All Features
Oliver Trabert
Manufacturing in the U.S. is seeing its fastest growth in more than four years, driven in large part by rising demand for AI infrastructure. That expansion is arriving alongside severe supply shortages and higher input costs.
Manufacturers look to AI to increase capacity and operate more…
Kendall Kunz
On March 3, 2026, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning letter to Tentamus India Private Limited. The inspection it describes started the way most do, with one difference. At the initiation of the inspection, the agency’s investigator observed the firm attempting to remove…
Candace Orbaugh
At first glance, the next version of RC14001, the management standard for the chemical industry, looks like a simplification. In practice, it gives organizations more flexibility but also more responsibility. The revised standard no longer hands organizations a predefined list of stakeholder groups…
Stephanie Ojeda
A quality team’s supplier toolbox is deep. Supplier questionnaires, PPAP, supplier scorecards, incoming inspection, audits, corrective action—the list goes on.
In my years of experience as a quality leader, the challenge I see is matching each one to the right stage in the supplier process and the…
Sachin Bhandari
On April 2, 2026, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning letter to Purolea Cosmetics Lab, reference 722591-04022026. By now, most of you have heard the story. The company had used AI agents to write drug product specifications, procedures, and master production records. No qualified…
Neeta Verma
Extreme heat, drought, wildfires, floods, record-low rivers, and rising energy demand have defined much of the summer of 2026. But for businesses, the important story isn’t simply that weather records are being broken. It’s where those physical changes enter the operating system of a company.
A…
Neeta Verma
The European Commission’s latest Joint Actions on Compliance of Products (JACOP) project offers a useful starting point for understanding why products can still fail environmental compliance checks even when manufacturers have established compliance programs.
Published in June 2026, the JACOP…
Etienne Nichols
Ask a premarket team where corrective and preventive action (CAPA) sits on the priority list, and it usually lands below design controls, risk management, and the submission itself. The reasoning is easy to follow. Nothing has shipped, so there are no complaints to investigate, no returned product…
Grant Ramaley
Medical device companies selling into multiple countries don’t answer to one global regulator. They navigate a patchwork of national requirements that two organizations are trying to align in very different ways.
The International Medical Device Regulators Forum (IMDRF) and the Global…
Cornelia C. Walther
A CEO doesn’t need to read every AI law to understand why regulation matters. It shows up in subtler ways: a sales team using a chatbot with client data, a hiring manager testing an AI screening tool, a board member asking whether the company has an AI policy. AI governance has moved from the…
Neeta Verma
Product compliance is moving beyond certificates and restricted-substance checks. PFAS restrictions, digital product passports, artificial intelligence, supply-chain transparency, and sustainability increasingly require manufacturers to connect regulatory knowledge with reliable product, material,…
Pascal Terrien
In the electrotechnology sector, we know one thing for certain: Trust can’t be imposed; it must be built. Standardization enables us to build it every day. As the world grapples with climate, digital, and societal challenges, manufacturers, electricity producers, grid operators, conformity…
Stephanie Ojeda
The recent multistate outbreak of cyclosporiasis is a powerful reminder that food quality involves more than appearance, consistency, and shelf life. It requires an integrated approach to food safety, supplier control, traceability, risk management, and continuous improvement.
By mid-July 2026,…
Steve Romig
Quality teams throughout the food manufacturing industry face increasingly difficult obstacles and risks while keeping our food safe. A team can discover a positive Listeria result on a slicer component inside a ready-to-eat production zone after earlier environmental monitoring signals in the area…
Florian Harzenetter
In industrial manufacturing, quality failures carry consequences far beyond the factory floor. A single defect can trigger warranty claims, production downtime for customers, costly recalls, and long-term damage to brand reputation. Yet despite significant investments in quality programs, many…
Yuan Wang
Most manufacturing engineers have experienced some version of the same problem: A production process successfully completes validation. The production part approval process (PPAP) is approved. Yield is stable, customer requirements are being met, and everyone assumes the process is under control.…
Rob Moorey
The healthcare technology management (HTM) industry is facing a looming labor shortage and must attract enough skilled professionals to meet future demand. The industry is grappling with an aging workforce, a shrinking traditional talent pool, and increasingly complex medical equipment. Healthcare…
Vick Vaishnavi
The complexity of today’s manufacturing operations and ever-evolving digital disruptions, including the biggest of all, artificial intelligence (AI), require standards that set the pace and keep organizations around the world aligned with what quality looks like.
ISO 9001 has been the…
Quality Digest
(Renishaw: West Dundee, IL) -- The global engineering technologies company Renishaw is introducing its multipurpose RMP400S at the IMTS 2026 and AMB 2026 exhibitions.
The RMP400S seamlessly combines touch-trigger, scanning, and surface-finish verification into a single machine tool probe. This…
Megan Wallin-Kerth
Every industry has blind spots. Sometimes the problem is not a lack of expertise, or even information, but of connection.
While in Austin, Texas, at a recent Octave Live OnTour event, sitting in a large room filled with people from different industries, different methods, different states,…
Megan Wallin-Kerth
Speaking with experts who love their jobs usually makes you aware of two things simultaneously: 1) how much you don’t know, and 2) how much you’d like to know. My conversations with Prashant Darisi and Vick Vaishnavi were no exception. I walked away with an appreciation for the decades of expertise…
Data Physics
Aerospace qualification standards continue to shift as component designs grow more intricate and real-world forces become better understood. Traditional single-axis testing methods don’t capture the complex, multidirectional stresses that modern spacecraft and aircraft encounter. Multi-axis testing…
Sai Ranjith
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration scrutiny of AI and machine learning in medical devices is intensifying. Yet most companies still apply failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) methods designed for deterministic hardware failures. AI failures are probabilistic, context-dependent, and often…
Chris Chuang
Manufacturers have spent millions investing in safer equipment, smarter automation, and increasingly sophisticated operational technology. Yet employee disengagement, one of the most significant risks to workplace safety and productivity, remains stubbornly difficult to address.
Gallup’s recent…
Mark Stabile, Ridhima Aggarwal
We often think of AI as a technological revolution that will transform industries, disrupt jobs, and change the nature of competitive advantage. But inside organizations, it’s unfolding in a much more complex, less predictable way. In many firms, AI is still more narrative than operational reality…