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(Leica Microsystems: Heerbrugg, Switzerland) -- Digital microscopes by Leica Microsystems are successfully established as analytical instruments in applications such as pharmaceutics, materials research, and electronics production. Industrial quality control, which makes immense demands of…
(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced that it is accepting proposals for funding for a broad range of potential research projects and related activities that support the institute’s measurement science and engineering programs. The…
(Booz & Co.: New York) -- For business next year, the only sure thing is uncertainty, according to Booz & Co. in a recent advisory to its clients. The consulting firm’s annual “Industry Perspectives” predicts that industries in 2012 will face challenges ranging from price wars to the…
It’s all too easy to make mistakes involving statistics. Statistical software can remove a lot of the difficulty surrounding statistical calculation, reducing the risk of mathematical errors, but correctly interpreting the results of an analysis can be even more challenging.
A few years ago,…
A frequent refrain of top managers is, “We need to do a better job of holding people accountable.” Accountability seems to be the mantra for organizational get-well programs these days. One can agree with this in part, and yet there is an aspect of accountability that feels like a cop out.
The…
(ANSI: Washington, D.C.) -- “In this global, knowledge-intensive and consumer-oriented economy, the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing has never been more important... A new era of manufacturing excellence offers hope for good jobs, new innovations, and a higher standard of living.”…
(McGraw-Hill: New York) -- McGraw-Hill has announced the release of two new books of particular interest to quality professionals. The first focuses on how lean and theory of constraints work together in the supply chain. The second describes which quality tool to use, and when.
Lean supply…
(FARO: Lake Mary, FL) -- FARO Technologies Inc., the world’s leading provider of portable measurement and imaging solutions, announces it will host its annual 3D Documentation Conference at the Gaylord Palms Resort in Orlando, Florida, on Feb. 21–22, 2012. It’s the first time the company will…
(Accenture: New York) -- Services are increasingly the differentiator that can make or break a company, according to a recent Accenture survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers.
According to the study, “It’s more than just your product—how service and support influence buying decisions.” The service…
(NCSL International: Boulder, CO) -- Technical Exchange, developed by NCSL International (NCSLI), a nonprofit organization for excellence in measurement science, is a new educational event designed to provide regional access to low-cost, high-quality metrology training solutions. At this two-…
(InnovMetric Software Inc.: Québec City, Québec, Canada) -- InnovMetric Software Inc., a software development company, announces that the latest intermediate release of the PolyWorks universal 3-D metrology platform—version 12.0.3—can display laser-scanned points being captured in real time on…
(MIT News: Cambridge, MA) -- Whatever your profession, systems thinking is critical for success in the global economy, according to speakers at the 2011 MIT SDM Conference on Systems Thinking for Contemporary Challenges.
The annual event, sponsored by MIT’s System Design and Management (SDM)…
On Nov. 18, 2011, President Obama signed into law the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2012 (P.L. 112-55), which provides fiscal year (FY) 2012 funding for a number of government agencies, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The act…
In production, “zero defects” is a frequent quality metric, but zero worker injuries, while a stated goal of most manufacturing plants and distribution centers, has not made it to the gold standard. There is no disputing that defective product costs companies millions of dollars in repairs,…
He is nameless in the movie Polar Express and the closing credits only give him the name, “Hero Boy.” The adventures depicted in the movie follow the plight of a young boy who doesn’t believe in Santa Claus. Hero Boy cannot hear the bells of Santa’s sleigh because he doesn’t believe.
For…
I recently attended the annual forum of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), which is probably the leading health improvement organization in the world. The forum has grown from under 100 attendees in 1989 to almost 6,000 this year—half of whom were there for the first time—with now…
(Thomson Reuters: New York) -- A new report has found that health care organizations that have won Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards for performance excellence or have been considered for a Baldrige Award site visit outperform other hospitals in nearly every metric used to determine the…
A nurse refuses to help an ailing alcoholic who is upset to find a hospital detox unit closed. A hospital clerk brushes off a deceased woman’s grieving family as they try to pay her bills and claim her belongings. A charge nurse keeps the mother of gunshot victim from seeing her son, saying the…
To improve quality, the most effective hospitals and leaders focus on processes and systems, instead of just lecturing and cajoling their employees and physicians to do better. W. Edwards Deming famously stated that the problem with posters and exhortations was that “they take no account of the…
Hospital-acquired infections, ventilator-acquired pneumonia, patient falls, and similar events are (hopefully) rare enough to promote discussion of control charts for rare events. A Google search will, for example, turn up the application of u charts to falls per 1,000 patient days (u being…
As a 2011 recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit has achieved recognition as a top-performing organization for excellence in innovation, efficiency, and quality improvement. The highest priority of our quality improvement work is to…
(Cornell University Press: Ithaca, N.Y) -- An estimated 9.3 million American adults lost health insurance coverage as a result of increased unemployment during the recession of 2007–2009, according to a newly published study by researchers at Cornell, Indiana, and Carnegie Mellon universities…
(Gartner: Stamford, CT) -- Gartner Inc. has released the findings from its third annual Healthcare Supply Chain Top 25. The research focuses on the health-care value chain’s pursuit of high-quality patient care at optimal economic cost. The Top 25 rankings for 2011 identifies organizations…
(ISPE: Tampa, FL) -- The International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE), a global nonprofit association of 22,000 pharmaceutical science and manufacturing professionals, has released a new guidance document on pharmaceutical commissioning and qualification titled, ISPE Good…
Story update 12/13/2011: Additional information was added to the first paragraph pointing out the connection between FDA requirements and statistical tools.
According to a September 2010 interview of Rick Friedman, director of the manufacturing and product quality division at the Food and Drug…
