All Features
John R. Treace
As a senior sales officer charged with effecting business turnarounds for bankrupt private and pre-IPO companies, I witnessed firsthand the importance of core values. A strong set of core values is crucial to driving corporate performance, and without them, companies suffer.…
Georgia Institute of Technology
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a prototype wireless sensor capable of detecting trace amounts of a key ingredient found in many explosives.
The device, which employs carbon nanotubes and is printed on paper or paper-like material using standard inkjet…
Wiley
(Wiley: Hoboken, NJ) -- If a manager wants her staff to perform at its best, then she needs to become the best manager she can be: someone who can ignite employees’ passion for their jobs, enabling them to execute their duties at a high level whether the manager is there or not. Offering a…
Today, solid rockets dominate most military applications because they take up relatively little space, can be launched on a moment’s notice, and offer a high thrust-to-weight ratio. Meanwhile, liquid bipropellant rockets enjoy the lion’s share of orbital launch vehicle and spacecraft propulsion…
ISO
A selection of center-page spreads from ISO Focus+, the magazine of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), filled with colorful graphic art conveying the benefits of international standards, provides the theme for the ISO 2012 calendar. Topics covered include motor vehicle…
The objective of our improvement project was to contribute to more fuel-efficient air transportation. As explained in this article, transportation by air comes with strong regulatory constraints, and there’s a need for careful stakeholder management. We nearly abandoned the project when the efforts…
Paul Naysmith
Oh no, it’s happened again! Why do I do this to myself time and again? Do I need to seek help, professional assistance of a psychological nature? I must stop doing this; it’s is as if I don’t have control over myself. It’s a habit. No, it’s not that; it’s something different. It’s worse, a…
NIST
A team of university researchers, aided by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), have succeeded in integrating a new, highly efficient piezoelectric material into a silicon microelectromechanical system (MEMS). This development could lead to significant…
Bruce McDuffee
Ask any metrologist, and you’ll likely get quite a diatribe about the challenge of making a good measurement of humidity. There are, however, some specific steps or best practices you can follow that will help improve your measurement of humidity through better accuracy, better repeatability,…
Bill Kalmar
The 2011 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winners were announced last week, and for the first time, three recipients are in the health care category.
The recipients of the 2011 Baldrige Award are:
• Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis (nonprofit)
• Henry Ford Health System, Detroit (…
Knowledge at Wharton
In a world of endless information sharing, consumers have become the product. Platforms such as Google, Facebook, Foursquare, and Twitter are the new factory floor, and online users who leave digital crumbs as they browse the web and tap into social networks generate data that can be bought and…
FARO
In production plants across the globe, lean manufacturing techniques are being used to meet increasing demands placed on manufacturers. Originally developed as a methodology to make production processes highly efficient, lean techniques have been adopted by more than 72 percent of machine shops…
NIST
Led by a group at the University of Maryland (UMd), a multi-institution team of researchers has combined modern materials research and an age-old metallurgy technique to produce an alloy that could be the basis for a new class of sensors and micromechanical devices controlled by magnetism.…
Michelle LaBrosse
This time of year, many of us are thinking about decorating for the holidays. Decorations lift our spirits and put us in the holiday mood. This holiday season, don't forget to decorate your name as well, with a professional certification. By adding a dash of "PMP" or a sprinkle of "CAPM" to the…
The teaching of lean concepts is typically tuned to continuous processes: Day in, day out, value flows continuously from suppliers until the final product reaches the customer. The concepts of lead time (the time it takes individual “flow-units” to travel through a process), Takt time (the…
Daniel Brown
It’s no secret that manufacturing processes have become more complex. Manufacturers have tried hard to infuse innovation into their products, usually as new features, technologies, or attributes. However, coming up with innovative product features is not enough to create a competitive…
Bill Kalmar
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Unlike other holidays, there is no pretentiousness. You can arrive at the host’s home dressed in everyday attire, unencumbered by a load of presents. That’s not to say guests can’t bring a tasty food dish or a bottle of wine for the host, or don your…
Mark R. Hamel
During the first winter storm this year in the Northeast, I found myself, along with hundreds of thousands of folks in the area, without power for the better part of a week. It was a long wait before the lights came on… and the heat.
Heck, they had to send the National Guard to my town, and…
Bruce Hamilton
A short time after I moved into operations as the vice president of manufacturing, our assembly department made an early and, dare I say, imperfect attempt to realign the factory floor for ease-of-material delivery and pick up. I would not describe this as improved flow because we were still…
ISO
In the wake of recent failures in corporate governance, two new standards from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) will help organizations to disclose corporate information quickly and effectively. Increased pressure by industry regulators obliges companies to provide such…
William A. Levinson
The elimination of waste (muda) from all manufacturing and logistics activities is an obvious concept. Less obvious is the fact that waste often hides in plain view. “Unfortunately, real waste lurks in forms that do not look like waste,” says Shigeo Shingo in Modern Approaches to Manufacturing…
Sandia National Laboratories
The human eye is as comfortable with white light generated by diode lasers as with that produced by increasingly popular light-emitting diodes (LEDs), according to tests conceived at Sandia National Laboratories.
Both technologies pass electrical current through material to generate light, but…
Mona Pearl
One of the main challenges of the U.S. economy is mind-set. As trade borders become seamless and the world becomes more dependent on technology, U.S. companies and their executives must scramble to acquire the tools and skills necessary to survive and thrive in the increasingly competitive…
Paul Naysmith
My cell phone was vibrating like a dryer set at hyper-speed, and my wife’s name popped up on the screen. My first thought was that something had gone wrong. I did tell her to call only if there were problems with the movers. I was on the other side of town, a prisoner at the Department of Motor…
MIT News
Continual product and process innovation are crucial for commercially successful products to maintain their industry dominance, according to MIT Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) industry co-director Vah Erdekian.
At the MIT Laboratory for Manufacturing and Productivity annual summit held Oct…
