All Features

Hannah Fischer-Lauder
In an age where data are among the most valuable assets for any business, the ability to retrieve, process, and utilize information efficiently is critical for success. Yet traditional data-retrieval methods often struggle with the demands of today’s dynamic business environments. Enter retrieval-…

Susan Robertson
Every year, Amy B., a buyer for a large retail chain store, hosts an Easter egg decorating team-building party where she and a bunch of her suppliers spend an entire afternoon coloring and bedazzling boiled eggs. None of them bring kids—they do this for the sheer pleasure of out of the office…

Oak Ridge National Laboratory
By editing the polymers of discarded plastics, chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have found a way to generate new macromolecules with more valuable properties than those of the starting material. Upcycling may help remedy the roughly 450 million tons…

Creaform
GKN Aerospace Deutschland is a global tier-one supplier of airframe and engine structures, landing gear, electrical interconnection systems, transparencies, and aftermarket services.
The company has more than 38 manufacturing locations in 12 countries and 17,000 employees worldwide. It…

Sergey Sukhovey
The collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March 2024 was the consequence of a long-standing problem: the fragility of aging infrastructure. As reconstruction gets underway on an estimated four-year timeline, the disaster reflects the urgent need for better bridge inspection nationwide…

Nick Haase
PharmaNZ is a family-owned nutraceutical company that manufactures health supplements for the world’s leading brands. The company produces more than 250 tonnes of powder-blend products, 10 million tablets, and 70 million hard-shell capsules annually for clients worldwide. The company, founded by…

Tara Fortier
If you’ve heard or read about quantum mechanics, you may have seen it described as “weird.” Even the great Albert Einstein—one of the founders of quantum mechanics—called certain aspects of the theory “spooky.”
With its wave-like particles and particle-like waves, quantum mechanics certainly…

Siemens USA
Since the early 1980s, the automotive industry has used hydraulically actuated (servo-hydraulic) test systems to simulate operating speeds and road conditions for testing OEM components and fully assembled vehicles. These systems have helped unlock vast improvements in the quality, safety, and…

Yushiro Kato
Artificial intelligence (AI) is gaining momentum across a vast array of fields. Nearly everyone has tried or actively uses a form of AI, whether for personal or professional purposes. Many are finding benefits of the technology in industries that use large amounts of data that must be analyzed,…

Peter Beaucage
Every time you squeeze toothpaste onto your toothbrush, spray perfume on your skin, or swallow a pill, you’re using the result of a carefully crafted recipe made in a lab. These are called formulations.
Formulations aren’t just simple mixtures—they’re complex arrangements of ingredients designed…

Michael Sharp
Understanding the inner workings of your industrial artificial intelligence (IAI) system is crucial if you want it to add measurable value to your manufacturing operations. Here, we’ll dig into one important aspect of every AI: the inputs, aka your data. Including the right type and the right…

Adam Grant, Michael Platt, Jonah Berger, Jerry Wind
Nano Tools for Leaders—a collaboration between Wharton Executive Education and Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management—are fast, effective tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes, with the potential to significantly impact your success and the engagement and…

NIST
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created a new thermometer using atoms boosted to such high energy levels that they are 1,000 times larger than normal. By monitoring how these giant “Rydberg” atoms interact with heat in their environment, researchers can…

Adam Zewe
With a more efficient method for artificial pollination, farmers in the future could grow fruits and vegetables inside multilevel warehouses, boosting yields while mitigating some of agriculture’s harmful effects on the environment.
To help make this idea a reality, MIT researchers are developing…

S. Heather Duncan
Idaho National Laboratory (INL) uses a software algorithm that Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) developed to check for flaws in additively manufactured components. This is part of the process of identifying promising metals and alloys for 3D printing the next generation of nuclear reactors. …

Sabine Terrasi
It creates a warm and inviting atmosphere. Its natural grain and color tones have a lively effect and add character to a room. We are talking about classic wood flooring—usually laminate, and optionally with a click system for easy installation.
Scheucher Holzindustrie GmbH, from Mettersdorf,…

Christine Schaefer
In a recent blog, I provided many reasons to apply to be a 2025 Baldrige examiner. The benefits of serving in this volunteer role were conveyed by three highly experienced Baldrige examiners with career expertise from the business, K-12 education, and healthcare sectors. Each served as an…

Anne Trafton
For many industrial processes, the typical way to separate gases, liquids, or ions is with heat, using slight differences in boiling points to purify mixtures. These thermal processes account for roughly 10% of the energy use in the United States.
MIT chemical engineer Zachary Smith wants to…

Stephanie Ojeda
In April 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first artificial intelligence-powered diagnostic system, a software program used to detect diabetes-related vision loss.
Since then, the industry has seen explosive growth of AI in medical device manufacturing, which is…

Ilana J. Sprongl
Back in 2023, only 15% of businesses had adopted AI-augmented software testing tools. By 2027, that number is expected to leap to 80%. The reason behind this rapid adoption is clear. The complexity of modern software and products is skyrocketing, and with it, the risks associated with quality…

Harish Jose
In this article, I’m exploring complexity through the lens of George Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form (Cognizer Co., 1994). This philosophical and mathematical treatise explores the foundations of logic and mathematics via a unique symbolic system. Spencer-Brown introduces a primary algebra based on a…

Laurie Locascio
So much has changed since I walked onto the Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) almost three years ago to begin my term as its director and U.S. Commerce Undersecretary for Standards and Technology.
We were all still feeling the impacts of…

Jennifer Chu
The electronics industry is approaching a limit to the number of transistors that can be packed onto the surface of a computer chip. So chip manufacturers are looking to build up, rather than out.
Instead of squeezing ever-smaller transistors onto a single surface, the industry is aiming to stack…

Nick Haase
In the evolving landscape of industrial digital transformation, the unified namespace (UNS) has emerged as a transformative approach to enterprise data management. At its core, UNS provides a single source of truth that eliminates barriers between disparate systems and data sources, enabling any…

Peter Zemsky, Ricky Wong
Gemini, O1, Grok, Claude, Llama, Yi, and Mistral: The number of large language models (LLMs) seems to have grown exponentially since OpenAI’s ChatGPT burst into the public consciousness in late 2022. It’s estimated that $154 billion was spent on AI by businesses in 2023, while the most recent …