All Features
Ray Hein
The manufacturing industry is at a make-or-break point. An underqualified workforce coupled with a disruptive pandemic has made it difficult for companies to attract top talent. Manufacturers are having trouble filling open roles with employees who possess necessary skills to carry out the desired…
Bryan Christiansen
When it comes to maintaining the critical infrastructure and machinery of your facility, choosing the right maintenance contractor can make all the difference. It's essential to find a contractor who not only has the knowledge and skills to keep a maintenance program running smoothly, but also the…
Gleb Tsipursky
‘I would bet 10 percent or more of our remote staff, especially programmers, are working two remote jobs! We need to stop this before it escalates and get everyone back to the office.”
Thus spoke the chair of the board of a Fortune 1000 tech company when I met with the board to help them figure…
Erika James
Crises are leadership litmus tests—make-or-break challenges, such as the Covid-19 pandemic—that are often unique and random, appearing out of nowhere with no clear road map. Many of those who prevail understand that crises are inevitable and seek to learn the lessons of experience. They then…
Adam Zewe
Imagine using an online banking app to deposit money into your account. Like all information sent over the internet, those communications could be corrupted by noise that inserts errors into the data.
To overcome this problem, senders encode data before they are transmitted, and then a receiver…
Rupa Mahanti
Data are an enterprise asset, and data governance (DG) is about establishing policies, processes, rules, standards, and controls around data to improve the quality of data and ensure data security and privacy.1
However, organizations struggle to implement data governance and, as a result, face a…
Grace Stinson
Women have always been and continue to be a fundamental cog in the constantly grinding wheels of capitalism. But Bloomberg’s recent report on gender equality in the workplace shows there are still major gaps between the status of men and women in modern-day workforces.
Although half of the entry-…
Donald J. Wheeler, Al Pfadt
In memory of Al Phadt, Ph.D.
This article is a reprint of a paper Al and I presented several years ago. It illustrates how the interpretation and visual display of data in their context can facilitate discovery. Al’s integrated approach is a classic example not only for clinical practitioners but…
Etienne Nichols
On Dec. 9, 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a new draft guidance, “Content of Human Factors Information in Medical Device Marketing Submissions,” that provides recommendations for the inclusion of human-factors information in marketing submissions.
The drafted guidance is…
ISO
The world of work connects employers, workers, governments, and regulators, but it has fundamentally changed since 2019. The upheaval caused by the pandemic, energy crisis, war, and the green transition have exposed and exacerbated fractures in the workplace, most often related to job status and…
Aaron Krol
As plastic pollution continues to mount, with growing risks to ecosystems and wildlife, manufacturers are beginning to make ambitious commitments to keep new plastics out of the environment. A growing number have signed onto the U.S. Plastics Pact, which pledges to make all plastic packaging…
Kate Zabriskie
‘They’re hit or miss: Sometimes the service is marvelous. Other times it’s simply meh. I’m afraid to recommend the place because I can’t trust them to deliver.”
“Maybe I’m just boring, but I don’t like surprises. They’re great one day and disappointing the next. I don’t need to be delighted. I…
Bryan Christiansen
According to “The 2022 State of Employee Safety Report,” 79 percent of employees say they’re concerned about their health and safety at work. Workplace safety policies along with various technologies can be effective tools for preventing injuries and increasing employee productivity. Overlooking or…
Trupti Dhere
The healthcare industry is known for rapidly adopting advanced technologies that offer improved treatment for various diseases. Consequently, digital twin technology in healthcare has gained popularity during the past few years, owing to the range of advantages it offers.
Digital twin technology…
Meredith Persily, Mark A. Clark
Having good relationships with colleagues is key to building a rewarding and effective work experience. Employees who are engaged with their co-workers, such as reporting “a best friend at work” in Gallup’s well-regarded survey, are more likely to be productive, stay with their organization, and…
Michael Platt
It’s a perfect storm. Just as senior leaders have become overwhelmed with demands and crises too numerous and powerful for any one person, a new study from Korn Ferry and Harvard finds that the majority of teams—so vital to business success—are ineffective. Efforts to improve them, centering on “…
Greg Kihlström
Customer loyalty and lifetime value are highly prized in today’s competitive environment. Smart businesses know that a major point of competitive advantage (or failure) can be the type of customer experience they provide.
The need to balance what customers want with what the business needs to…
Angie Basiouny
Managers who want to keep employees from quitting should consider reordering work tasks, according to a new paper co-authored by Wharton management professor Maurice Schweitzer.
In the largest field study of its kind, Schweitzer and his colleagues found that people are far more likely to quit when…
Tom Taormina
The quality profession has been evolving since the Industrial Revolution. I’ve lived part of this journey since the 1970s and have experienced its effect. ASQ and other organizations have continually pushed the envelope in creating training and certifications in the skill sets we’ve developed over…
Chip Reavley
The business challenges of the past few years—labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and inflation—have accelerated the long-term trend toward automated packaging operations. All types of manufacturers and distributors, including food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, automotive, and e-commerce…
William A. Levinson
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) is growing in popularity as a metric to guide investment decisions. What does ESG have to do with productivity, quality, or stakeholders, aka relevant interested parties? The answer is—with the exception of generally accepted practices for workplace…
When MasterControl hosted the Masters Summit 2022 in Salt Lake City, Quality Digest CEO Jeff Dewar was one of the panelists. That gave him a chance to catch up with Jon Beckstrand, CEO of MasterControl, a company which provides its quality management system to more than 1,000 clients, primarily in…
Matt Zajechowski
We spend about one-third of our waking hours at work. That’s often more time than we spend asleep or hanging out with our family and friends. It’s no wonder then that workplaces develop their own languages.
Workplace jargon can help streamline our jobs and bond us to our colleagues. But sometimes…
Etienne Nichols
In a highly regulated industry like medical technology, manufacturing processes must undergo either process verification or process validation to ensure they’re consistently producing the correct result. The question is, which one should you use?
Verification and validation are two different…
Phanish Puranam, Daniel A. Levinthal, Özgecan Koçak
Knowledge-intensive work is quite different from the physical manufacturing work that birthed the corporate hierarchies widely prevalent today. Consider the incompetent Pointy-Haired Boss in the Dilbert comic strip: He can’t lead through wisdom or better information, and he’s unable to control his…
