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As the global economy grows, it’s more necessary than ever to stay on top of efficiency. Keep up with increasing production demands by implementing a continuous improvement method to streamline the workflow.
Continuous improvement is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, and processes.…
The scene is a Russian chemical weapons facility. James Bond, 007, and his partner, Alec Treveleyan, 006, are on a mission of sabotage. As they enter the warehouse armed with explosives, senses on full alert, they turn to each other and say, “For England.”
In a scene from Thunderball, Bond has…
In this episode we look at bioethics, next-gen manufacturing employees, and the death of Le Grand K.
What happens if customers want designer babies? We discuss the latest news about a Chinese researcher who claims to have edited the genes of two babies. Should society draw a line in the sand?
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As of the 2010 Census, there were 27.9 million small businesses registered in the United States. That’s a lot of competition. To thrive and grow in such a competitive environment, business owners must make wise decisions, commit to high-quality results, and take care of their customers and…
Due to a tightening labor market and a competitive global economy, highly talented individuals have a lot of freedom in where they choose to work.
Pay isn’t the sole criteria that attracts and retains the best people. Employees want jobs that fit their lifestyle, give them opportunities to grow,…
Manufacturers throughout the United States are facing a new set of challenges and exciting growth opportunities. Given the manufacturing industry’s important role in providing both direct and indirect jobs, how firms react to these changing conditions is critical not only to the companies…
Manufacturers throughout the United States are facing a new set of challenges and exciting growth opportunities. Given the manufacturing industry’s important role in providing both direct and indirect jobs, how firms react to these changing conditions is critical not only to the companies…
Industry 4.0 is the current hot trend in manufacturing, and one of the adjectives used to label new projects. The concept is primarily a way to describe how automation or “smart” systems enable manufacturers to drive costs down and increase quality. The sense of those words is magic to those…
A giant engine in a factory fails. Concerned, the factory owners call in technicians, who arrive with bulging toolkits. None of them can work out what the problem is. The issue persists.
One day, an old man shows up who’s been fixing engines his whole life. After inspecting it for a minute, he…
Last week I joined the New England Idea Generation Consortium (NEIGC) on a tour of the Stone Zoo where we had the opportunity to see how continuous improvement is expressed in an animal-care function.
In the open area for black bears, Senior Keeper Dayle Sullivan-Taylor explained to us the…
Iam not really sure how it started, but one day a couple months ago, I found myself diving down an internet rabbit hole in search of more information on a guy named Alfred Adler. Adler was an Austrian psychotherapist in the early 1900s who, although a good friend of Sigmund Freud, developed a…
One of our favorite things on our show is to welcome guests, either via Skype or live in the studio. And this week, we were joined by three of our great partners. Here’s a closer look:
Interview: Nicole Radziwill of Intelex
Radziwill is quality manager and data scientist along with the presenter of…
Everybody wants to design and conduct a great experiment! To find enlightenment by the discovery of the big red X and perhaps a few smaller pink x’s along the way. Thoughtful selection of the best experiment factors, the right levels, the most efficient design, the best plan for randomization, and…
In this article I will show that the conventional method for calculating uncertainty is not always reliable. In fact, it is generally only exact when the measurement can be represented by a simple linear equation and the input uncertainties are all normally distributed. Whenever the measurement is…
Yes, the robots are definitely coming for the jobs of America’s 3.5 million cashiers. Just ask the retail workers who’ve already been displaced by automated checkout machines. Robots may also be coming for radiologists, whose expertise diagnosing diseases through X-rays and MRIs is facing stiff …
A convocation of delegates representing 60 countries voted last month in Versailles, France, to implement the most significant change to the International System of Units (SI) in more than 130 years. For the first time, all measurement units will be defined by natural phenomena rather than by…
Walter Shewhart, father of statistical process control and creator of the control chart, put a premium on the time order sequence of data. Since many statistics and graphs are unaffected by this, you might wonder what the fuss is about. Read on to see why.
Figure 1 shows a series of measurements…
Machine learning as a tool in your analytical toolkit can help accelerate the discovery of insights in data that can create a more efficient manufacturing process and drive innovation.
Machine learning in the spotlight
The growth in availability of technologies that give us the ability to monitor,…
A convocation of delegates representing 60 countries voted last month in Versailles, France, to implement the most significant change to the International System of Units (SI) in more than 130 years. For the first time, all measurement units will be defined by natural phenomena rather than by…
I always enjoy my fellow columnist Arun Hariharan’s musings. He has worked in the field of quality for more than 30 years and, like me, has obtained reasonable results. But he has also made his share of the inevitable growing-pain mistakes—lessons we both had to learn the hard way in an environment…
Nearly every month, it seems, comes a new report. In March 2018, there was news of contaminated romaine lettuce, which eventually led to five deaths and sickened more than 200 people across the United States and Canada. In May 2018, about 100 people in California got sick after eating raw oysters…
Nearly every month, it seems, comes a new report. In March 2018, there was news of contaminated romaine lettuce, which eventually led to five deaths and sickened more than 200 people across the United States and Canada. In May 2018, about 100 people in California got sick after eating raw oysters…
In June 2017, President Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Expanding Apprenticeships in America.” It calls for the creation of a special task force to identify strategies and proposals to promote apprenticeships in the United States. To meet this challenge, Department of Labor Secretary Alex…
(ANSI: New York) -- The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has signed an agreement to acquire full interests in the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board LLC (ANAB), strengthening ANSI’s and ANAB’s abilities to provide the highest quality third-party accreditation services for diverse…
Each year, billions in funding for research and development as well as workforce initiatives is available for small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs) to help them get off the ground or aid in expansion efforts. Here are eight organizations that can help your business flourish in today’s…
