All Features
Gleb Tsipursky
As the world slowly recovers from the pandemic, many knowledge workers find themselves at a crossroad. On one hand, the prospect of returning to the office stirs up a cocktail of dread and nostalgia. On the other hand, the threat of AI-driven job elimination looms large. It’s like being caught…
Anne Trafton
A team of chemists from MIT and Duke University has discovered a counterintuitive way to make polymers stronger: Introduce a few weaker bonds into the material.
Working with a type of polymer known as polyacrylate elastomers, the researchers found that they could increase the materials’ resistance…
Stephanie Ojeda
Design controls are a frequent citation in 483 observations and warning letters from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In fact, the agency has noted a large proportion of past recalls that could have been prevented with design controls.
FDA guidance also makes an explicit link between…
ISO
Net zero is our strongest tool yet against the climate crisis. The transition to net-zero emissions presents a compelling solution that offers not only environmental benefits but also economic, social, and health advantages. Failing to act swiftly and decisively risks catastrophic climate change,…
Mark Hembree
Pick a problem—any problem. As soon as you have one without an immediate answer, we can begin.
Perhaps you’re a quality professional, an auditor, a systems analyst, or just the person your boss sent to find out what the heck is going on around here. Whether you have a problem on your plant floor…
Gleb Tsipursky
The unemployment rate is surprisingly low, at 3.7%, shocking economists who expected a slowdown in hiring and rising unemployment rate. Frontline work, such as healthcare, led job growth. Frontline workers are in high demand, and the competition for their services is fierce. Yet wage growth cooled…
Sébastien Breteau
Supply chain quality control is a demanding job. Ensuring that products meet specific standards and expectations for safety and customer satisfaction by monitoring and managing the entire supply chain, from raw materials to finished products, must be accomplished consistently and reliably.
At any…
Bruce Hamilton
Last May marked the 35th anniversary of the Shingo Prize, an award bestowed each year to recognize organizations that demonstrate the principles and methods espoused by its namesake, Shigeo Shingo. Although I haven’t made it to every celebration and award ceremony, it turns out that I was the only…
Kevin Cool
You probably won’t find it in a book on business leadership, but Faiz Shakir has a dictum for executives of major corporations who really want to understand what their employees’ jobs are like: “Know the coffee.”
The reference was in the context of unionization efforts by Starbucks employees, and…
NIST
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed chip-scale devices for simultaneously manipulating the color, focus, direction of travel, and polarization of multiple beams of laser light.
The ability to tailor those properties using a single chip is…
Etienne Nichols
The goal of your MedTech company’s supplier management process should be to ensure a consistent supply of high-quality parts and components that conform to your specifications.
But achieving that goal is easier said than done, and it depends heavily on whether you take a risk-based approach to…
Jon Finerty
In today’s highly competitive business environment, a trusted supply chain that functions seamlessly is essential. Even small errors can affect the entire supply chain, resulting in lost revenue, unsatisfied customers, and irreparable damage to your brand.
Now more than ever, companies need the…
Stephanie Ojeda
Effective complaint handling is fundamental to life-sciences quality management, with implications for operations, product design, risk management, and more.
It’s also critical to ISO 9001, FDA Quality System Regulation (QSR), and EU Medical Device Regulation (MDR) compliance.
Manufacturers that…
Automated Precision Inc.
Siemens-Mobility’s factory in Graz, Austria, is a development center and manufacturing plant for high-tech bogies, an important component of the global rail vehicle industry. Whether bogies for streetcars, locomotives, passenger coaches, or high-speed multiple units, the Siemens Mobility World…
Ken Voytek
It’s time for U.S. manufacturers to focus on productivity or they will lose their long-term advantage. Productivity is fundamentally about increasing output rather than decreasing costs and inputs while output remains static. We faced this challenge during the 1980s and 1990s but didn’t learn much…
Mike Figliuolo
Twice in the last week I’ve heard about “idiot bosses.” Being the inquisitive guy I am, I probed for the root cause of such comments. Rather than simply asking what the cause is, I decided to address the symptoms first.
Q: “Tell me more about this idiot boss.”
A: “I’m so fed up with him. He’s…
InnovMetric
Pratt Miller was founded in 1989 by Gary Pratt and Jim Miller. Their aim was to create a world-class engineering company that could take automotive-based programs all the way from concept to reality. Since then, Pratt Miller has become a respected industry leader, providing automotive and…
Gleb Tsipursky
A new study from the University of Birmingham has found that managers have developed a more positive outlook on the benefits of hybrid work productivity since the Covid-19 pandemic. The research surveyed 597 managers and found that 51.8% of them agreed that working from home improves employee…
Evan Milberg
The year is 2033: The owner of a planned high-rise in a big city is looking to build prefabricated modules with recyclable, low-carbon materials. Work is expected to begin as soon as possible, so the contractor can’t afford to spend a great deal of time figuring out how much of each material will…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
As part of last year’s Masters Summit, hosted by the quality software specialists at MasterControl, Jeff Dewar, Quality Digest’s publisher, approached a few attendees for some candid comments. Since most people there were quality professionals of one sort or another, he cast a wide net and simply…
National Physical Laboratory
Graphene and related 2D materials (GR2Ms) could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the production of advanced materials. Using GR2M nanoplatelets in applications, such as reinforcing concrete or improving battery performance, will require a dramatic increase in GR2M production. As production…
Anders Rasmussen
Enterprise resource planning (ERP), product life cycle management (PLM), and customer relationship management (CRM) systems were transformative when they were first developed. They made it possible for businesses to establish centralized data repositories for customer, product, or financial…
NIST
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have developed a novel tabletop device that takes three-dimensional X-ray (CT) images of integrated circuits. The highly detailed scans produced by the prototype device inspect the billions of electrical…
Aaron Heinrich, MetalForming
In metal stamping, especially in critical automotive applications, sometimes it’s not enough simply to close the control loop. Traditional control algorithms rely on eliminating an error between what is happening—as indicated by feedback from system sensors—and what should happen. High-speed motion…
Dave Gilson
Many people think of negotiation as a fight, but it’s really about collaboration, Margaret Neale explains to me as we begin our walk. “What negotiation is, to me, is joint problem-solving. Let’s find a solution to a problem that we’re facing.”
Right now, the problem Neale and I face is how to get…
