All Features
Te Wu
Business skills are constantly changing to keep up with current technological and societal trends. But 2023 wasn’t an ordinary year, and there were three major developments that accelerated the evolutionary process of project management.
First, thanks to the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022,…
Silke von Gemmingen
Smart waste management is one of the core tasks within smart cities, i.e., those urban areas in which innovative technologies and data-driven solutions are used. They aim to improve residents’ quality of life, minimize environmental impact, and use resources more efficiently. Conserving resources…
Gleb Tsipursky
Many companies have struggled with figuring out their flexible work policies. What they may not realize is that many investors are watching—and judging. Indeed, a number of investors have explicitly and publicly integrated work-from-home (WFH) policies into their evaluations of prospective…
Katia Savchuk
Since generative AI went mainstream in 2023, it has inspired an equal measure of hype and fear. Boosters of tools such as ChatGPT and DALL-E predict that they will transform our economy, while skeptics worry about their potential to produce inaccurate or harmful results and ultimately replace…
James Chan
The term lean maintenance describes a methodology that focuses on eliminating waste and continually identifying opportunities for improvement. Over time, a lean approach to maintenance extends the useful life of assets, maximizes profitability, improves resource allocation, and enables more…
Alonso Diaz, Maria DiBari
Quality consistently ranks among organizations’ foremost competitive priorities; it’s a prerequisite for success in the global marketplace. Firms that want a competitive edge do it by delivering products that meet customer needs and function as intended.
Despite the long-standing emphasis on the…
Mike Figliuolo
By eliminating low-value work from your life, you can focus on more important things. Get rid of difficult customers and focus on driving your business instead.
To get your new year started right, I’d like to share with you what I’ve been taught by homemade bread, lawn mowers, and cheap customers…
Creaform
End-to-end manufacturers are companies that lead products through the entire manufacturing process, from design to customer delivery. Unlike businesses that manufacture their products with a segmented manufacturing process, end-to-end manufacturers have complete control over the different parts of…
Matthew Barsalou
A root cause analysis (RCA) should be empirical; however, this can be difficult when dealing with human error. A typical human failure is a missed operation, such as when a process step isn’t carried out. This could mean a part wasn’t installed, a bolt wasn’t tightened, or a server didn’t deliver a…
Akhilesh Gulati
The first day of the conference was over, and most of us congregated for happy hour, relaxing, networking, and furthering our connections. We reminisced about the day, commenting about the good, the bad, and the ugly: events at work, travel, organizational policies, you name it.
Interestingly, the…
Gleb Tsipursky
Have you ever felt like you’re speaking into a void in a hybrid meeting? You’re not alone. The shift to hybrid workplaces has introduced a unique set of challenges in communication and collaboration. The goals? To make the office worth the commute, and the virtual connection minimally distant from…
Eric Whitley
High-precision manufacturing is critical in industries where even the slightest deviation can lead to significant consequences. It encompasses processes that demand the utmost accuracy, often in sectors like aerospace, medical devices, and electronics. Precision is important due to its direct…
ComplianceQuest
Today’s quality leaders in the life sciences industry have nearly impossible charters. Long-term trends and sudden black swan events in combination can hinder an organization’s ability to exert control over product quality. Globalization, labor shortages and strikes, outsourcing, just-in-time…
Jason Walker
As the manufacturing industry continues to grapple with labor shortages, potential shifts in government policies could further intensify these challenges in 2025. This heightens the urgency for manufacturers to meet demand while navigating an unpredictable future.
One area where this is…
Scott Ginsberg
Manufacturing is undergoing two significant transformations: a workforce shift and a work method shift.
The manufacturing sector faces a 37% annual labor turnover rate (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), indicating a substantial challenge in retaining employees. Also, 54% of leaders report that…
Industrial Inspection and Analysis
Unlike the traditional engineering process of designing a part, product, or component from the ground up, many times in life we need to start with an existing item and work backward to solve a problem. It’s a process known as reverse engineering, and it begins by obtaining accurate data about the…
Mike Figliuolo
Your legal department is screwing up. Royally.
You work hard to build relationships with other businesses. How many hours do you invest getting closer to partners, customers, and suppliers? And then that wonderful handshake happens, and it’s time to hammer out the agreements. That’s when Larry the…
Mark Hembree
Without raising false alarms, it’s fair to say that password insecurity is a problem that lives near you and is worthy of your attention.
In its article, “139 password statistics to help you stay safe in 2023,” digital security firm Norton cites a report by password manager LastPass that more than…
Chris Caldwell
The quest to optimize equipment efficiency, ensure consistent quality, and lower operational costs while empowering a stronger workforce continues to permeate the industrial landscape. While challenges persist, the transformative potential that high-performance robotic automation is bringing to…
Donald J. Wheeler
When do we need to fit a lognormal distribution to our skewed histograms? This article considers the basic properties of the lognormal family of distributions and reveals some interesting and time-saving characteristics that are useful when analyzing data.
The lognormal family of distributions…
Mike Figliuolo
My favorite time of year is rolling around (and no, it’s not the holidays with their nauseatingly excessive tinsel-before-turkey consumerism). I’m talking about the time for end-of-year progress reviews. They’re those agonizing, mandatory, and often confusing reams of paper we’re forced to suffer…
NIST
From monitoring concentrations of greenhouse gases to detecting Covid in the breath, laser systems known as frequency combs can identify specific molecules as simple as carbon dioxide and as complex as monoclonal antibodies with unprecedented accuracy and sensitivity. Amazing as they are, however,…
Mike Figliuolo
It’s hard asking for help. Getting rejected stings. But by not asking, you’re probably missing out on some great opportunities.
I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up I was a little bit of a dork. OK, OK... a huge dork. I sold comic books (and incidentally made 100 times what my…
Stephanie Ojeda
There’s an old saying in regulated industries: If it isn’t documented, it didn’t happen.
In the past, maintaining fully compliant documentation meant handling a mountain of paper, which created extra work—and hidden risks—from a quality perspective.
Today, document management has become the…
Jeff Roscher
In the ever-evolving landscape of manufacturing, operational efficiency is paramount. The seamless functioning of machinery not only ensures optimal production but also minimizes downtime and associated costs. However, for a certain manufacturing company that had been operating in a reactive…