All Features
Minter Dial, Caleb Storkey
The onslaught of disruptive technologies has resulted in business and operating models being turned upside-down. This requires a shift in mindset. Invariably, change is difficult. We are all creatures of habit and subject to long-standing attitudes. Those of you who have been in business a long…
Scott Shackelford
Hackers around the world are attacking targets as diverse as North Dakota’s state government, the Ukrainian postal service, and a hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia. Unfortunately, many governments—in the developing world, and even cash-strapped states and local communities in the United States—lack…
Dean Solberg
As technology rapidly advances, its uses are benefiting nearly every industry, and the world of art is no exception. Brad McConnell, a mechanical design instructor at John T. Blong Technology Center in Davenport, Iowa (Eastern Iowa Community College), wanted to expand the types of projects offered…
Jordan Kraemer
During the past year, I stopped responding to customer surveys, providing user feedback or, mostly, contributing product reviews. Sometimes I feel obligated—even eager—to provide this information. Who doesn’t like being asked his opinion? But, in researching media technologies as an anthropologist…
Jeremy Straub
Some people are afraid that heavily armed artificially intelligent robots might take over the world, enslaving humanity—or perhaps exterminating us. These people, including tech-industry billionaire Elon Musk and eminent physicist Stephen Hawking, say artificial intelligence technology needs to be…
Knowledge at Wharton
As the essayist E.B. White once wrote, “Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.” Some people are of course quick to acknowledge the good fortune they’ve enjoyed along their paths to the top. But White was surely correct that such people are in the minority. More…
Jeffrey Phillips
I
was thinking over the weekend that for years we've positioned innovation incorrectly. Too often we position innovation as creating a new and valuable offering or solution, ready when customers demand new products and services. In other words, we've positioned innovation as something to do to…
Henrik Bresman
The auto industry may be in for a double upending in the near future. First, the tipping point for self-driving cars is expected to occur between 2020 and 2026, according to experts’ estimates. Second, the rise of ride-sharing (otherwise known as “Uberization”) poses a potentially fatal threat to…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Our Oct. 27, 2017, episode of QDL looked at Ford, autonomous cars, and changes to FDA compassionate use rules.
“Ford Plans $14B in Cost Cuts as Part of New CEO’s Strategy”
Ford Motor Co’'s new CEO plans to cut $14 billion in costs, drop some car models, and focus the company’s resources on…
Scott Berkun
While researching my new book, The Dance of the Possible (Berkun Media, 2017), I studied the history of some of the most misleading ideas that have been popularized about creative thinking. Like the myth of epiphany and the other creative myths of innovation, these sayings are misleading despite…
Lily Elefteriadou
What self-driving cars want, and what people want from them, varies widely. Often these desires are at odds with each other. For instance, carmakers—and the designers of the software that will run autonomous vehicles—know that it’s safest if cars stay far away from each other. But traffic…
Mike Richman
We cover a wide range of topics on QDL most weeks, but our latest episode, from Friday, Oct. 20, 2017, provided a steady drumbeat of technological detail. Here’s what we chatted about:
“Energy Harvested from Evaporation Could Power Much of U.S., Says Study” Renewal sources of energy like solar…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny…
Jeff Dewar
This photo shows the Milky Way (from the Latin via lactea), part of our galaxy as seen from Earth. It’s a barred spiral galaxy, essentially a flat disk of at least 100 billion stars. Our galaxy is just one of about 400 billion in the universe, only three of which can be seen by the naked eye.…
MIT Management Executive Education
Design thinking is an innovative problem-solving process rooted in a set of skills.
The approach has been around for decades, but it only started gaining traction outside of the design community after the 2008 Harvard Business Review article [subscription required] titled, “Design Thinking” by Tim…
Davis Balestracci
In my last column, I reflected back on my career to date and issued a challenge. Based on the relatively lukewarm response, let’s see whether I can engage a few more of you to join me on my quixotic journey.
“Trying to manage your career or your organization in a world changing as rapidly as ours…
Frank Defesche
Until recently, most quality departments were unable to select their own quality management system (QMS) software.
Think about it. From hardware sizing to system requirements, database types to installation, only IT had the expertise to procure and maintain on-premise QMS software. At many…
Lee Vinsel, Constantine Samaras
Fully automated cars are still many years away. Amid the government activity and potential for social benefits, it’s important not to lose sight of smaller improvements that could more immediately save lives and reduce the injuries and economic costs of highway crashes.
Our research found that…
Patrick Nugent
Sponsored Content
A simple fact in manufacturing is that everyone has to measure. However, measurement is not simply about inspection; manufacturers need the right tools to increase quality, maximize productivity, and ultimately, make measurement a value-added process.
One of the most critical…
Mike Richman
Our most recent episode of QDL from Friday, Sept. 29, 2017. featured news, technology, and two great interviews. Let’s have a closer look:
“Domestic Cars Fail to Keep Up With International Competition”
The most recent American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) survey took a look at people’s…
Graham Ross
Why doesn’t machine translation (MT) work for all languages? There are currently more than 7,000 languages worldwide. If each of those had four dialects, that would be more than 28,000 language variances. To offer a perspective, Google can translate 37 languages. If you take into account…
Mary McAtee
True to my profession as an engineer, I am a total geek at heart and proud of it. Spending time in automobile museums always fascinates me. It excites me to see a prescient innovator from the past come up with an idea like headlights. The first ones were Limelight carbide models that had a nasty…
Beth Colbert
When we think of champions of manufacturing today, we tend to think of some of the big companies such as Boeing, Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM. But companies don’t form themselves, and patents don’t automatically mean innovation—people do.
Not all companies have inventors. However, all…
Austin Thomas
Since commercially available 3D printers came out a few years ago, their capabilities have radically expanded. At first, they could only print little things out of plastic, but now people have begun to print working cars and even bridges. People are actively experimenting with how to print with…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Our Sept. 22, 2017, episode of QDL was decidely techie, covering artifical intelligence, the internet of things, Manufacturing Day, and a cool color-matching tool that uses your smart phone.
Manufacturing Day preview
There is a lot happening on Manufacturing Day, which falls on Oct. 6 this year,…
