On Dec. 9, 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a new draft guidance, “Content of Human Factors Information in Medical Device Marketing Submissions,” that provides recommendations for the inclusion of human-factors information in marketing submissions.
The drafted guidance is…
Tom Taormina
The quality profession has been evolving since the Industrial Revolution. I’ve lived part of this journey since the 1970s and have experienced its effect. ASQ and other organizations have continually pushed the envelope in creating training and certifications in the skill sets we’ve developed over…
William A. Levinson
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) is growing in popularity as a metric to guide investment decisions. What does ESG have to do with productivity, quality, or stakeholders, aka relevant interested parties? The answer is—with the exception of generally accepted practices for workplace…