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Every employer wants employees who feel like they belong at their organization, because those employees are able to give their best every day. They feel empowered to go all out, take risks, and be their best selves. That kind of deep belonging comes about when an organization fosters a culture that…
(Beamex: Atlanta) -- Beamex has opened attendee registration for its Annual Calibration Exchange (ACE 2018), which will be held Sept. 19–20, 2018, at California Polytechnic University in Pomona, California.
The event will explore the latest insights, trends, and best practices for process plant…
So, the Quality Digest team is considering a transition to working remotely for the most part. I and two other associates already do. In part one of this series, I outlined my ad-hoc attempt at creating a computer work space at home. The result was not very pretty.
As I said in part one, my home…
The rise of neuromarketing has already begun to provide companies and researchers with greater insight into consumer behavior than consumers themselves are capable of giving. Neuromarketing tools such as facial-affective recognition, eye tracking, and fMRI technology can illuminate the…
The world is an uncertain and risky place. The news constantly bombards us with scary situations from school shootings to gruesome murders.
Risk is everywhere and associated with everything. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention a decade ago estimated 234,000 people a year…
Roughly 7 in 10 manufacturers have implemented lean manufacturing principles in their organizations, with 5S, Six Sigma, and kaizen representing the most popular strategies today.
One tool that supports these specific approaches and lean manufacturing principles more generally is a layered process…
The number of publicly listed U.S. companies traded on U.S. exchanges has been cut almost in half during the past 20 years—from about 7,300 to 3,700—which goes to show that mergers and acquisitions are still a primary growth strategy.
In fact, 2018 looks to be another banner year for mergers and…
The climb in the United States stock market during the last year has been greeted warmly by many, investors especially. This does not, however, take away the day-to-day challenges most businesses face. Think stiff competition, shrinking demand, and squeezed profits. The newspaper and magazine…
The climb in the United States stock market during the last year has been greeted warmly by many, investors especially. This does not, however, take away the day-to-day challenges most businesses face. Think stiff competition, shrinking demand, and squeezed profits. The newspaper and magazine…
(Starrett: Athol, MA) -- The L.S. Starrett Co. has introduced a series of motorized digital test frames for performing a wide range of basic, high-volume, in-situ manufacturing, force-testing applications including tension, compression, flexural cyclic, shear, and friction. The Starrett FMM digital…
(Productivity Press: Boca Raton, FL) -- Productivity Press presents the latest book from international quality expert, H. James Harrington, titled Innovative Change Management (ICM): Preparing Your Organization for the New Innovative Culture, published in March 2018.
Features
• Significantly…
On the Apr. 20 episode of QDL, we brought you interviews on manufacturing’s digital transformation and the primacy of photogrammetry for large-volume, close-tolerance metrology, plus news about logistical efficiencies and worker motivations (or lack thereof). Here’s a closer look at the show:
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Customer satisfaction surveys are all the rage these days. Healthcare has a couple of “800 pound gorilla” surveyors whose services (and nontrivial expense) have been pretty much forced upon it. In many cases, targets are set that are used to drive reimbursement.
A client once shared a 186-page…
I had another column in the hopper, but when this article came across my desk, followed by a phone conversation with Bob Chapman, I knew I needed to write something different, something that is top of mind for me now—and often—as I work with my clients. The article? “Beyond Nice,” which you can…
Carrying your smartphone around everywhere has become a way of life. In doing so, you produce a surprising amount of data about your role in the economy—where you shop, work, travel, and generally hang out.
Thasos Group, founded at MIT in 2011, has developed a platform that leverages those data,…
The great surprise for people with good ideas is the gap between how an idea feels in their minds and how it feels when they try to put the idea to work.
When a good idea comes together, it feels fantastic. Good ideas often come with a wave of euphoria, a literal dopamine high, and we’re joyously…
Policies and procedures tell your employees, partners, vendors, and customers how your system operates. With changing regulations and expectations, a static library is not enough. Policies are dynamic and require a system to manage their creation, documentation, distribution, and management. Here’s…
I have been thinking a lot about why innovation fails. Not about why supposedly innovative new products fail, because there are multiple reasons for that. A product could be too early or too late in the market window, or it could simply have the wrong pricing or distribution. A new product may lack…
By 2025, nearly 25 percent of the U.S. population is expected to be 60 years of age or older. With this demographic preparing to exit the workforce and enter retirement, what can be done to retain their knowledge and pass it down to the next generation of employees? After all, a good portion of the…
Grace Swanson, vice president of human capital at Accumold, a leading micro-molding plastics injection company located just outside Des Moines, Iowa, knows the field of standards well. Her company has certifications in ISO 9001 for quality management, ISO 14001 for environmental management, and ISO…
In our April 13, 2018, episode of QDL, we talked about anti-hacker robots, data privacy, and new product introduction.
“HoneyBot Lures in Digital Troublemakers”
MIT nerds come up with a tasty target for IoT hackers. But this one fights back.
“We Don’t Care About Data Privacy”
Privacy, schmivacy.…
Too much of a good thing brings out its downside. Ever had too much team time? It makes you long for a solo vacation on a desert island.
One of the best portrayals of “too much of a good thing” was in Black Mirror’s Nose Dive (Season 3). In what initially looks like a utopian culture where everyone…
Limiting first-year medical residents to 16-hour work shifts, compared to “flexing” them to allow for some longer shifts, generally makes residents more satisfied with their training and work-life balance. It also makes their training directors more dissatisfied with curtailed educational…
You can’t see well without lenses that can focus, whether those lenses are in your eye or the microscope you peer through. An innovative way to focus beams of neutrons might allow scientists to probe the interiors of opaque objects at a size range they were blind to previously, allowing them to…
Invented in 1987 and commercially available since 1991, laser trackers have long been a mainstay of the aerospace industry. Automotive manufacturers have also adopted laser trackers for quality control (QC) and design. The fact is, any industry dealing with large-scale measurements—from small…