All Features
Akhilesh Gulati
In part one of this article, I described a rapid strategic planning session for fire-service response time, and included a comment from one of the planners that he’d like to “see a fire station on every corner.” This was a terrific starting point because of the visual it presented.
Discussion…
Mario Gislao
Almost all of us have experienced the frustration of searching for a document we created in the past. Whether it is a spreadsheet of last quarter’s sales figures, a mission-critical report on 2007’s quality control improvements, or a list of contact names, we are so consumed with creating our…
Georgia Institute of Technology
It’s a pattern that no doubt repeats itself daily in hundreds of millions of offices around the world: People sit down, turn on their computers, set their mobile phones on their desks, and begin to work. What if a hacker could use that phone to track what the person was typing on the keyboard…
Dan Adams
Making a lasting change is usually easier said than done. Most of us spend more time talking about that next exercise program we plan to start than we do actually going through with it. Businesses have just as much difficulty as individuals in going through with change. Too often, companies are…
Argonne National Laboratory
When a nasty strain of E. coli flooded hospitals in Germany this summer, it struck its victims with life-threatening complications far more often than most strains—and the search for an explanation began.
During a feverish weekend after the rogue bacterium’s genome was sequenced, scientists…
The QA Pharm
Most good manufacturing practices (GMP) training that I encounter is not necessarily bad, just irrelevant. In fact, the same could be said for most training departments. They jealously guard their turf and deliver mediocre, perfunctory training. Names get checked off the list, and the training…
MIT News
The ability to see through walls is no longer the stuff of science fiction, thanks to new radar technology developed at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory.
Much as humans and other animals see via waves of visible light that bounce off objects and then strike our eyes’ retinas, radar “sees” by sending…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
Maybe the best book to come across my desk this year is Melissa Pregill’s Become One (Rojo Press, 2010). It’s all about becoming a consultant, or “independent,” as she likes to say. It’s a slim little volume, just right to leaf through during a break, so I did. Maybe that was a mistake, since I…
Laurel Thoennes @ QD
In 2003, Subir Chowdhury realized his company needed to change and tailor its tools and services to fit each of its client’s circumstances. His colleagues and employees developed the management approach called LEO—for listen, enrich, and optimize—which has been transforming people and…
APQC
It happens all the time: lost opportunities, missed handoffs, rework, delayed product launches, and frustrated employees and customers. The likely culprit: poorly managed processes. Even mature organizations struggle with inconsistent or incorrectly applied process management techniques. Only…
Flexibility is just one of the many benefits of acquiring ultrasound data directly into a PC and then performing application-specific processing in software. However, the large number of channels in ultrasound array imaging systems introduces data throughput and front-end connectivity…
Imagine a world where shoe sizes were not standardized, or where golf balls came in a variety of sizes and weights. What if your favorite CDs didn’t fit in your friend’s CD player? None of these things are problems today, thanks to an army of unsung heroes known as standards.
Standards—agreed…
Jay Arthur—The KnowWare Man
For the last decade, people have come by my booth at the American Society for Quality (ASQ) World Conference on Quality and Improvement and asked: “Isn’t there a better way to implement Six Sigma that doesn’t cost so much or take so long?” Of course there is, but conventional wisdom inhibits…
Ryan E. Day
It’s funny how the simple act of opening your e-mail can have a profound effect on your view of the world’s economic landscape.
Recently, I received a press release from South Korean tire manufacturer Hankook Tire Co. Ltd., which touted a deal with Volkswagen to outfit several of its vehicles…
NIST
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) colleagues of Dan Shechtman, Ph.D., joined others in the scientific community in congratulating him on winning the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Shechtman made his astonishing discovery of a quasicrystal—an arrangement of atoms thought to…
Bill Kalmar
Back during the early 1960’s, a television program called That Was the Week That Was, hosted by David Frost, took over the airwaves with millions of ardent followers tuning in each week. The satirical comedy program took a look at the events of the previous week and poked fun where appropriate,…
Bill Kalmar
October is always an interesting time of year. In preparation for the beginning of holiday activities, stores begin erecting displays for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas weeks in advance. And let’s not forget “Sweetest Day,” which is celebrated on October 15, mainly in the…
Michelle LaBrosse
It’s a basic concept, but it’s something that many of us have forgotten how to achieve in our ever-busier lives. It’s a frame of mind that can be all-too-quickly brushed aside in the name of efficiency, career advancement, or other obligations. What is this elusive concept that I am referring to…
Cody Steele
Using candy is a great way to build your confidence with statistics,
and there's usually no problem about wasted resources afterward,
either. Good quality analysis requires collecting useful data, and that
skill takes practice. With the help of gummi bears, we'll try out a
cause-and-effect…
Quality Digest
On Oct. 7, 2011, Dr. H. James Harrington appeared on our live streaming video program Quality Digest Live, where we talked about China and quality. Harrington has 30 years of experience in working with the Chinese on quality issues. Below are some further insights on what is going on in China. Some…
Jim Benson
Parkinson’s Law is: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” People misconstrue it all the time.
Logic plays funny tricks on our brains sometimes. People look at Parkinson’s Law and think that it’s telling us that work will expand (or contract) to fill the time to the…
Bob Beatty
W
hether you are an employee, consultant, or business owner, we’re all looking for ways to excel. One way to do that is to look outside our immediate circle and adopt what others are doing well. Although it may not be obvious, the nonprofit industry may be a great place to start…
American National Standards Institute (ANSI) president and CEO, S. Joe Bhatia, has advice for U.S. companies on a topic we don’t often see in the news. Streamlining standards and conformance procedures is becoming increasingly essential in an increasingly complex global economy, and is extremely…
Joseph A. DeFeo
Is there a difference from a quality perspective between food production and goods manufacturing? You bet there is.
Food production processes materials by converting raw goods such as wheat into other products, including flour, bread, and cookies. Goods manufacturing assembles materials into…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
“L et me drive the boat.” It was the one statement from the creative director I’d come to dread. It usually came within moments of his reading over my shoulder as I wrote advertising copy on my computer.
It meant, “Get out of your seat. I’m going to start changing your work.”
The changes were…
