All Features
William A. Levinson
According to the U.S. News & World Report article “FDA Warns Sanofi of Manufacturing Irregularities at Key Facility” (Jan. 23, 2025), the pharmaceutical company Sanofi received a U.S. Food and Drug Administration warning letter “stating that FDA inspectors found irregularities with the facility…
Bryan Christiansen
The cornerstone of efficient industrial and facility management, maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) cover all activities related to equipment maintenance, procurement, upkeep, and inventory management. This includes spare parts, consumables, lubricants, cleaning supplies, safety equipment,…
Donald J. Wheeler
For many hundreds of years, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” has summarized the predominant approach to process operation. From the physician’s admonition to do no harm, to the slightly more positive aphorism that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, there is a common theme of differentiating…
Mike Figliuolo
There’s an old army saying, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
I’m sure some Navy or Marine guy out there will attribute this comment to their branch of service, but to be clear, it came from the Army.
Actually, the original of this paraphrased quote is widely attributed to Prussian…
Creaform
The Marshall Advanced Manufacturing Center (MAMC) is a leading-edge resource facility dedicated to driving innovation and advancing manufacturing technologies.
Operating from West Virginia facilities in Huntington, South Charleston, and Point Pleasant, the MAMC is at the heart of groundbreaking…
Nick Haase
When I talk with maintenance leaders, I hear urgency. Pressure is mounting. They’re being asked to cut costs, attract skilled workers, and embrace AI—and fast. Yes, pressure turns coal into diamonds. But constant pressure can wear down even the best teams. So for our 2025 State of Industrial…
Bruce Hamilton
Last year, after many years of physical therapy, cortisone shots, and experimental treatments to prop up my failing knees, I decided to go bionic and get full knee replacements. Holding out hope for more than a decade that emerging cell-therapy technology would offer breakthrough cartilage…
Reinfried Kößlbacher
Just like in the Star Trek holodeck, digital twins are virtual replicas of the physical world. They enable industries to predict and optimize processes using live data. In manufacturing, digital twins create a real-time digital profile of production lines, assets, and processes. Manufacturers can…
Akhilesh Gulati
In today’s competitive manufacturing landscape, resilience is the new quality. And one of the most powerful lessons in resilience doesn’t come from a factory—it comes from an art form.
In the Japanese tradition of kintsugi, a broken ceramic bowl is not discarded or disguised. It’s repaired—…
Creaform
Ålö Agricultural Machinery (Ningbo) Co. Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Ålö, is a leading manufacturer of loaders and implements for agricultural tractors.
With production facilities in four countries, and customers in more than 50, Ålö holds approximately 30% of the world market for tractor…
Wilhelm Klein
In 2025, sustainability is no longer optional—it’s a strategic imperative. Manufacturers, responsible for nearly 40% of global material waste, face rising demands to reduce emissions, cut waste, improve product consistency, and enhance efficiency.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is central to this…
Jennifer Chu
In metamaterials design, the name of the game has long been “stronger is better.”
Metamaterials are synthetic materials with microscopic structures that give the overall material exceptional properties. A huge focus has been in designing metamaterials that are stronger and stiffer than their…
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
When Jonaaron Jones started his master’s degree at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville (UT), his mentor invited him to visit the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, or MDF, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). “I saw a metal 3D-printed part for the first time,” says Jones. “I knew I was…
Ariana Tantillo
A team from MIT Lincoln Laboratory has built and demonstrated wide-band selective propagation radar (WiSPR), a system capable of seeing out various distances at millimeter-wave (mmWave or MMW) frequencies. Typically, these high frequencies, which range from 30 to 300 gigahertz (GHz), are employed…
Georgia Institute of Technology
What’s the hottest thing in electronics and high-performance computing? In a word, it’s “cool.”
To be more precise, it’s a liquid cooling system developed at Georgia Tech for electronics and aimed at solving a long-standing problem: overheating.
Developed by Daniel Lorenzini, a 2019 Tech graduate…
Matt McFarlane
One of the key findings in Greenlight Guru’s 2025 Medical Device Industry Report was that economic uncertainty is playing a large role in the decisions medical device companies make this year.
The report surveyed more than 500 medical device professionals across quality, regulatory, product…
Bruce Hamilton
A few months ago I visited a potential customer, a high-tech startup, which like many Boston-area tech companies is developing astounding products that would have been considered science fiction only 10 years ago. The parking lot was half full at 8 a.m., but the entrance was locked to visitors, and…
Stephanie Ojeda
Every day, quality leaders face a variety of production and process issues. Although some problems are easy to fix, others require deeper investigation, such as using a 5 Whys analysis or fishbone diagram. But then there are the stubborn, recurring issues that can lead to quality issues, increased…
William A. Levinson
The Chinese character for crisis means “danger” and “opportunity,” and tariffs have created a supply chain crisis throughout the United States. Paul Roberts of the Seattle Times reports that fewer ships are arriving in Seattle: “Fewer ships coming into the U.S. means companies can’t get components…
NIST
In a physics first, a team including scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has created a way to make beams of neutrons travel in curves. These Airy beams (named for English scientist George Airy), which the team created using a custom-built device, could enhance…
Akhilesh Gulati
When we step into a complex organization—whether in manufacturing, healthcare, or finance—we often find ourselves navigating a sea of competing truths. Everyone seems certain they see the problem clearly. Yet somehow, solving it feels harder than it should.
Why?
Often, it’s not the facts that…
ISO
Occupational health and safety (OHS) is often brushed aside as a checkbox exercise—something assigned to compliance officers or forgotten in day-to-day operations. But this mindset comes at a cost. Every year, millions of people suffer injuries, illnesses, or worse, simply because their workplace…
Stephen Graham, Quality Digest
Uploading something “to the cloud” has become common enough that most people are acutely aware of the storage advantages of cloud services—whether in their personal or professional lives—as well as how they might benefit administrators in any business. What might surprise people is the additional…
Quality Digest, David Mihal
What happens when a powerhouse company like Hexagon joins forces with an elite innovator like Geomagic Software? Well, here’s a hint: There’s magic right there in the name. Now that talk of acquisition has became reality, Quality Digest is here with more details on what to expect as the two…
Troy Harrison
Salespeople are getting older. Buyers are getting younger. You have a disconnect.
In raw terms, the average age of a professional business-to-business (B2B) salesperson in the United States is 47.1 years old. Fifteen years ago that number was 42. So, the sales profession is graying. Meanwhile, the…
