All Features
Erin Vogen
For many maintenance teams, the story is all too familiar: Limited resources make it difficult to anticipate equipment failures, which leads to frequent, costly breakdowns. During these moments of crisis, miscommunication and disorganization only amplify the problem. This perpetuates the perception…
Akhilesh Gulati
It was another busy morning at the monthly operations meeting. Lindsay, the operations manager at TechElectronics, a growing manufacturer of consumer electronics, called the meeting to order. As usual, they started with the routine updates—inventory levels, production schedules, and customer…
Etienne Nichols
Compliance with industry regulations and standards is a fundamental part of medtech. Without proper medical device compliance, companies risk patient harm, litigation, and reputational damage.
Fortunately, compliance with medical device regulations and standards is not an impossible task. A…
Mike Figliuolo
Everyone has goals these days. The one that causes more disconnects than any other is a sales goal. It’s a number to hit (either units or dollars or both—the better ones are actually measured in profit dollars rather than revenue dollars). They’re problematic because by their very nature they get a…
Jennifer King
A study by Upwork has revealed that about 22% of the American workforce will be working from home by 2025. Remote work is here to stay, bringing many benefits along with it—including significant cost savings for businesses and the promise of a better work-life balance for employees. However, the…
Marian Merritt
Cybersecurity is a fast-growing field with a constant need for skilled professionals. But unlike other professions—like medicine or aviation—there’s no clear-cut pathway to qualifying for cybersecurity positions. For employers and job seekers alike, this can make the journey to building a team (or…
Rachel Byfleet
In an eco-friendly plot twist that would make Captain Planet proud, the European Union has rolled out the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), a blueprint that’s got big companies talking about more than just profits. Imagine a world where every major company’s reports don’t just…
Victoria Alestra
In regulated industries like pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and food manufacturing, compliance is crucial for operational excellence. A validated quality management system (QMS) is key to maintaining this compliance. Let’s explore how QMS software streamlines validation and ensures regulatory…
Patrick Willemson
As sustainability and transparency become increasingly vital to global business practices, the European Union has introduced the Digital Product Passport (DPP)—an initiative that will reshape the manufacturing landscape worldwide.
For manufacturers in the U.S. and other regions, understanding the…
Etienne Nichols
A quality management system (QMS) is at the heart of every successful medtech company. A QMS comprises all the policies, processes, and procedures that ensure the production of safe and effective medical devices—which means that problems with your QMS can quickly become problems with your products…
Gleb Tsipursky
As organizations increasingly integrate generative AI (gen AI) to boost productivity, innovation, and competitive advantage, they encounter a host of challenges. Many face resistance to change, fears of job displacement, and concerns about data privacy.
Understanding and overcoming these…
Yushiro Kato, Quality Digest
The state of American manufacturing is in dire need of improvement. For decades, the U.S. economy has been transforming into a service-based model while the manufacturing power we associate with the American postwar capacity of the 1950s and ’60s has dispersed offshore.
This slow degradation of U.…
Gary Peacock
W ith the rapid digital transformation of manufacturing, including technologies like cloud solutions, digital twins, next-generation devices, automation, and AI, the role of metrology is poised for a transformative evolution. What can we expect from new quality systems, and how is the metrology…
ISO
A customer calls asking for details about how they are registered in your company’s database so they can make sure their information is updated. You get a phone call from a business partner who needs to contact your colleague and asks you to check her calendar to see when she’s free. Although in…
Mike Figliuolo
As leaders, we say we want our people to be empowered to go out and make decisions. We say we’re OK with them making mistakes, and we’ll still support them making decisions on their own. But not really.
I’m lucky to have a huge leadership lab in the form of the SmartBrief on Leadership weekly…
Anil More
The jet in pneumatic dimensional (or air) gauging is the mechanical part of the sensing probe—air plug gauge, air ring gauge, air caliper gauge—through which compressed air is directed onto the part under measurement.
In its simplest form, we have two jets working in tandem facing in opposite…
Michael Sharp
Welcome knowledge seeker! Do you feel dazzled and awed by the great potential of artificial intelligence (AI)? Perhaps hesitant or lost when terms like convolution, deep learning, or autoencoder are thrown around? Well, fear not, for you’ve come to just the right place. You don’t need to be a…
Cal Newport
The goal: Using proven strategies, cut the clutter to focus on core priorities.
Nano Tools for Leaders—a collaboration between Wharton Executive Education and Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management—are fast, effective tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes…
Chip Bell
Is your organization about fun? How often do your customers giggle? How much of your business strategy is about funniness—not just entertainment, but customer experiences made joyful by design? What are your customers’ principal memories of their encounters with your organization?
Before we go too…
Akhilesh Gulati
In the ever-changing world of quality management, the intersection of innovation and standardization offers both exciting opportunities and tough challenges. Maria, a dedicated and certified quality professional, struggled with the concept of “standardizing innovation”—something that seemed like an…
Brett Farmiloe
Struggling with underperforming team members while trying to maintain a positive work environment? To help navigate this delicate situation, we’ve turned to insights from CEOs and human resources managers.
We’ll explore six effective strategies HR leaders use to support and guide underperforming…
Chris Rush
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently published new guidance on conducting clinical trials with decentralized elements. It offers recommendations for sponsors, investigators, CROs, and other parties that are interested in implementing decentralized clinical trials.
By issuing this…
ISO
From small family-run companies to tech giants, the business world is changing at an unrelenting pace. Amid a constantly evolving economic landscape and sometimes dizzying technological advances, one thing remains constant: the need to maintain the highest level of quality.
Whether manufacturing a…
Anthony Hardy
In a competitive manufacturing industry, meeting high standards is crucial to quality, sustainability, and safety. While it can be challenging to earn customer trust and establish a positive brand reputation, third-party certifications to standards such as IATF 16949: Automotive Quality Management…
Donald J. Wheeler
Managers are commonly fed a diet of report-card data. These data have usually been aggregated into summaries, averages, and totals to characterize the big picture. As useful as such summaries can be, they can also be an obstacle to an effective analysis. Here, we’ll learn how to avoid this obstacle…
