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Within the next couple of weeks, scores of college students and senior high-school students on summer vacation will join the workforce. Many will have jobs at summer resorts, while others will perhaps work as life guards, as wait staff at restaurants, or toil at some of the state parks. Others…
March U.S. Manufacturing Technology Orders (USMTO) totaled $507.91 million, according to AMT—The Association for Manufacturing Technology. This total, as reported by companies participating in the USMTO program, was up 30.4 percent from February and up 3.2 percent when compared with the total of $…
Quality Digest and the Coordinate Metrology Society are joining forces to celebrate World Metrology Week 2013 starting on Monday, May 20.
The week will feature special editorial content, photos, games, contests, and prize drawings, all of which will appear in portions of the Quality Digest Daily…
I n my past life as president of a medical device company, I had two reliable leading indicators of a potential customer relationship. Basically, one was if the customers demanded automatic annual price decreases, and the other was if their payment terms were greater than net-30. Those few…
Bean-to-cup coffee makers manufactured at De’Longhi can produce a cup of coffee by just feeding beans at the touch of a button. These machines include a boiler, grinder, brewing unit, and in most cases, a steamer. The machines are manufactured on assembly lines with each unit individually…
As publisher of Quality Digest Daily, I often take a somewhat dispassionate view of process and performance errors. After all, our typical reader is a quality professional whose job, in part, is to figure out why something went wrong and prevent it from occurring again.
From that perspective, a…
During this week’s World Metrology Day festivities, it is fitting to highlight the Coordinate Metrology Society’s longstanding dedication to education and the advancement of the field of 3D portable metrology. Each year, their Coordinate Metrology Systems Conference is held in a different city in…
It was the memo heard around the world: In late February 2013, when Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer ordered the company’s staffers to stop working from home, she set off a ferocious debate over workplace productivity.
“Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” wrote the company’s…
What do you do when revenues rapidly decline, banking and financial institutions pull back, and there’s a national workforce decline? For many business owners, it’s as if lightning has struck their organizations’ industries not once, but twice.
For integrated manufacturing service provider KARLEE…
Laser trackers and the software that control them have revolutionized the way metrology data has been taken over the last 20 years. With software and hardware advances, taking measurements has become more efficient and accurate.
One of these advances in metrology software is the ability to measure…
Joe, a successful leader, is deeply frustrated. The strategic planning system that once served him well is failing. Regardless of his best-laid plans, other forces in the organization are overriding his strategies. His methods to motivate his staff no longer work. How can each day be such a…
There’s nothing I love as much as a paradox. So there’s a lot for me to get excited about with America’s current manufacturing paradox, which is whether U.S. manufacturing is the next big thing or a dying dinosaur. Should we steer our children from factory work, or should we embrace the…
During a recent interview with a big Los Angeles-area newspaper, a reporter asked me, “Is America now in permanent decline?” My answer was, “No.” Our country is not in permanent decline. But I’m concerned that our leadership is.
Actually, our leadership in Washington is failing miserably, and…
Anyone who has seen pictures of the giant, red-hot cauldrons in which steel is made—fed by vast amounts of carbon, and belching flame and smoke—would not be surprised to learn that steelmaking is one of the world’s leading industrial sources of greenhouse gases. But remarkably, a new process…
As best as I can recall, I’ve never coined a phrase with any staying power. Until now. And, my phrase has been purposely captured on a T-shirt, by someone other than a close relative. It’s not quite like having my words recorded indelibly in marble and situated in the Parthenon, but I’ll take it…
Remember your Latin? In the Aeneid Virgil used the phrase notus calor to describe what Hephaestus felt when he embraced his wife, Aphrodite. Think you know what it is now?
It means “familiar warmth.” Not passion. Not animal lust, as one might suspect when describing the embrace of a goddess. But…
“What if I were to tell you that one of the most important keys to your organization’s success can be found in a very unlikely place—a place many of you may consider to be complicated, inaccessible, and perhaps even downright boring? What if I were to tell you that this key to success is already…
Editor’s note: This continues Jack Dunigan’s series about unsung heroes in the workplace, and the 16 traits they all share.
“You can buy a person’s hands but you can’t buy his heart. The heart is where enthusiasm and loyalty are.” —Anonymous
You can’t build a team without team players. Experience…
How do you communicate with 5,000 employees across 17 countries in a simple yet effective and compelling way? This was a question that Jovina Ang had to answer back in 2010, when she joined Microsoft Services Asia as marketing communications director.
It was around that time that the organization…
It’s no secret that Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspectors hone in on a medical device company’s corrective and preventive action (CAPA) program during an inspection. But a leading CAPA consultant says many companies may have overreacted and made things unnecessarily difficult for…
ECM Global Measurement Solutions (ECM) of Topsfield, Massachusetts is working with ProTom International (ProTom) of Flower Mound, Texas, to install a state-of-the-art proton therapy treatment center in Flint, Michigan, for McLaren Healthcare. This is the first in a series of proton therapy centers…
Henry Ford’s My Life and Work is the bible of Aldous Huxley’s dystopian Brave New World, which is an excellent example of hiding something in plain view. The people in Huxley's story essentially worship Henry Ford, with the sign of the T (Model T) replacing the Christian cross, and years recorded…
We live in an age of increased specialization: physicians who treat just one ailment, scholars who study just one period, network administrators who know just one operating system. However, researchers at MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) have shown that, in a number of…
Editor’s note: This article continues the series exploring structured innovation using the TRIZ methodology, a problem-solving, analysis, and forecasting tool derived from studying patterns of invention found in global patent data.
T
he monthly innovation meeting commenced with Joyce, one of the…
April’s factory collapse in Bangladesh, which killed more than 700 people, has renewed public debate over working conditions in the developing world: How can dangerous and debilitating factory work be improved?
For more than a decade, MIT political scientist Richard Locke has studied that…