All Features
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…
Christa Kuljian
Seven women were part of a trailblazing network of feminist scientists in the Boston area during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Christa Kuljian is a science writer and historian of science who focuses much of her research on issues of science and society, gender, and race. She’s the author of two…
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…
Annie Wilson
More than half of the nation’s 623,218 bridges are showing significant deterioration. Through an in-field case study conducted in western Massachusetts, a team led by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst—in collaboration with researchers from the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering (…
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 …
Sanath Hegde
For quality heads, compliance officers, auditors, and engineering leaders, audits have been a time-consuming, resource-intensive process, yet necessary to build resilient operations, prevent costly failures, and maintain competitive advantage.
The question isn’t whether to audit, but how to…
Harish Jose
In this article I’m exploring the need for ethics in systems thinking using the ideas of Heinz von Foerster and Russell Ackoff. The two come from different traditions within systems thinking. Von Foerster comes from physics and second-order cybernetics, and Ackoff from operations research and…
Adam Zewe
The advanced semiconductor material gallium nitride (GaN) will likely be key for the next generation of high-speed communication systems and the power electronics needed for state-of-the-art data centers.
Unfortunately, the high cost of GaN and the specialization required to incorporate this…
Creaform
Streamlining the transition from scan-to-CAD involves selecting the right tool set for reverse engineering. However, many software platforms force product designers to switch between multiple tools, disrupting their workflow and increasing the risk of errors. Furthermore, some advanced scan-to-CAD…
Christoph Dorigatti
When Henry Ford introduced the moving assembly line in 1913, manufacturing changed forever. Today, it stands on the edge of another revolution—one powered by AI, automation, and sustainability. Ford’s innovation paved the way for transformation. Those who embrace the future now will define…
Etienne Nichols
As part of its effort to address the changing landscape around artificial intelligence (AI) in medical devices, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently released two new guidance documents on artificial intelligence-enabled device software functions (AI-DSF): • “AI-enabled device…
Jeff Dewar, Steven Garner, Quality Digest
Tom Taormina, CMC, esteemed quality consultant and long-time contributor to Quality Digest, has passed away. He is survived by his wife, Midge, and their three children. Recently, Taormina was working with Quality Digest and a consortium of others to design a certified training program for quality…
Adam Zewe
Ready for that long-awaited summer vacation? First, you’ll need to pack all items required for your trip into a suitcase, making sure everything fits securely without crushing anything fragile.
Because humans possess strong visual and geometric reasoning skills, this is usually a straightforward…
Cornelia C. Walther
On April 8, 2025, a driverless Zoox robotaxi misjudged an approaching vehicle, braked too late, and sideswiped it at 43 mph on the Las Vegas Strip.
One month later, the Amazon subsidiary issued a software recall on 270 autonomous vehicles and suspended operations while regulators investigated the…
MIT News
On Dec. 21, 2022, just as peak holiday season travel was getting underway, Southwest Airlines went through a cascading series of failures in its scheduling, initially triggered by severe winter weather in the Denver area.
But the problems spread through the airline’s network, and over the course…
Jennifer Chu
Hearing aids, mouth guards, dental implants, and other highly tailored structures are often products of 3D printing. These structures are typically made via vat photopolymerization—a form of 3D printing that uses patterns of light to shape and solidify a resin, one layer at a time.
The process…
Scott Ginsberg
When quality failures go public, it’s not just your product on the line—it’s also your reputation, compliance status, and workforce morale.
From product recalls to OSHA citations, recent manufacturing disasters reveal a brutal truth: The real cost of outdated documentation isn’t just inefficiency—…
InnovMetric
Humanetics is the world’s largest manufacturer of anthropomorphic test devices (ATDs), commonly known as crash test dummies. The group has more than 1,000 employees across 21 facilities located around the world, with global corporate headquarters in Farmington Hills, Michigan.
Humanetics is…
Rene Ymzon
When manufacturing tolerances shrink to the micron, and part geometries become increasingly complex, the margin for measurement error disappears. In this space—where even thermal drift or mechanical vibration can invalidate results—motion control becomes not just a component but a cornerstone of…
Harish Jose
I am a longtime admirer of George Spencer-Brown’s “Laws of Form.” In this article, I explore how his notion of reentry helps illuminate the paradoxes and blind spots in modern ideologies, especially the rise of xenophobia and extreme nationalism. These rigid ideologies depend on distinctions…
Creaform
The Marshall Advanced Manufacturing Center (MAMC) is a leading-edge resource facility dedicated to driving innovation and advancing manufacturing technologies.
Operating from West Virginia facilities in Huntington, South Charleston, and Point Pleasant, the MAMC is at the heart of groundbreaking…
Nick Haase
When I talk with maintenance leaders, I hear urgency. Pressure is mounting. They’re being asked to cut costs, attract skilled workers, and embrace AI—and fast. Yes, pressure turns coal into diamonds. But constant pressure can wear down even the best teams. So for our 2025 State of Industrial…
Quality Digest
(NewTek: Pennsauken, NJ) -- NewTek Sensor Solutions, a U.S.-based manufacturer of linear and rotary position sensors, is developing an advanced linear variable differential transformer (LVDT) specifically designed to withstand the extreme environments found in next-generation molten salt reactors (…
