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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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
(InfinityQS: Fairfax, VA) -- InfinityQS International Inc. (InfinityQS), the global authority on data-driven enterprise quality, proudly announces it has been named a Top Software & Technology Provider by Food Logistics magazine for the 11th year in a row. Formerly known as the FL100+, the…
(JBT Org.: Chicago) -- JBT Corp., a leading technology solutions provider to the global food, beverage, nutraceutical, and pharmaceutical industries, is proud to announce its A&B Process Systems business unit has received the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)'s 9001:2015…
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…
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…
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…
(CAMECA: Madison, WI) -- CAMECA, a business unit of AMETEK Inc., and a world-leading supplier of microanalytical and metrology instrumentation for research and process control, is partnering with the University of Sydney on the acquisition of the latest atom probe tomography (APT) instrument—the…
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…
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…
(Seegrid: Pittsburgh, PA) -- Seegrid Corporation, the leader in autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for material handling, and Applied Intuition, a best-in-class simulation and software tools provider for autonomous vehicle development, announces an agreement to collaborate on creating 3D virtual…
(Dimensional Control Systems: Troy, Michigan) -- Dimensional Control Systems (DCS) is hosting a webinar to showcase a digital twin gear model and the results from simulation that provide insight into the design and allow for operational optimization and reductions in tooling changes. The webinar…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
