All Features
DATRON Dynamics
Every CNC machine purchase begins with a need and the inspiration to grow. Recognizing the value in his ability to design and manufacture customer products in-house, Clint Caldwell of Solid Design Enterprises (SDE) wanted to put his extensive manufacturing background to work and move beyond his…
William A. Levinson
Starbucks’ implementation of artificial intelligence coffee makers1 offers a simple and ideal case study that can illustrate the synergy between efficiency, wages, profits, and inflation. Even if we don’t know the actual cost figures, we can use some hypothetical numbers to demonstrate how higher…
NIST
A vacuum chamber is never perfectly empty. A small number of atoms or molecules always remains, and measuring the tiny pressures they exert is critical. For instance, semiconductor manufacturers create microchips in vacuum chambers that must be almost entirely devoid of atomic and molecular…
Harish Jose
The success run theorem is one of the most common statistical rationales for sample sizes used for attribute data.
It goes in the form of:
Having zero failures out of 22 samples, we can be 90% confident that the process is at least 90% reliable (or at least 90% of the population is conforming).
Or…
engineering.com
In the era of the industrial internet of things (IIoT), assets of both information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) are becoming more sophisticated—and they both generate and use more data. As a result, it’s increasingly important for manufacturers to mesh the IT and OT sides of…
Jeffrey Lewis
I’ve observed that ISO management system audits have remained largely unchanged, even after the advent of ISO 19011:2018, the auditing standard that superseded ISO 19011:2011. Auditors are still using clause-based auditing, despite ISO 19011:2018’s direction to take a risk-based approach.…
Elisabeth Kelan
Ever since the Industrial Revolution, people have feared that technology would take away their jobs. While some jobs and tasks have indeed been replaced by machines, others have emerged. However, the success of ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence (AI) now has many people wondering…
Gleb Tsipursky
With 74% of U.S. companies transitioning to a permanent hybrid work model, leaders are turning their attention to measuring the success of that model. That’s because there’s a single traditional office-centric model of 9–5, Monday through Friday, in the office, but many ways to do hybrid work.…
Kurt Kleiner, Knowable Magazine
When a Manhattan parking garage collapsed in April 2023, rescuers were reluctant to stay in the damaged building, fearing further danger. So they used a combination of flying drones and a doglike walking robot to inspect the damage, look for survivors, and make sure the site was safe for human…
Polina Marinova Pompliano
Mental toughness is a quality that sets extraordinary individuals apart from the rest, enabling them to endure discomfort and uncertainty for extended periods. But what exactly is mental toughness? Can it be achieved without undergoing severe stress and trauma? Why do some people seem to possess it…
Audrey Kim
Before he became an expert on corporate leadership, Charles O’Reilly spent five years in the U.S. Army. There he witnessed the stark divide between good and bad leaders and realized how much influence they had on the people who worked for them.
Now a professor of organizational behavior at…
Emily Newton
Solving problems goes beyond noticing the symptoms and wanting to resolve them. It’s also necessary to perform a root cause analysis, pinpointing the factors likely to have made an issue occur. It’s only then that leaders can create concrete solutions for lasting changes. However, root cause…
Bruce Hamilton
Peter Drucker, celebrated by BusinessWeek magazine in 2005 as “the man who invented management,” is credited with a concept that has created confusion for me throughout my work life: the distinction between knowledge work and manual work.
In his 1959 book The Landmarks of Tomorrow (latest edition…
Adam Zewe
Engineers are constantly searching for materials with novel, desirable property combinations. For example, an ultrastrong, lightweight material could be used to make airplanes and cars more fuel-efficient, or a material that is porous and biomechanically friendly could be useful for bone implants…
Peter Fader
As an organizational leader, you’ll be very familiar with your company’s key financial statements and monthly management reports. But what do you really know about the people who pull out their wallets and pay for your products and services? In The Customer-Base Audit: The First Step on the Journey…
Adam Zewe
Imagine purchasing a robot to perform household tasks. This robot was built and trained in a factory on a certain set of tasks and has never seen the items in your home. When you ask it to pick up a mug from your kitchen table, it might not recognize your mug (perhaps because this mug is painted…
Katarina Cicak
I fled my home country of Bosnia during a civil war in 1992 when I was only a teenager. I eventually landed in California as an 18-year-old with one suitcase and settled in with a host family.
Every time I turned on the news, I saw horrifying pictures of what was going on back home. My home, my…
Lindsey Walker
In the quickly changing industrial landscape, firms continue to place a high premium on safety. Innovative approaches to improving industrial safety have been made possible by technological advancements. One particularly revolutionary option is computerized maintenance management system (CMMS)…
Jennifer Chu
For Mathias Kolle, the wings of a butterfly are a window into a better material world. The insect’s iridescence is a result of “structural color” rather than pigments or dyes: A single wing is layered with hundreds of thousands of microscopic scales that act as tiny reflectors, bouncing light from…
Ujjwal Parwal
Risk analytics is a vital component of risk management that uses statistical models, data analysis, and predictive modeling techniques to assess, quantify, and mitigate risks in various domains. This article will delve into the definition of risk analytics, discuss its importance, and explore its…
Witold Henisz
It is a phenomenon known as the “war on woke”: the political backlash against investments in companies with a corporate purpose beyond profit maximization. Some U.S. lawmakers have argued that environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing undermines financial returns. However, a new paper…
Chanakya Gupta
The food and beverage industry is currently growing at 8.7% and is projected to be worth $8.9 trillion by 2026, according to Research and Markets’ 2022 report on the global food and beverage market. This growth presents opportunities and challenges for manufacturers, many of which must modernize…
Mike Figliuolo
We make leadership way too difficult. We write entire books on it. We teach it in universities and MBA programs. We dedicate entire fields of study to it. We create massive corporate programs to foster it. Here’s the thing: It’s really not that hard.
Sure, we teach leadership at thoughtLEADERS,…
NIST
Static force, such as the weight of a person standing motionless on a bathroom scale or the force that an office full of equipment exerts on a high-rise floor, can be easily determined using scales, balances, load cells, and the like because static force doesn’t change over time. It’s…
Paul Bramson
Effective communication is the cornerstone of every healthy relationship, both personal and professional. This isn’t new information, of course, but the reality is most of us aren’t very good communicators. Even if you have strong skills and may even be told this by others, you can always improve…
