All Features
Akhilesh Gulati
Complacency won’t show up on a control chart. But its damage is real. Can AI and systems thinking help us detect it and respond before trust is lost?
As customer expectations evolve, one question remains: Are customers still at the core of your company’s operations?
Back in 1999, a simple but…
Mike Figliuolo
This article is dedicated to all the paranoid businesspeople out there who are terrified of their competitors. You know, the people who run businesses centered around “consulting” who view any other “consulting” firm as a competitor. You can insert whatever industry you like in the quotes, and this…
Adam Zewe
Inspired by the Harry Potter stories and the Disney Channel show Wizards of Waverly Place, 7-year-old Sabrina Corsetti emphatically declared to her parents one afternoon that she was, in fact, a wizard.
“My dad turned to me and said that if I really wanted to be a wizard, then I should become a…
Alexander Gelfand
A lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business for more than two decades, Robert Siegel says, “I’ve taught almost 20% of the people who graduated from the GSB.” He has also served as an executive at Intel and General Electric, founded and led startups, and worked as a consultant and venture…
George Schuetz
There are endless variations in the dials used on mechanical dial indicators. In most cases, though, they can be broken down into two distinct styles: balanced and continuous. Let’s look at both.
With a balanced dial, the graduations around the dial represent the smallest value, or resolution, as…
Sabine Terrasi
The precise recording of passenger numbers is essential for transport companies—it helps optimize timetables, make better use of capacities, and organize local public transport more efficiently.
A modern solution for this is camera-based passenger-counting. Intelligent image processing systems…
Anouschka Jansen
Global supply chains are going through steady disruption and reevaluation—some of it planned, much of it reactive. While political tensions and trade disputes often grab headlines, other important factors are reshaping how companies manage their suppliers.
Rising tariffs, challenges in sourcing…
ISO
The digital revolution has transformed healthcare along with virtually every other industry. From telemedicine to digital health data, providers now have access to innovative solutions that have the potential to make healthcare more accessible and effective for all.
In some instances, this is done…
Mike Figliuolo
During the 14 years I’ve run my firm, I’ve heard a polite “No, thank you” more times than I can count. That’s fine. Rejection, especially when it’s quick, enables me and my team to spend our time on more fruitful conversations.
It’s the silence that kills me. I know I’m not alone in this. I’ve…
Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence
Did you know that shutdowns, turnarounds, and outages (STOs) can consume up to 50% of a plant’s annual maintenance budget? That’s according to a report by the Boston Consulting Group.
STOs are among the most complex and high-stakes events in industrial operations. They’re costly, especially when…
Zach Winn
Companies building next-generation products are often limited by the physical constraints of traditional materials. In aerospace, defense, energy, and industrial tooling, pushing those constraints introduces possible failure points into the system. Unfortunately, companies don’t have better options…
Patrick Willemson
The European Union has taken a leading role in shaping a variety of data and AI regulations. One of its most recent initiatives, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), extends this regulatory momentum into the manufacturing sector. Under this new regulation, manufacturers and…
George Thuo
These are new times for manufacturers. Global pandemics. Worldwide supply-chain disruptions. Steep price increases for parts and materials. Increasingly competitive global markets.
Manufacturers are can-do people, but doing becomes harder in today’s “do more with less” manufacturing environment.…
Bryan Christiansen
Facility teams are constantly balancing urgent repairs, preventive tasks, asset tracking, and compliance, all while ensuring smooth day-to-day operations. But when processes are manual, fragmented, or unclear, even simple tasks can spiral into delays, miscommunication, and wasted time.
The…
Creaform
Brosius GmbH is a trusted partner in metal processing for a wide range of companies in the mechanical and plant engineering industries, offering comprehensive services under one roof. Brosius ensures that every part it manufactures in its 10,000 m² state-of-the-art production hall meets or exceeds…
Quality Digest
(Boeing: El Segundo, CA) -- Boeing has successfully delivered its ninth and tenth O3b mPOWER satellites to content and network provider SES, advancing the company’s effort to provide global connectivity from space. The satellites, which feature Boeing’s fully software-defined payload technology to…
Donald J. Wheeler
In statistics class we learn that we can reduce the uncertainty in our estimates by using more and more data. This effect has been called the “law of large numbers” and is one of the primary ideas behind the various big data techniques that are becoming popular today. Here we’ll look at how the law…
Zach Winn
Modern fighter jets contain hundreds or even thousands of sensors. Some of those sensors collect data every second, others every nanosecond. For the engineering teams building and testing those jets, all those data points are hugely valuable—if they can make sense of them.
Nominal is an advanced…
Amy Knue
Health systems across the country are unknowingly paying multiple times for the same medical equipment—once to own it, and again to rent it. The issue isn’t always an increase in clinical demand; it’s often availability and visibility to medical device inventory. The cost of these unnecessary…
ISO
Gridlocked streets, honking horns, and polluted air—modern city life often feels like a daily battle against time and space. With half the world’s population projected to live in cities by 2050, the pressure on transport systems is reaching a breaking point. Long commutes steal hours from our day,…
Michael McDowell
As artificial intelligence takes off, how do we efficiently integrate it into our lives and our work? Bridging the gap between promise and practice, Jann Spiess, an associate professor of operations, information, and technology at Stanford Graduate School of Business, explores how algorithms can be…
Stephanie Ojeda
Spreadsheets are usually the first tool used to manage suppliers, and the first to become a liability. Important updates get buried. Repeat supplier problems start popping up. Along the way, you start to wonder whether that cheaper vendor is really saving you money in the long run.
The core…
Etienne Nichols
The corrective and preventive action (CAPA) process is one of the most important elements within a medtech company’s quality management system (QMS). The goal of the CAPA system is to identify, address, and prevent systemic issues that could compromise product safety, regulatory compliance, and the…
Mike Figliuolo
Most days we walk through life unaware of the conversations occurring around us. And then there are those times you overhear a conversation that stops you dead in your tracks. You have to hit rewind in your brain and ask, “Did they actually just say that?”
Ever have one of those moments? Clearly,…
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Stronger than steel and lighter than aluminum, carbon fiber is a staple in aerospace and high-performance vehicles. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have found a way to make it even stronger.
ORNL researchers simulated 5 million atoms to study a …