All Features
Kaya Wiles
Your everyday permanent markers, glue sticks, and packing tape may offer a surprisingly low-tech solution to a long-standing nuisance in the manufacturing industry: Making soft and ductile, or so-called “gummy” metals easier to cut.
What makes inks and adhesives effective isn’t their chemical…
Ryan E. Day
Factory and industrial inspections are the backbones of robust quality assurance programs. Inspection is also an integral part of machine system installation and maintenance, as well as in-situ repairs and retrofits. This is why highly competent individuals who understand the metrology methods of…
Jeff Dewar
‘There’s nothing we can do about it.”
In a customer service situation, those words are equivalent to “buzz off” (or worse).
Here’s what customer service managers, from healthcare to telecommunications, from utilities to gyms, should have tattooed on the inside of their eyelids: Because employees…
Steven Brand
While manufacturers have traditionally been hesitant to invest in their operations due to cost, a recent National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) survey of more than 500 manufacturers reveals that 65 percent plan to increase capital spending during the coming years. Where is the money going to…
William A. Levinson
Quality and manufacturing practitioners are most familiar with the effect of variation on product quality, and this is still the focus of the quality management and Six Sigma bodies of knowledge. Other forms of variation are, however, equally important—in terms of their ability to cause what…
Pamela Waterman
Anyone involved in 3D printing/additive manufacturing (AM) knows about STL file formats. Problem is—and no offense meant—STL is dumb. It’s just a large text file, generally written in ASCII programming language, defining the surface of a closed solid using a zillion triangles. For every tiny…
Andrew Nobleman
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has campuses in Maryland, Colorado, South Carolina, and Hawaii. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Hawaiian campus? How do I get a job at NIST?”
Perhaps calling it a “campus” is a bit of an exaggeration. Ensconced within the U.S. Navy’s…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
Often in coaching, managers work on changing their behaviors. But there’s another area you need to pay attention to also—other’s perceptions of you. Otherwise you can end up in a situation where people don’t notice you’ve changed—where you’ve become a butterfly, but others still see a caterpillar…
Michael Gaunce
What do you think of when you think work holding? A vise, hydraulic clamps, vacuum plates, toe clamps, magnets, glue? Absolutely, but this is only half of the equation. What about the interface between these components and the machine tool? This is equally important, if not more so because it…
Jeffrey Phillips
Ihave been thinking a lot lately about innovation and how we may have emphasized one component at the expense of another. Here I’m talking about something that should appear obvious—the focus of innovation in building new things. We are constantly reminded that innovation is about building new…
Nikon Metrology Inc.
A recent interview with Tadashi Nakayama, Nikon’s corporate vice president, provides insight into the strategy of the firm’s Industrial Metrology Business Unit, of which he is deputy general manager. In particular, he explained the company’s strategic focus on Quality 4.0, where digital, automated…
Craig Knight
When I am too hot at work, I like to open a window, retrieve an ice lolly from the kitchen, and kick off my shoes. But for many people, this is not an option. Finding the right temperature can make a big difference to how happy—and productive—we are at work. It can also be the cause of some serious…
Gwendolyn Galsworth
The world of work shares a single basic transaction, used millions of times a day: translating vital information into human behavior. But operationalizing this formula is not that simple. Workplace information can change quickly and often—schedules, customer requirements, engineering specifications…
Bruce Hamilton
Who remembers VisiCalc, often referred to as the first killer app? In 1978, this spreadsheet software ushered in the personal computing boom. Although it only ran on Apple’s priciest computer (the one with massive 32K RAM), its ability to calculate and recalculate arrays had much to do with the…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
If asked whether you guard your company’s secrets, most of us would say, “Well, of course I do.” But I’m guessing that if you are a remote worker, or do any work while on the road, you are blithely handing out company secrets and don’t even know it. If nothing bad has happened yet, it’s only…
Tara García Mathewson
Some of the most celebrated education reform efforts today serve to make instruction more difficult. Personalized learning, project-based learning, mastery-based learning—they all require more work of teachers and more work of students.
But several speakers at the LearnLaunch Across Boundaries…
Jane Stull
As companies seek to gain efficiencies in the workplace, provide choice for employees, and attract and retain talent, strategies involving agile working and free-address have gained traction. When our Gensler La Crosse office relocated last year, we leveraged the opportunity to support an agile…
Thomas R. Cutler
Although automation has been successful in replacing repetitive, simple tasks, the human workforce still plays a critical role in manufacturing. Even the most sophisticated and automated manufacturing operations rely on human operators to configure, run, and properly maintain production equipment…
Fred Schenkelberg
Reliability activities serve one purpose: to support better decision making. That is all they do. Reliability work may reveal design weaknesses, which we can decide to address. Reliability work may estimate the longevity of a device, allowing decisions when compared to objectives for reliability.…
Aiman Sakr
Does your organization benefit from lessons learned? Does it learn from previous quality issues? A vast amount of learning takes place every day in every manufacturing facility. Do global manufacturing companies share experiences gained from resolving quality issues between overseas plants? And…
Tom Kevan
MELD Manufacturing has commercialized a metal production process that promises to enable 3D printing to carve out a greater role in the manufacturing sector.
Until recently, manufacturers’ efforts to apply 3D printing in large-scale production areas have been thwarted by inherent limitations of…
Rick Barker
Return on investment (ROI) is the subject of many discussions about ergonomics, and rightfully so. Musculoskeletal disorders are an expensive and preventable workplace injury, with total costs averaging nearly $30,000 per case, according to data from the Occupational Safety and Health…
Douglas C. Fair
A few months back, I was reading a really good article from The Wall Street Journal, titled “Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs.” Even though it was geared toward accounting and corporate operations, the message of the article struck home: Excel shouldn’t be used as an enterprisewide…
Jim Benson
I love to cook. When I make good food and share it with others, they will take a bite and look as excited to eat it as I was to create it. They might not understand the subtleties that went into it, but they understand the product. Satisfied eater, satisfied chef.
When we do something and are…
Stephen Salata
It’s an open secret that many automotive and aerospace manufacturers have unacceptably high defects and costs. And where defects are on the rise, quality costs aren’t far behind.
Even one defect could mean recalling an entire batch, a problem that can cost thousands of dollars per minute if it…