All Features
NIST
A powerful color-based imaging technique is making the jump from remote sensing to the operating room—and a team of scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have taken steps to ensure it performs as well when discerning oxygen-depleted tissues and cancer cells in the…
Ron Kaufman
You start your morning running late and sprint into your local coffee shop for your morning cup of joe. As you breathlessly place your order, you notice the barista doesn’t smile at you. She utters a flat, “Here you go” as she hands you the steaming cup. “Why didn’t she put the cardboard sleeve…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
Right, let me get this straight. The uncomfortable process of air travel, bad enough with its crowding, overpriced food, and seating melees, will soon be intensified by a new airport humiliation: asking a hologram for help. And we think old ladies are odd talking to their cats.
Beginning next…
Steven Ouellette
Why is improving quality so important? Why not spend our money on something else in the business? I know it seems a little odd to ask this, especially to readers of Quality Digest, but could those not initiated into the mysteries of the quality gurus be right? Is getting it “out the door” the only…
Mary Beth Edmond, Jonathan Flanders
Ensuring patient safety is one of the most vital and challenging roles in health care. Public reporting of preventable medical errors has forced hospitals to report their medical error numbers accurately and to improve the quality of care. Organizations such as the Institute of Medicine recommend…
Timothy F. Bednarz
One of the pillars of leadership is developing and fostering a deep sense of mutual workplace trust. One of the problems facing organizations is a simple lack of trust between employees and their managers.
For managers to experience successful growth and positive results in their respective…
Patrick Stone
Speed up approval for new health care products and minimize a major drug shortage. Sounds good so far, right? Let’s hope lawmakers get this right with a new bill designed to speed delivery and avert shortages of life-saving medicines.
Throughout the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) history,…
Bruce Hamilton
I am looking for some help to answer this question: What is advanced manufacturing? Seeking illumination, I recently attended a presentation offered through the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology (CCAT), a nonprofit corporation with a mission not unlike that of GBMP: “To apply innovative…
William A. Levinson
People often ask for examples of benefits from implementing ISO 9001-compliant quality management systems (QMS). Such examples are often difficult to provide, at least in terms of immediate results. The reason is that the effects of ISO 9001 and its automotive counterpart ISO/TS 16949 are largely…
Vickie L. Milazzo
For many college graduates, the slowly recovering economy has made that first step into the real world a real doozy. The bottom line is that many grads are lucky to find any job, let alone a job that pays what they hoped they’d be making right out of college. The Associated Press reports that 53.6…
Gorur N. Sridhar
Story update 6/18/2012: A couple of confusing references to Taguchi methods were removed.
During new product development, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is often used in the design stage to simulate such things as the effect of air flow on cooling. The problem with CFD is that it can take a…
Umberto Tunesi
Back in the early 1990s, there was a saying, loudly heralded by one global registrar: “Certify your company, and the export markets will open their doors to it.” Well, the actual wording was a bit more rude, to get the message across to small companies.
I guess this slogan still holds true,…
Stanley H. Salot Jr.
Editor’s notes: The HSF Mark was inadvertently truncated on the issue of Quality Digest Daily released on Tuesday, June 12th, 2012. The full and complete logo can be found below. Author Stan Salot will be the guest this week on Quality Digest Live, airing Friday, June 15, at 11 a.m. Pacific.
We…
Ryan E. Day
“Stop!” Our shop’s trade-school intern froze in mid-swing. A 5-lb hammer clutched in his right hand, he was attempting to disassemble a spindle unit from a late model Mazda. More than likely, our newbie would have ruined the spindle in the process. I suggested he would be better served using a…
The Conference Board
The first analysis of 2011 corporate giving data, the most recent data available, reveals a majority of corporations worldwide have increased their giving year over year. According to the annual Corporate Giving Standard (CGS) survey, conducted by the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (…
Donald Jasurda
Quality itself is no longer a differentiator among manufacturers. High quality is expected and achievable. With enough time and money, any manufacturer can produce a high-quality product. The focus of manufacturing quality has shifted to a discussion about the cost of quality and how to manage it.…
The word kanban means “sign” or “signboard” in Japanese and is often used in conjunction with lean or just-in-time principles for scheduling and manufacturing. Kanban is a “pull” system, whereby product, parts, or inventory move forward based on customer demand, thus eliminating inventory, waste,…
MIT News
The manufacturing sector, its advocates note, is burdened by negative stereotypes. Outsiders often mistakenly think that manufacturing consists of jobs that are “dumb, dirty, and dull,” as MIT President Susan Hockfield said during a recent conference on the subject.
Many people also view…
Miriam Boudreaux
So, you think you’ve got them all figured it out, and then, bam! Somebody else comes up with a new quality acronym to throw you off your game. But don’t give up too soon. Acronyms are confusing, but they all boil down to continual improvement. The trick is to decide, along with your company, which…
Donald J. Wheeler
Editor--Part 2 of this article can be found here.
In some industries a few test batches will be produced prior to going into production. When this happens, a critical question is: “Are all of the test batches alike?” With only one value per batch, how can we compare a set of three or more values to…
Bill Kalmar
A government task force recently proclaimed that the prostate scientific antigen (PSA) test need not be administered to detect cancer. The report indicates that the results of surgery can result in incontinence, sexual dysfunction, heart problems, and even death.
Men for years have had this test,…
Jude Holmes
What is the greatest threat to the U.S. manufacturer? The great recession? Close, but not quite. Corporate espionage? Save it for the movies. Obamacare? Let’s not go there. A product recall can make every other problem seem trivial.
The folks at Toyota know something about that. The 2009–2010…
The Conference Board
According to a new report from The Conference Board, the proportion of employees who work predominantly from home or from another remote location has, during the last decade, more than tripled in many industries, while nearly doubling nationwide among all full-time (nonself-employed) U.S. workers…
Mike Micklewright
I write this as I am sitting in the Jury Assembly Room (JAIL for short) on the 17th floor of the Richard J. Daley Center in downtown Chicago, waiting for something to happen.
I estimate that there are another 130 poor souls who probably have a million things to do and are waiting just like I am in…
Umberto Tunesi
They come trendily dressed, grinning and baring their teeth. They are equipped with the latest electronic tools. And they are forever hypnotizing you into believing that they come in peace.
I’m one of them. I know these aliens from inside their world.
They tell you that you have problems, but do…