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In 2019, I wrote about a marketing phenomenon that I kept hearing about, that customers are in control, that they have all the power. I never felt like that was right.
In that post, I wrote: “So, when you see those headlines about customer control and customer power, what are they really talking…
(Optical Gaging Products: Rochester, NY) -- Cygnus Manufacturing Co. (CMC) is a leading manufacturer and supplier of high-precision products and components for the medical device, transportation, energy, and aerospace industries. CMC provides full-service manufacturing from prototype through…
(Exact Metrology: Cincinnati) -- Exact Metrology, a comprehensive 3D metrology service provider and hardware sales company, sells Raytech Measuring Systems.
These are shop-floor dimensional measuring machines like the single-axis and the three-axis table for industrial manufacturers. The company…
Like business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce, business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce allows customers to purchase parts and supplies via an online portal. The difference is that in B2B e-commerce, both the customers and suppliers are businesses, and the customers may or may not be the end users of the…
It’s a new year, with a new president and new opportunities to boost modern apprenticeship programs in the United States that can help get people back to work and stimulate the economy.
Getting people into apprenticeships has never been more vital, as job losses caused by the pandemic continue to…
At the tender age of 21, living in a universe with far too many parallels to present day, I took a job—which turned out to be more than a job—to support myself in college by working as a caregiver, cook, driver, and constant companion to a man who as a young adult had been infected by the awful…
(Interfacial: Prescott, WI) -- Interfacial Consultants (Interfacial), a Wisconsin-based innovator in advanced materials, has recently released two disruptive, highly filled masterbatch technologies, to be distributed by its sister company Nagase Specialty Materials (NSM).
These novel, proprietary…
(Brunson Instrument Co.: Kansas City, MO) -- Completing a 21-year career at Brunson Instrument Co., general manager Richard Powell will retire later this year. The company has initiated a vigorous search for Powell’s replacement, and he will continue in his current capacity until the position is…
Stakeholder engagement is one of the more critical aspects of leadership, whether you’re a team leader or a member of a cross-functional team trying to lead team members to focus on quality. Stakeholders can be anyone from your colleagues to suppliers to business partners, and your relationship…
Quality managers have a problem. The success of their quality program hinges on one thing. It’s not KPIs, and it’s not methodology. It isn’t even employee engagement or customer satisfaction. The one thing a quality manager needs most is leadership buy-in.
Quality programs fail because they do…
There is a type of error that occurs when conducting statistical testing: to work very hard to correctly answer the wrong question. This error occurs during the formation of the experiment.
Despite creating a perfect null and alternative hypothesis, sometimes we are simply investigating the wrong…
Alexander Hamilton, one of the United States’ founding fathers, famously called energy the most important characteristic of the executive branch of government. “A feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of the government,” he said in the Federalist Papers. “A feeble execution is but another…
(AAT3D: Indianapolis) -- Andretti Autosport has announced that Applied Automation Technologies (AAT3D) will serve as the team’s official metrology solution. AAT3D began in 1987 as a CAD-based dimensional measurement software and developed into a global leader of software solutions for metrology,…
Negotiators, even professional ones, make surprisingly many wrong decisions that doom negotiations that should have succeeded. Many of these mistakes relate to overestimating how well they can read the feelings and thoughts of other parties in the negotiation, as well as the extent to which the…
Manufacturing robotics is to some extent following a similar path of advances to those in machining and fixed automation systems. Though the ROI is most easily measured in efficiency and cost savings, manufacturers are looking for robotic technology to help them resolve a pain point in their…
Globalization of trade and decades-long innovation in supply chain networks have resulted in significant benefits for all stakeholders—greater efficiencies, lower costs, and greater access to markets, to name just a few. Yet Covid-19 has exposed vulnerabilities in global supply chains. Dispersed…
Globalization of trade and decades-long innovation in supply chain networks have resulted in significant benefits for all stakeholders—greater efficiencies, lower costs, and greater access to markets, to name just a few. Yet Covid-19 has exposed vulnerabilities in global supply chains. Dispersed…
Globalization of trade and decades-long innovation in supply chain networks have resulted in significant benefits for all stakeholders—greater efficiencies, lower costs, and greater access to markets, to name just a few. Yet Covid-19 has exposed vulnerabilities in global supply chains. Dispersed…
It’s easy to think of quality as a niche responsibility, requiring only the involvement of those working in quality-based roles. But involving your entire medical device organization—and even suppliers and manufacturers—in the quality process can lead to better products, greater efficiency, and…
This story was originally published by MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL).
In some ways, learning to program a computer is similar to learning a new language. It requires learning new symbols and terms, which must be organized correctly to instruct the computer what to…
‘For sale: 3 bd, 2 ba, 1,407 sq ft home in Riverhead, NY,” the groundbreaking listing on Zillow reads. “Own a piece of history! This is the world’s first 3D-printed home for sale [on the open market]. The future begins with this historic property!” Perhaps the exclamation marks are warranted.…
Lean supply chains are designed based on several key principles. First, the general philosophy of lean is to reduce or eliminate nonvalue-added waste. The concept of reducing waste is always beneficial to organizations. We should continuously strive to reduce things like wasted time, wasted effort…
(Siemens : Plano, TX) -- Siemens Digital Industries Software announces Teamcenter Quality software, a new suite of solutions that provide a closed-loop approach for quality management, from design to manufacturing on the shop floor and back again. Teamcenter Quality helps keep product development,…
Eight years ago Quality Digest published the article, “Suit Up, Show Up, Give Up: Are e-marketing techniques killing trade shows?” The premise was that electronic marketing was slowly diminishing the need for in-person events. However, until recently inertia has kept these sprawling shows alive as…
Have you ever dreaded having a conversation with an employee who wasn’t meeting performance expectations? Maybe you avoided it, hoping it would improve on its own? If so, you are not alone.
Most managers would agree that one of their least favorite tasks is talking to an employee about poor…