All Features
Lisa Apolinski
A not-so-surprising fact, according to HubSpot: 65 percent of consumers state that the experience they encounter on a website is a “very important” factor in recommending a brand. If that statistic’s not enough, HubSpot also reported that 75 percent of consumers expect new technologies to be used…
Adam Zewe
When deep-learning models are deployed in the real world—perhaps to detect financial fraud from credit card activity or identify cancer in medical images—they are often able to outperform humans.
But what exactly are these deep-learning models learning? Does a model trained to spot skin cancer in…
Tony Schmitz
The U.S. Navy is beginning to build 12 top-of-the-line nuclear submarines, with the first one scheduled to be completed by 2027. But it is missing a critical ingredient: many of an estimated 50,000 skilled workers needed to get the job done. It also lacks a reliable supply chain and the…
Sarah Burlingame
There is more to lean manufacturing than improving a few processes. Sustainable lean success requires a companywide culture of continuous daily improvement. Companies that develop their people to think scientifically, using facts and data to drive their decisions, are often the ones that most…
Del Williams
For owners and operators in the agricultural and food-processing industries, Jan. 1, 2022, was the deadline for completing a dust hazard analysis (DHA) for existing facilities in accordance with Chapter 7 of the National Fire Protection Association’s Standard 61 (2020) for the Prevention of Fires…
Gleb Tsipursky
The term “quiet quitting” emerged in March 2022, and refers to doing the bare minimal tasks of your job description well enough that you don’t get fired. The concept quickly went viral on TikTok.
Yet it only started to gain traction as an issue of concern among business leaders when government…
Tess Malone
Imagine messaging an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot about a missing package and getting the response that it would be “delighted” to help. Once the bot creates the new order, it says it’s “happy” to resolve the issue. Afterward, you receive a survey about your interaction. But would you be…
Mark Hembree
When I started working from home in 1998, it wasn’t by choice. I was writing for a major record label that decided—in so many words—that I was like a painting that didn’t go with the furniture. (Fine. Know what you get when you play New Age music backward? New Age music.)
My panic-stricken…
Matt Fieldman
I’m sure you’ve heard the buzz around the German apprenticeship system—but does it really live up to the hype?
That’s what a recent mission of 16 workforce professionals from around the United States set out to learn. Supported by the Transatlantic Program of the Federal Republic of Germany,…
Scott Trevino
Nearly a quarter of surveyed healthcare cyberattack victims experienced increased mortality rates following a data breach, and more than half reported poorer patient outcomes due to longer hospital stays and delayed procedures. Healthcare has faced the highest average data breach cost—more than $10…
Costas Xyloyiannis
During the early 2000s, I was a recent software engineering graduate. Along with a friend and fellow graduate, I landed some project work with a major pharmaceutical company. The CEO, who had just signed up to the U.N. Global Compact, needed to know how sustainable the company’s supply chain was.…
Gleb Tsipursky
One of the key stakeholders in stakeholder capitalism is the employee. You could argue that the employee is the key stakeholder, because without employees you’d have no stakeholders at all. This is why employers need to stay aware of today’s health environment and its effect on their employees.…
Marni Baker-Stein, Bridgett Paradise, Rodney Petersen
There’s a growing movement to increase competency and skills-based education and hiring practices in both the public and private sectors.
For example, the Executive Order on Modernizing and Reforming the Assessment and Hiring of Federal Job Candidates calls on the federal government to “ensure…
Michael Muillenburg
Consider these two pieces of recent industry data: (1) 75 percent of the workforce will be millennials by 2025. Thousands of experienced workers are retiring daily. The Silver Tsunami is real, and it’s rising fast. This unprecedented talent loss is draining industry of its ability to train and…
Rachel Gordon
The manufacturing industry (largely) welcomed artificial intelligence with open arms. Less of the dull, dirty, and dangerous? Say no more. Planning for mechanical assemblies still requires more than scratching out some sketches, of course—it’s a complex conundrum that means dealing with arbitrary…
Matthew Greenwood
Getting the most out of your older capital equipment is a priority for any manufacturer. Luckily, the technology needed to bring legacy equipment into the internet of things (IoT) is readily available.
Let’s take a look at some specific products and technologies businesses can use to bring legacy…
Craig Matthews
Producing quality work is imperative in every field, particularly in the construction industry. A well-built structure, whether it’s an educational facility, hospital, or a commercial establishment, provides shelter, safety, and stability, which is why quality should always be a top priority. As…
Brian Brooks
Manufacturers spend too much on quality issues. Some issues they are blind to, some are due to poor detection, and some are the costs incurred when issues escape to a customer.
It seems like in recent years the challenges have been great in both magnitude and quantity—supply chain turmoil, global…
Jeffrey Heimgartner
As the U.S. manufacturing sector barrels toward a renaissance, the path ahead comes with challenges that many manufacturers may not be prepared for. The industry—which employs 12 million people and accounts for 11 percent of the U.S. GDP—has slowly crawled out of a decline, and it has the potential…
Vanessa Bates Ramirez
Austin, Texas-based 3D-printing construction company ICON has gotten some pretty significant projects off the ground in recent years, from a 50-home development in Mexico to a 100-home neighborhood in Texas. Recently the company won a NASA contract that will help it get an even bigger project much…
Matt Fieldman
The NASCAR pit stop—it’s exciting, intense, and can mean the difference between winning and losing a race. Accomplishing the three simultaneous necessities of moving quickly, completing each job with perfection, and having a flawlessly coordinated team seems impossible, yet it happens right in…
Chirag Rathi
Two years later, the perfect storm of pandemic-related disruptions is still a major source of irritation for manufacturers. Those disruptions have been major contributors to the inflation we are now experiencing worldwide. Will that inflation lead us into a recession? A lot of very smart people say…
Nisan Lerea
Quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) are a continual part of any manufacturing process. No matter how many times your factory has executed the same procedure, you must regularly perform quality checks to maintain the same quality level of your process. Quality control on a manufacturing…
Tony Boobier
Does your use of probabilities confuse your audience? Sometimes even using numbers can be misleading. The notion of a 1-in-a-100-year flood doesn’t prevent the possibility of flooding occurring in consecutive years. This description is no more than a statistical device for explaining the likelihood…
Bhushan Avsatthi
The very nature of healthcare construction and its specific infrastructural and functional needs pose significant challenges to the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) sector. Crucial hospital spaces such as operation theaters and critical care centers need fail-proof connections to…
