All News
Measurement devices in manufacturing facilities are as ubiquitous as Skittles in trick-or-treat bags. Some companies have thousands of devices in their inventories and depend on them to provide accurate information. This is why timely calibration of all measurement devices is critical to…
For manufacturers in diverse sectors such as automotive, aerospace, electronics, and medical device, there’s little question that ensuring great quality would be impossible without the proper testing of materials. And proper material testing applications begin with reliable and repeatable…
Choosing the correct linear regression model can be difficult. Trying to model it with only a sample doesn’t make it any easier. Let’s review some common statistical methods for selecting models, complications you may face, and look at some practical advice for choosing the best regression model.…
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
Back in the 1990s, when U.S. banks started installing automated teller machines in a big way, the human tellers who worked in those banks seemed to be facing rapid obsolescence. If machines could hand out cash and accept deposits on their…
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
Back in the 1990s, when U.S. banks started installing automated teller machines in a big way, the human tellers who worked in those banks seemed to be facing rapid obsolescence. If machines could hand out cash and accept deposits on their…
(CompliancePoint: Duluth, GA) -- It should come as no surprise to anyone that the California State Legislature has passed, and the California governor has signed, amendments to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Having previously been a ballot initiative, one of the main drivers to get the…
In this episode we look at a history of quality, how you serve your customer in the housing industry, and what makes a good review.
“Young couples ‘trapped in car dependency’”
Building entry-level housing along highways may give couples the chance to buy a home, but at what cost to them and the…
During the late 1990s, I was working in the Silicon Valley for a medical device company, responsible for a drug-infusion pump manufacturing operation. I had just completed a crazy period where I had also “temporarily” (months and months...) led the advanced engineering department after that manager…
All organizations are looking to increase the competency of their employees and, hopefully, of themselves. Looking at this from the base level up, in a practical sense our competency evolves with experience, expertise, and possibly, time.
1. Unknowing
We begin by not knowing about a skill, issue,…
Data science is hot right now. The number of undergraduate degrees in statistics has tripled in the past decade, and as a statistics professor, I can tell you that it isn’t because freshmen love statistics.
Way back in 2009, economist Hal Varian of Google dubbed statistician the “next sexy job.”…
Whether you are booking a hotel room, choosing a restaurant, deciding on what movie to see, or buying any number of things, it is likely you have read online reviews before making your decision.
What makes a consumer review persuasive, though? No matter how short, it tells a story in much the same…
In his book, The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results (Bard Press, 2013), author Gary Keller reminds us that everyone has 24 hours in a day. So, why do some people earn more, achieve more, and get more done? They “go small.”
“When you want the absolute best chance…
I am writing today about “bootstrap kaizen.” This is something I have been thinking about for a while. Wikipedia describes bootstrapping as “a self-starting process that is supposed to proceed without external input.” The term was developed from a 19th-century figure of speech—“pull oneself over a…
If you are a CEO of a manufacturing company with many value streams, it’s impractical to think that you have the time to review all the performance measures of every value stream in your company. Yet you need to know the operational impact of lean on your entire organization.
The traditional…
(MIT News: Cambridge, MA) -- A material designed by MIT chemical engineers can react with carbon dioxide from the air, to grow, strengthen, and even repair itself. The polymer, which might someday be used as construction or repair material or for protective coatings, continuously converts the…
(RealWear: Vancouver, WA) -- Colgate-Palmolive Co. has selected RealWear as its strategic provider of hands-free wearable computers for its industrial workforce. RealWear’s smart, voice-operated HMT-1 will be worn by hundreds of its mechanics and engineers across 20 of Colgate-Palmolive’s largest…
Leaders lead. Those two simple words conceal the complicated fact that being a change agent means confronting the failures of the past and confidently facing the promise of the future. Stories addressing these facts, along with hot takes on current news and a preview of an exciting upcoming webinar…
It takes guts to come to the heart of high tech, in San Francisco, and preach a message that is about putting people—women, no less—onto the assembly lines of America’s factories. Danielle Applestone, of Daughters of Rosie, tells the hipsters gathered at Autodesk’s Design Night that, yes, there are…
Metrics are an important part of an effective quality management system (QMS). They are necessary to understand, validate, and course-correct the QMS. They should be used to verify that it is achieving the goals and objectives defined by management. In an ISO 9001 system, metrics must be available…
Traditionally, managers have relied on the annual performance review to provide employees with feedback. However, surveys indicate employees don’t find the process valuable. Simply meeting once a year to discuss their progress doesn’t give employees a thorough sense of their own performance. It…
It finally came to me last week. For more than a decade I’ve been working with corporations, trying to help them accelerate their ability to generate new, interesting ideas to market as viable products and services. In some instances we’ve been successful, and in other instances there were…
Every company I speak at, every leader I coach, I see a constant pattern: Virtually everyone sees struggle as something negative.
At the heart of this perception, people get too caught up in the idea of struggle to consider what struggle at its core is all about. Most people cannot see themselves…
It is all too common in the industry: A part design is created and sent out for production only to hit repeated snags as questions arise about datums, locators, symbols, and values. Even simple misunderstandings, such as where the geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) lines terminate,…
In this episode we look at data, data, more data, and then... engineering the perfect human?
“Your Data Are Your Most Valuable Assets”
Just what the heck is Quality 4.0? Remember this acronym: CIA. No, not that CIA. Nicole Radziwill explains.
“Applying Smart Manufacturing Technology to Conduct…
This is the second half of our two-part interview with Doug Fair, who is the chief operating officer of InfinityQS. In part 1, we chatted with Fair about data gluttony, the process for uncovering actionable information, and the power of sampling. The conversation continues here as we dive into a…
