All Features
Katie Rapp
For manufacturers, artificial intelligence (AI) can be a game changer. Greater efficiencies, lower costs, improved quality, and reduced downtime are just some of the potential benefits. This technology isn’t just for large manufacturers. High-value, cost-effective AI solutions are more accessible…
Prasad Akella
We are a full two years into post-pandemic manufacturing life, with the omicron variant the latest cause for concern. It might sound hyperbolic, but I’m pretty sure manufacturing will never be the same as it was in 2019. In some ways, that’s a good thing.
One silver lining of the novel coronavirus…
Sarah Schiffling, Nikolaos Valantasis Kanellos
Everything was about shortages last year. COVID-19 vaccine shortages at the start of the year were replaced by fears that we would struggle to buy turkeys, toys, or electronic gizmos to put under the Christmas tree. For most of the year, supermarket shelves, car showrooms, and even petrol stations…
Walter Nowocin
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was directed by the federal government to define cloud computing to assist federal agencies in implementing cloud architectures.
In 2011, NIST published NIST SP 800-145—“The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing” and defined cloud computing as…
Ben Bensaou
A manufacturer of the fabric used to reinforce car tires might not seem an obvious source of innovation inspiration. But in just a few years, Kordsa, a part of the Turkish industrial conglomerate Sabancı Group, transformed itself from a price-driven maker of commodity products into a provider of…
Maxim Wheatley
Three years’ worth of new graduates have entered the workforce entirely remote due to the changing atmosphere of the work world, and more companies than ever are fully remote. Millions of employees have experienced remote work for the first time and don’t plan to go back to brick-and-mortar offices…
Bill Marler
Although the announcement, “FDA Proposes Changes to Food Safety Modernization Act Rule to Enhance Safety of Agricultural Water Used on Produce,” is a bit to fully digest in one sitting, I’m intrigued by the FDA’s focus on pre-harvest risk assessment of water risk as opposed to water testing for…
Etienne Nichols
If you’re looking for information on medical-device design controls and product development, you can find a practically endless number of articles, videos, and podcasts with a few quick online searches. Yet with so much out there on these topics, there’s a glaring omission of a closely related…
James Wells
The ISO 9001 standard talks about the relationship between the company and the customer in a couple of places. First is management’s responsibility to make sure that customers’ needs are a top consideration, and that their requirements are met. Then that customer satisfaction is improving, and…
Bruce Hamilton
You may recognize the following quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, or more recently from Kelly Clarkson: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I’ve thought about this often during the last 22 months in context of the horrible pandemic and, more parochially, in relation to the efforts of many…
Gleb Tsipursky
Are you worried that having hybrid and, especially, full-time remote employees will undermine employee on-the-job learning, integration into company culture, and intra- and inter-team collaboration? This issue recurrently came up with organizations that I guided in developing strategies for…
Artem Kroupenev
The manufacturing industry was thrown into the spotlight early in the pandemic as consumers rushed to stores, panic-buying everything from canned goods to water bottles. Since then, the industry has had more than its fair share of challenges, including the critical ramp-up of vaccine and…
Jeff Dewar
With membership in ASQ down, ISO 9000 series certifications down, and an unnerving reduction in quality management staff in many companies during the pandemic, today’s quality professionals are justifiably concerned about their future and career choice.
Here’s my take on the future of quality: It…
Mike Richman
It’s hard to fathom that Quality Digest, a little Northern California media company respected by all and beloved by many, turned 40 in November 2021. For a human being, 40 may be the new 30, but it’s still just creeping up on middle age. For a small business, on the other hand, 40 years is…
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
No matter which quality management methodology, technique, or fad du jour you chose during the past 40 years, from quality circles to TQM to Six Sigma, all had one thing in common: data. In manufacturing this eventually meant measurement data. Whether it was dimensional, time, temperature,…
Ryan E. Day
Quality Digest (QD) was born 40 years ago. Birthed as Quality Circle Institute (QCI), the organization was conceived as a consultancy focused on bringing the success of quality control circles at Lockheed to organizations that were beginning to awaken to the importance of employee involvement in…
Dr T Burns
I’m a chemical engineer. The fundamentals of the chemical engineering profession were laid down 150 years ago by Osborne Reynolds. Although chemical engineering has seen many advances, such as digital process control and evolutionary process optimization, every engineer understands and uses Reynold…
Dennis Bailen, Bob Sherlock
Manufacturing businesses small and large have had their hands full with the fallout of the pandemic, and although it seems the worst of the crisis is now behind us, companies will continue to grapple with how to keep both customers and employees on board despite supply chain issues, intense…
Steven Severt
Although ISO 19011—“Guidelines for auditing management systems” has included language about remote quality management system (QMS) auditing since the 2018 revision, this became a reality for many of us in March 2020 with the onset of Covid-19 and the mass lockdowns that ensued. Many of us have been…
Georgia Tech News Center
The Georgia Institute of Technology was awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) as part of its $1 billion Build Back Better Regional Challenge. Georgia Tech is one of 60 entities to be awarded funding to assist communities nationwide in their…
NIST
Sneezes, rain clouds, and ink-jet printers: They all produce or contain liquid droplets so tiny it would take several billion of them to fill a liter bottle.
Measuring the volume, motion, and contents of microscopic droplets is important for studying how airborne viruses spread (including those…
Paul Laughlin
The latest book I'm reviewing is about data and critical thinking, and it often makes you laugh. Alongside Moonwalking With Einstein (Penguin, 2011), it’s in the traditional Penguin paperback size and ideal to take with you anywhere. It’s so enjoyable you'll want to complete it ASAP. The writing…
Winnie Jiang
In what has become the most watched commencement speech ever, Steve Jobs had this advice for the class of 2005 at Stanford University: “The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
Inspiring words from the…
Jason Tham
It’s common to hear about how the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted supply chain operations. Supply chain leaders are navigating one of the most difficult periods in recent history, and it’s impossible to foretell an end to global disruptions. What many don’t realize, however, is that the pandemic…
Sybil Derrible, Juyeong Choi, Nazli Yesiller
Communities across the U.S. Southeast and Midwest are assessing damage from the deadly and widespread tornado outbreak on Dec. 10–11, 2021. It’s clear that the cleanups will take months and possibly years.
Dealing with enormous quantities of debris and waste materials is one of the most…
