All Features
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Who’s more clever, engineers or designers? Alexa-connected toilet, anyone? How do you promote rigorous thinking? We discussed all of that and more during this week’s QDL.
“CES brings you... the Alexa-connected toilet!’ Just when you thought that nothing crazier than your clothes dryer could be…
Scott Berkun
Are engineers more creative than designers? Both answers (“Yes they are!” and, “No they are not!”) are naïve. It’s foolish to compare massive groups of people against each other, especially around a sloppy word like creativity.
Assuming you work making products of some kind, we all likely know…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
We tied up last year in a neat little bow, talking about how stories define ourselves and our work; waste is waste, no matter your political leanings; and putting numbers from the news in context.
“The Gift of Being Small” This article by Quality Digest’s Taran March wonderfully illustrates how we…
Steven Barrett
Since their invention more than 100 years ago, airplanes have been moved through the air by the spinning surfaces of propellers or turbines. But watching science fiction movies like the Star Wars, Star Trek, and the Back to the Future series, I imagined that the propulsion systems of the future…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
In this episode we look at bioethics, next-gen manufacturing employees, and the death of Le Grand K.
What happens if customers want designer babies? We discuss the latest news about a Chinese researcher who claims to have edited the genes of two babies. Should society draw a line in the sand?
“…
Ryan E. Day
As of the 2010 Census, there were 27.9 million small businesses registered in the United States. That’s a lot of competition. To thrive and grow in such a competitive environment, business owners must make wise decisions, commit to high-quality results, and take care of their customers and…
Sarah Gonser
Yes, the robots are definitely coming for the jobs of America’s 3.5 million cashiers. Just ask the retail workers who’ve already been displaced by automated checkout machines. Robots may also be coming for radiologists, whose expertise diagnosing diseases through X-rays and MRIs is facing stiff …
Minitab LLC
Machine learning as a tool in your analytical toolkit can help accelerate the discovery of insights in data that can create a more efficient manufacturing process and drive innovation.
Machine learning in the spotlight
The growth in availability of technologies that give us the ability to monitor,…
Ariana Tantillo
The ability to program computers is crucial to almost all modern scientific experiments, which often involve extremely complex calculations and massive amounts of data. However, scientists typically have not been formally trained in science-specific programming to develop customized computational…
Nicole Radziwill
Even though most businesses have invested in quality management and performance improvement, each organization is unique. People, processes, and machines must be coordinated to achieve desired outcomes. This is not easy.
Whether you’re in discrete manufacturing, a process industry, or a service…
Devshree Golecha
In this era of artificial intelligence, where bots can mimic human minds and outperform humans, a new-age process automation tool called “robotic process automation” (RPA) has been creating a lot of buzz. It is highly versatile and can be used by every industry to streamline and optimize their…
Chip Bell
I recently had eye surgery that required me to sleep on my back for two weeks following the operation. I have always slept on my side, ever since I was a kid. My back-sleeping attempts are so challenging, I am never able to nap on those United States to Europe flights. I usually end up burning a…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
These days, even regulatory agencies must innovate if they expect to keep pace with the speed of doing business. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is no exception, and this year especially it has challenged itself to find ways to enhance efficiency and update old regulations. Quality Digest has…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
The Dec. 31, 2018 deadline looms for medical device companies that sell their devices in Canada. On that day, any company that sells medical devices to Canada will either need to hold an MDSAP certificate or show proof that they are on track to be MDSAP certified, or they won’t be able to sell…
Ryan E. Day
One of the unique aspects of Finch Therapeutics is that although its product does not fall easily into any regulated category and thus is not FDA-approved, the company has been working closely with the agency for at least five years. The FDA has broad jurisdiction to regulate all health products,…
Mike Richman
Technological breakthroughs tend to change the way users perceive of a problem, offering a solution that, in retrospect, comes to seem obvious and apparent. So it is with the new FARO 8-Axis Quantum ScanArm and FaroArm.
“This is such an obvious solution to a challenge that every single portable-arm…
Dan Jacob
What a difference a year and a half make. In mid-2017, LNS Research coined the term “Quality 4.0” and published definitive research on the topic. At that time, an early but large group of manufacturers started to make Quality 4.0 one of their top digital transformation initiatives. This continues…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
Last year I was invited to give a lecture on critical thinking to the U.S. Navy. I opened my presentation with a story I’d read in Reader’s Digest magazine as a child. It’s an old story you may have heard before, but it’s a perfect introduction to the importance of critical thinking. Here’s how it…
M. Mitchell Waldrop, Knowable Magazine
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
Back in the 1990s, when U.S. banks started installing automated teller machines in a big way, the human tellers who worked in those banks seemed to be facing rapid obsolescence. If machines could hand out cash and accept deposits on their…
P. Richard Hahn
Data science is hot right now. The number of undergraduate degrees in statistics has tripled in the past decade, and as a statistics professor, I can tell you that it isn’t because freshmen love statistics.
Way back in 2009, economist Hal Varian of Google dubbed statistician the “next sexy job.”…
Jeffrey Phillips
It finally came to me last week. For more than a decade I’ve been working with corporations, trying to help them accelerate their ability to generate new, interesting ideas to market as viable products and services. In some instances we’ve been successful, and in other instances there were…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
In this episode we look at data, data, more data, and then... engineering the perfect human?
“Your Data Are Your Most Valuable Assets”
Just what the heck is Quality 4.0? Remember this acronym: CIA. No, not that CIA. Nicole Radziwill explains.
“Applying Smart Manufacturing Technology to Conduct…
Mike Richman
One of the highlights on our calendar each year is the first Friday in October, which is Manufacturing Day here in the United States. This event offers us the perfect opportunity to celebrate the centrality of manufacturing as a driver of the economy, innovation, automation, education, and lots…
Nicole Radziwill
Data science and machine learning have surged in prominence during the past few years, and digital transformation seems to be on everyone’s agenda. Have you ever wondered why? Even though quality engineering has long been a data-driven pursuit, we now have the potential to get even deeper insights…
Dan Jacob
LNS Research published its research, “Driving Operational Performance With Digital Innovation: Connecting Risk, Quality, and Safety for Superior Results” to address fundamental challenges quality and safety leaders face today.
If quality and safety are separate functions in your organization (…
