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(Makino: Tokyo) -- Makino has announced its current roster of free online seminars for 2012. The seminars offer insight into a variety of new milling, electrical discharge machining (EDM), and control technologies for improving part cycle times, quality, and accuracy.
“The North American…
(ANSI: Washington, D.C.) -- The American National Standards Institute (ANSI), coordinator of the U.S. voluntary standardization system, and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) invite certificate-awarding entities that develop and administer energy efficiency and renewable energy programs…
(PCS Press: Vancouver, WA) -- It is amazing how time flies. It was December 1980 when I first started to write about the Toyota Production System in my newsletter, Productivity. In February 1981, I conducted my first two-week study mission to Japan, taking 19 top U.S. executives from ALCOA,…
(FDAnews: Falls Church, VA) -- Is failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) the cornerstone of your risk management program? Consider this quote from the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) quality systems regulation expert Kim Trautman: “Are FMEA or FMECA… good tools? Yes. They are very good tools…
(Wiley: Hoboken, NJ) -- Clear yet comprehensive, Managing Performance in Turbulent Times: Analytics and Insight, by Ed Barrows and Andy Neely (Wiley, 2012), eliminates complex jargon and reveals what it takes to be an effective, modern-day manager. Offering expert know-how, this timely book equips…
It’s actually bigger than a battle over a popular condiment, according to some folks who oppose what they say is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) overplaying its regulatory hand.
We’re not going to settle this controversy here, but some experts suggest you may be able to sprinkle a little…
France—the land of haute cuisine, fine wine and cheese—would be the last place you would expect to find a thriving fast-food market. In a country known for its strong national identity and anti-globalization movement, it seems improbable that McDonald’s could have survived the onslaught of French…
(PRI: Warrendale, PA) -- To better understand the “value” of Nadcap accredited certification, the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) surveyed businesses in 40 different economies to clarify the drivers for seeking certification, the factors involved in choosing a certification body, and the…
One of the more fascinating applications for large-volume 3-D scanning is in preserving our past. Sure, for those of you who work in the manufacturing or building industry, 3-D scanning is all about the future, making sure your product is in spec and performs properly going forward. But for those…
An advance in sensor design by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Waterloo’s Institute of Quantum Computing (IQC) could unshackle a powerful, yet high-maintenance technique for exploring materials. The achievement could expand the…
(Smarter Solutions: Austin, TX) -- Join Smarter Solutions—a provider of Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) training and coaching for measurement, strategic planning, and improvement systems—in a demonstration of its new IEE-compatible performance-scorecard software, the Enterprise Performance…
(Deb Tech International: Short Hills, NJ) -- DebTech International is accepting presentation proposals for the annual Data Governance and Information Quality Conference (DGIQ) scheduled for June 25–28, 2012, at the Catamaran Resort Hotel and Spa in San Diego. This event, produced by DebTech…
(Zontec: Cincinnati) -- Zontec Inc., a global developer of statistical process control (SPC) software solutions, has updated its Synergy 2000 for its customers worldwide.
“These new capabilities are focused around enhancing the users’ access to information to run their business more efficiently…
(To-Increase: Norwell, MA) -- To-Increase, a developer of business software designed to work seemlessly with Microsoft Dynamics solutions for industrial equipment manufacturers (IEM), presents comparison results of quick response manufacturing (QRM) vs. lean manufacturing for custom product…
(FSM: South Elgin, IL) -- Field System Machining (FSM) has added on-site, 3-D laser portable imaging metrology to its arsenal of on-site industrial machining and machinery repair services. FSM has provided customers with optical and laser metrology solutions for decades, including optical metrology…
Quality by design (QbD) is a widely discussed approach that is often neither well understood nor effectively executed. Joseph Juran also called QbD “quality planning.” QbD is not primarily focused on typical quality issues such as corrective action, testing, measurement, or monitoring. QbD is a…
(Productivity Press: Boca Raton, FL) -- There are many books that seek to explain lean and agile software development that offer theory, techniques, and examples. Michael K. Levine’s first book, A Tale of Two Systems (Productivity Press, 2009), is one of the best, synthesizing lean manufacturing…
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n my February 1996 Quality Digest column I discussed an article out of USA Today. Since that article provides a great example of how we need to filter out the noise whenever we attempt to interpret data, I have updated it for my column today. “Teen Use Turns Upward” read the headline for a graph…
Sunk in 1606, the Portuguese merchant ship Nossa Senhora dos Martires is sailing again—in 3-D presently but perhaps one day in reality. If the cyber-replicated vessel ever does hit the high seas, the way will have been paved by the research of a persevering Texas A&M University nautical…
The information age is also the age of information overload. Companies, governments, researchers, and private citizens are accumulating digital data at an unprecedented rate, and amid all those quintillions of bytes could be the answers to questions of vital human interest: What environmental…
(Micro-Epsilon: Raleigh, NC) -- The thermoIMAGER TIM 200 is latest model in infrared (IR) thermography. The camera operates using new bispectral technology, combining two images into one. In this version, both a visual camera and an infrared camera are fitted to the thermoIMAGER housing. The visual…
(Konica Minolta Sensing: Ramsey, NJ) -- Konica Minolta Sensing Americas Inc. (KMSA), a global leader in 3-D scanning hardware and services, has announced the start of the 2012 3D Scanning Workshop series in Pomona and Anaheim, California.
The workshops cover 3-D scanning, reverse engineering, and…
(AMT: McLean, VA.) -- The resurgence of manufacturing following the crash of 2008 is unprecedented. The most current U.S. manufacturing technology orders put the year-to-date total at $4.5 billion, which is up 80.5 percent compared with 2010 and are the second-highest dollar amount in the last 15…
(Productivity Press: Boca Raton, FL) -- After nearly a year of debate, in March 2010, Congress passed and the president signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to reform the U.S. health care system. The most significant social legislation since the civil rights legislation and the…
(KnowWare: Denver, CO) -- Microsoft removed the Data Analysis Toolpak from Excel 2011 for the Macintosh in 2008, eliminating statistical tools such as ANOVA, t test, F Test, and regression analysis. Hypothesis testing using these tools is a key element in advanced problem solving, so the loss of…
