All Features
Fred Mason
A metrologist wants to know that any variations in measurements are the result of variations of the parts being measured, not variations in the measuring devices or their users. Subjective interpretation of inspection or measurement devices is a complex variable that can influence the quality of…
Richard Curtis Ph.D.
The speed, convenience and cost benefits of microliter volume, air displacement pipettes drive the frequent use of these precision instruments. However, pipettes, like all mechanical instruments, are subject to failure, and this—along with the technique of operators—can have a significant effect…
Denise Robitaille
Many of you have probably had the occasional insane day when you thought: “This job would be so much easier if we didn’t have customers to deal with.” Apart from the demands for price concessions and the requests for unreasonable deliveries, there are a whole group of customer traits that can drive…
Dennis Bradley
Europe’s Reduction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive identifies six hazardous substances and their maximum permissible levels within electrical and electronic equipment. RoHS imposes upon producers of such goods responsibility for knowing whether their finished products contain…
Michel Podevyn
In the old days at Soliant LLC in Lancaster, South Carolina, employees pushed 275-lb drums filled with acrylic resin powder to a scale for weighing and adding to a mix. Once the powder was weighed out, two employees manually scooped 1.5 lb at a time from the drums to the mixing vessel, the…
Praveen Gupta
Most of us spend our time being busy. We expect a lot, compare our belongings with those of others and feel miserable about the miss-outs. We complain about the way life treats us. While thinking about my New Year’s resolution for 2007, I looked for an opportunity for self-improvement.I…
Steve Wise
Some folks like to use control charts to analyze gauge study results. When using a control chart in this manner, one can assume that the chart should represent a series of gauge studies conducted over a period of time. In this example, let’s say that each morning a gauge is verified by recording…
Bill Kalmar
Recent department store sales figures in the Wall Street Journal are interesting and intriguing. Despite a slow economy in parts of the nation and frigid February weather in some states where several retailers experienced a decrease in sales, some high-priced retailers had exceptional results. What…
James M. Anderson
An ABC News/Washington Post survey in 2003 found that for the first time, 54 percent of Americans were dissatisfied with the overall quality of health care in the United States. In 2006, the Commonwealth Fund released results of an international survey that measured 37 areas of quality…
Mike Micklewright
Question:What do you call a root cause analyst?
Answer: A whys guy!
I had been summoned from my Chicago suburban home and office to visit a company in Wisconsin—Land of Cheese—to discuss the possibility of providing some lean training requested by the director of operations, Brent Favor. This was a…
Steven Ouellette
I had a lot of feedback from interested readers in regards to Stupid Six Sigma Tricks #5, which I jokingly called “Pop Stars Without Clothing,” and which was about the frequent misuse of statistics in the Six Sigma world. Taking heart from this response to what might have been viewed as dusty old…
Thomas R. Cutler
More than 13 hours per week creating documents and nearly seven hours per week organizing documents are common among small and midsize engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturers; four hours per week are spent managing document routing and another 10 hours per week searching for information. All this…
William A. Levinson
On December 29, 2006, passengers of American Airlines’ Flight 1348 were confined in a parked aircraft for eight hours. By this time, “The toilets on the American Airlines jet were overflowing. There was no water to be found and no food except for a box of pretzel bags.” This fiasco was…
On December 29, 2006, passengers of American Airlines’ Flight 1348 were confined in a parked aircraft for eight hours. By this time, “The toilets on the American Airlines jet were overflowing. There was no water to be found and no food except for a box of pretzel bags.” This fiasco was…
Thomas R. Cutler
More than 13 hours per week creating documents and nearly seven hours per week organizing documents are common among small and midsize engineer-to-order (ETO) manufacturers; four hours per week are spent managing document routing and another 10 hours per week searching for information. All this…
Fred Mason
Last month, I talked about vision vs. video and brought up the possibility of confusion between inspection and measurement. Some think that inspection is qualitative and measurement is quantitative. I can’t say I’ll put the matter to rest, but I’ll present a few different…
Denise Robitaille
How do we conclude that a nagging, recurring blip has become serious enough to justify taking action? How do we assess the significance of anomalies—isolated occurrences and scattered, seemingly unrelated events? Can we objectively distinguish those factors that suggest an escalating…
In a previous column, we discussed the importance of the IECQ quality assessment systems for electronic components, a certification scheme of the International Electrotechnical Commission. The IECQ mission is to provide a business-to-business quality certification scheme that serves industry by…
Craig Cochran
Last year I had the good fortune of doing some consulting with B&C Specialty Products in Hopeulikit, Georgia. B&C does light manufacturing, primarily plastic molding and assembly, and they also distribute imported products produced by companies in the Far East. They have about…
Praveen Gupta
Businesses have lately been focusing on profit and process improvement. However, profit improvement at any cost to make the upcoming quarter look bright has a price. It appears that most improvement effort leads with efficiency measured by head-count reduction. Improvement shouldn’t be measured by…
For the last Brain Teaser, in an interesting spin, sample size was defined as a time window. A is the correct response. The underlying data type falls into the category of defect counts (complaints) within a constant area of opportunity (one hour). These data, of course, follow the…
Bill Kalmar
This column normally originates from the hammock in the woods behind our home. With almost a foot of snow on the ground, though, this month’s contribution would better be titled “Thoughts From a Lounge Chair in My Den.” So, while sitting in my favorite chair and listening to the popping of…
Bill Kalmar
This column normally originates from the hammock in the woods behind our home. With almost a foot of snow on the ground, though, this month’s contribution would better be titled “Thoughts From a Lounge Chair in My Den.” So, while sitting in my favorite chair and listening to the popping of…
Research engineer Phil Santangelo works in professor Gang Bao’s cell culture facility in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University in Atlanta. Photo courtesy of: Phil Santangelo…
Kevin Meyer
Established in 1903, the Harley-Davidson Motor Company grew rapidly during the two world wars. Foreign competition hit the industry early, and by 1953 Harley-Davidson was the last remaining major motorcycle manufacturer in the United States. Harley was bought by AMF in 1969 and by the late…