All Features
Festo Didactic
Manufacturing in the United States and Canada is marked by negative stereotypes left behind from 1955. Repetitive and simplistic duties in grimy workplaces, without a chance to change or advance a career, are the images most people see when they imagine what it means to work in a factory. But, a…
By 2020, research shows that the number of connected industrial devices will grow 285 percent from 2015. If you’re like some industrial leaders who feel the industrial internet of things (IIoT) is more hype than real, you’re taking a wait-and-see approach. But if you’re like many of the leaders we…
While commanding four vessels sailing between England and India in 1601, Capt. James Lancaster performed one of the great experiments in medical history. Each of the seamen on just one ship—his own, of course—was required to sip three teaspoons of lemon juice per day. By the midpoint of the voyage…
Ryan E. Day
Sponsored Content
You might say what Henry Ford did for the automobile, GE, Siemens, and Mitsubishi have done for the gas and steam turbine industry. Naturally, the tools and technicians of both sectors have had to evolve right along with the challenges of new technology and the ever-increasing…
Dawn Bailey
Public schools across the country are facing significant challenges. Lisa Muller, assistant superintendent for Baldrige Award recipient Jenks Public Schools, says schools are dealing with an increase in student needs, while at the same time managing declining revenues and attempting to prepare…
Bruno Scibilia
There may be huge potential benefits waiting in the data in your servers. These data may be used for many different purposes. Better data allow better decisions, of course. For instance, banks, insurance firms, and telecom companies already own a large amount of data about their customers. These…
Knowledge at Wharton
Steve Klasko, president of Thomas Jefferson University and CEO of Jefferson Health, is the co-author of We Can Fix Healthcare (Mary Ann Lieber Inc., 2016) with Wharton adjunct professor Gregory P. Shea and Michael Hoad. In the book, the authors propose 12 disruptive transformations to the…
Chip Bell
Francie Johnsen is my very favorite pharmacist. When the petite, redheaded bundle of energy first came to work at the Eckerd Pharmacy (now CVS) near my home, she encountered a store spirit painted plain vanilla. Employees were creating a completely memory-less experience. Nothing was wrong, mind…
Eugene Daniell
Sponsored Content
If NASCAR teams had to choose a capitol city, Charlotte, North Carolina, would be the most likely. With so many teams clustered around this city and its celebrated racetrack, savvy specialty suppliers have moved to the region to help NASCAR teams build speed and reliability into…
Bob Emiliani
To this day, lean management has yet to enter the mainstream in business. It remains solidly on the fringe, despite great efforts by many people over many decades.
You almost never hear of lean management in the business press unless the article is written by an insider such as James P. Womack or…
Kevin Meyer
Nearly three decades ago, one of my first bosses pulled me aside. I forget the underlying incident except that I had somehow screwed up, and he bluntly told me to “sweat the details.” I clearly remember it to this day, and it became one of the defining pieces of advice I have ever received. It was…
Timothy Lozier
Current management regulations and standards stress the importance of making quality management a higher priority throughout all areas of operation. At Verse Solutions, we wanted to find out how quality managers are adjusting to that new mindset, and how they are using quality-based technology to…
Jesse Lyn Stoner
It’s pretty common these days to hear complaints about lack of leadership, poor leadership, and disappointment with those who are in leadership roles. In a recent World Economic Forum survey, 86 percent of the respondents reported they believe there is a leadership crisis in the world today.
But…
James Warren
Creating a new material has long been either an accident or a matter of trial and error. Steel, for instance, was developed over hundreds of years by people who didn’t know why what they were doing worked (or didn’t work). Generations of blacksmiths observed that iron forged in charcoal was…
Gensler’s U.S. Workplace Survey 2016 is the latest in a series that builds on more than a decade of research. The company, an integrated architecture, design, planning and consulting firm, started that journey in 2005 by uncovering a link between a better-designed work environment and performance…
William A. Levinson
ISO 9001:2015 clause 4.2—“Understanding the needs and expectations of interested parties” requires the organization to determine the “requirements of these interested parties that are relevant to the quality management system.” The recent two-day conflict that Facebook lost to F.B. (Fluff Busting…
François Leclerc
Color is a big differentiator in the world of 3D scanning, but when it comes to inspection or reverse engineering, it’s usually not mandatory and sometimes not even important. However, color is paramount in applications such as heritage preservation, which is the 3D scanning and digitization of…
Amir Grinboim
Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence recently released the latest system in its 3D optical scanner portfolio, the BLAZE 600M. The solution is similar to structured light but comprised of a blended combination of technologies that allow it to be faster and more accurate than traditional structured-…
NIST
A new publication from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides a basic model aimed at helping researchers better understand the internet of things (IoT) and its security challenges.
Examples of IoT systems include a smart electric grid, a home controlled by sensors,…
Jennifer Huergo
As I peer into the cardboard box NIST researcher Amanda Forster holds out for me, I can’t help thinking that this mild-mannered materials scientist has an impressive collection of shivs.
Forster’s collection of handmade prison weapons include a ballpoint pen with a razor embedded in the shaft and…
Annette Franz
I was honored recently to be a guest on Innochat, a weekly Twitter chat that takes place every Thursday at noon Eastern time. The show is about innovation and covers a wide range of topics and angles. If you love talking innovation, make time for this chat every Thursday.
The topic on July 21 was…
Andrew Maynard
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, recently revealed the second part of his master plan for the company, and it’s a doozy. Not content with producing sleek electric cars (which to be fair, were only a stepping stone to greater things), Musk wants to fundamentally change how we live our lives. But the…
MIT News
Ever waited way too long at your doctor’s office for an appointment to start? Those long waits may soon be over. A schedule-optimizing software developed by MIT spinout Arsenal Health gets more patients seen more quickly and could soon be used by thousands of healthcare providers across the…
Harish Jose
Today I’d like to take a look at a lesson from Taiichi Ohno regarding the pursuit of quality. His comment, “The pursuit of quantity cultivates waste, while the pursuit of quality yields value,” struck a chord with me. Among other things, he's referring to the importance of resisting mass-…
Eugene Daniell
Sponsored Content
For more than 30 years, Hendrick Motorsports has consistently been one of NASCAR’s most successful teams. In the course of winning a record 11 Sprint Cup Series championships, Hendrick Motorsports has learned that it must innovate constantly to stay ahead of the competition.…
