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Are prices in China really as low as they seem? This is not an easy question to answer. Prices for goods imported from China used to be very competitive but are beginning to look less attractive. Sourcing in China has become more difficult as negotiating with a Chinese supplier for a much lower…
Skeleton racing, a high-speed winter sliding sport, was born in Switzerland. The speeds achieved by racers hurtling down the track at more than 90 miles per hour would qualify them for a heavy fine for speeding on Switzerland’s motorways. “And not just that,” states Kristan Bromley, CEO of Bromley…
I typically attend a few lean Six Sigma conferences each year, and at each there’s at least one session about compensating belts. There are any number of ideas for how to do so, but they commonly include systems that provide a percentage of savings as a portion of pay, or provide a bonus for…
(NextSense: Austria) -- The new sensor of the CALIPRI gap measurement device is cable-free and ergonomically optimized. The testing device for the automotive industry developed by the Austrian company NextSense is famous throughout the world for testing gaps and hem edges without using any…
Customer satisfaction with retail is down for the first time in four years, according to a report released by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). All brick-and-mortar retail categories show weakening or flat customer satisfaction for the final quarter of 2014. Only Internet retail is…
(Ocean Optics: Dunedin, FL) -- Ocean Optics has launched a spectrometer line that combines decades of miniature spectrometer design expertise with industry-leading manufacturing techniques. The Flame spectrometer delivers high thermal stability and low unit to unit variation without compromising…
Have you ever wondered why customers say they buy your products based on price—and then in the end, they also stop buying because of price?
What’s that phenomenon all about?
In a nutshell, the answer lies in the value received: • for the price paid • relative to the competition or to alternative…
(ASQ: Milwaukee, WI) -- While most teens admire engineers’ problem-solving skills and agree engineers are very smart, only 2 percent would invite an engineer to be their date at a wedding, further supporting engineers’ perceptions that society deems them as socially awkward, according to new…
Principle: “Embrace scientific thinking.”
On first glance this seems like a strange thing to say. How does one “embrace” scientific thinking? Furthermore, why would they? To answer these questions let’s first remind ourselves that innovation and improvement are the consequence of repeated cycles…
Ask employees what is most important to their company and its CEO and they’ll commonly claim it’s the functions that are reported directly to the CEO. However, from my interactions, it seems undeniable that the organization chart plays a significant role in revealing what is important to the…
No matter how good your written policies are, or how clean a facility you operate, or how successful you are in the marketplace, it can all fall apart without a strong handle on your organization’s training needs and ability to effectively manage a training program.
Ensuring that your staff is…
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- Several recent articles in national journals support the validity of the Baldrige approach across several sectors, including healthcare and manufacturing.
First, “Understanding High-Reliability Organizations: Are Baldrige Recipients Models?” which was published in The…
‘From laughing tots in Haitian preschools to inner-city gang members to top executives in global corporations, people everywhere are gathering in circles. These circles are generating trusting relationships among people with long histories of antagonism; promoting healing among people suffering…
A list of quality gurus can range from just a few individuals to 50 or more. Several people make it onto most lists: W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, Armand Feigenbaum, Phil Crosby, and Walter Shewhart, all from the United States; and Japanese quality practitioners Karou Ishikawa and Genichi…
(Michigan Metrology: Livonia, MI) -- Michigan Metrology, experts in solving problems related to surface roughness, wear, texture and finish, is making available three tools to aid the understanding of surface roughness measurement and the proper use of surface texture parameters.
Surface finish/…
During the last five years or so I’ve been asked many, many times for my opinion about corporate innovation. Why is there so much demand for corporate innovation, yet so little practical result?
One could stipulate a number of reasons, including: • Lack of time or bandwidth • Focus on efficiency…
My phone wasn’t working, so I got in touch with my phone-line provider. Two technicians came to my house expecting to fix my line, but they worked for more than an hour until they admitted they had no idea how to correct the problem. These technicians were maybe 25 years old. I heard one of them…
Lately the momentum to outdistance a nagging sense of being left behind has accelerated for businesses. So many predictions about the digital workplace come tinged with a sense of urgency that it’s hard not to feel chivvied by time and circumstance. No matter that the future of doing business is…
In the years since ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 were first published, many organizations have followed the models of these standards in designing their own management systems. However, many of those systems haven’t been utilized to effectively manage risk. Many have been minimally developed to meet…
In the years since ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 were first published, many organizations have followed the models of these standards in designing their own management systems. However, many of those systems haven’t been utilized to effectively manage risk. Many have been minimally developed to meet…
(greenlight.guru: Indianapolis, IN) -- greenlight.guru recently announced the public release of its cloud-based quality management software exclusively for the medical device community. greenlight.guru allows medical device manufactures to bring new products to market faster while reducing risk by…
There are several methods for inspecting laser-drilled and electrical discharge machined cooling holes on aircraft engine turbine blades, vanes, nozzles, heat shields, and other similar parts. These holes are essential features of the cooling systems that protect critical components against the…
The game of billiards offers a useful analogy to explain risk-based thinking and “risk to quality” (i.e., the risk to achieving quality objectives). Like any game, billiards involves navigating risk. Survival in an open global marketplace, like billiards, is also a game of risk.
The association…
(VSL: Noordwijk, Netherlands) -- VSL has announced the keynote speaker for this year’s European Flow Measurement Workshop (EFMW), scheduled for March 17–19, 2015, in Noordwijk, Netherlands. Reinier den Hertog, principal technical expert for metering, hydrocarbon allocation, and deferment…
In their 2009 study, “Managing Cross-Cultural Differences,” Frank Anbari and his collaborators looked at different project management (PM) practices across the globe and noted that project managers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia ranked as the most “individualistic” in…