All Features
The United State Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that $60 billion is lost annually from workplace injuries and illness. Using the administration’s $afety Pays Program calculator, 20 carpal tunnel syndrome injuries will cost a company $1,260,000 in direct and indirect…
NIST
Until recently, if a company wanted the best measurements in the world for the physical dimensions of one of its dimensional standards, it had to book time on the NIST Physical Measurement Laboratory’s (PML) Moore M48 coordinate measuring machine (CMM). Operating at NIST since 2000, this CMM—…
Michael Causey
It’s time to get your compliance programs in order to meet some looming international regulatory compliance demands, experts including former Food and Drug Administration officials say. Having a firm grip on quality management processes—especially document management and change control—will be…
Paula Oddy
Changes to the global economy during the last two decades have dramatically altered the landscape of business and industry. Globalization has enabled an ever-lengthening supply chain, which confers greater complexity and risk to every step of the process, whether for material goods or for services…
Dawn Bailey
Should an organization embrace risk or spend millions of dollars a year to avoid it? How do you know when a particular strategy is best?
Considerations for such thinking are covered in the Baldrige Excellence Framework, and the topic was recently explored by Brennan McEachran in an Innovation…
Timothy Woodcome
An integrated management system (IMS) combines multiple management system standards to which an organization is registered. The management systems are developed, implemented, and maintained via one system with processes that cover each standard’s requirements.
For example, the processes required…
Harry Hertz
Yes, it’s time for the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to pay attention! Having recently seen an article in The Guardian about the new additions to the OED, it seemed a good time to take a somewhat tongue-in-cheek look at the 10 words I would propose for inclusion in that venerable reference for…
Electronic temperature compensation has been successfully applied to shop-floor gauges for more than 25 years. It’s become a mature technology and proven to be one of the most easily cost-justified means to achieve gauge correlation and eliminate the most common cause of high-resolution gauge…
Karleen Bacoccini
This month, the International Automotive Task Force (IATF) published IATF 16949, the standard for automotive quality management systems. In this article I’ll provide background on the origins of this important industry standard, summarize the key changes from its predecessor, ISO/TS 16949, and…
Christine Schaefer
To entertain you, to grab your attention, and (of course) to advance your understanding of the Baldrige Excellence Framework, staff members who contribute to this blog have occasionally written some odd posts—or, at least, given them curious titles.
In case you’ve missed one or more of these, I’m…
During the past year, my email inbox has been consistently pinged by law firms advertising seminars and workshops that promise to help medical professionals understand what is noteworthy for 3D-printed medical products, ranging from regulatory to IP concerns. Some of these have been quite alarming…
Kade Moody
Is the following statement true or false? The new revenue recognition standard will have only a minimal effect on my accounting practices and policies. I hope that statement is true for your organization, but I think for many healthcare systems, the answer is false.
If you have already started…
Peter Bussey
Operational risk management (ORM) centers on environmental, health, and safety (EHS) risks that can cause accidents or incidents anywhere that work takes place, whether it’s a manufacturing plant, an offshore drilling platform, a mine, or a marine terminal. This article will discuss why and how…
NQA
For companies that are registered to more than one management system, integrating them makes a lot of sense. Combining your management systems provides greater benefit than running separate management systems in parallel. An integrated management system (IMS) can help reduce duplication and…
Christine Schaefer
Every year a new cohort of Baldrige Executive Fellows gains intensive knowledge about leading organizations to excellence through cross-sector, peer-to-peer learning hosted at the sites of Baldrige Award recipients. Every Baldrige Fellow completes a capstone project as part of the executive…
Chad Kymal
Deadlines for ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 14001:2015 registration have appeared on the horizon. Although we have 24 months to get registered to these new standards, some related timelines are looming even closer, notably scheduling a recertification or surveillance audit.
Some organizations have…
Kate Remley
If you’ve ever used a device that picks up signals over the air, you know that sometimes you just can’t get the signal to come in clearly. You point the device every which way, move it all around the room, do a little dance, but nothing seems to work. There doesn’t seem to be any explanation.…
Dawn Bailey
Public schools across the country are facing significant challenges. Lisa Muller, assistant superintendent for Baldrige Award recipient Jenks Public Schools, says schools are dealing with an increase in student needs, while at the same time managing declining revenues and attempting to prepare…
Timothy Lozier
Current management regulations and standards stress the importance of making quality management a higher priority throughout all areas of operation. At Verse Solutions, we wanted to find out how quality managers are adjusting to that new mindset, and how they are using quality-based technology to…
William A. Levinson
Clause 6.1 of ISO 9001:2015 requires “Actions to address risks and opportunities” first with regard to section 4.1, “Understanding the organization and its context” and second in section 4.2, “Understanding the needs and expectations of interested parties.” As 4.2 goes on to say, the latter are…
Daniel Desilets
Sponsored content
Y our product or service is only as good as the management system that supports it. Certification by an independent third-party certification body, such as Intertek, confirms that your management system complies with the respective international standards for quality,…
NIST
NIST scientists have devised and modeled a unique optical method of sorting microscopic and nanoscopic particles by size, with a resolution as fine as 1 nm for particles of similar composition.
A stream of particles of various sizes enters the system at a single point, but the particles exit the…
Swapnil Srivastav
Mandatory reporting requirements for regulations such as Europe’s REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals) and RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) legislation have increased the focus on environmental compliance and ethical sourcing across the globe.…
InfinityQS
What do you feel when you imagine your next regulatory audit? Stress? Anxiety? Overwhelming dread? The average recall can cost a manufacturer as much as $10 million, making compliance important to your brand as well as your bottom line.
As you manage the daily ins and outs of your quality…
James Warren
Creating a new material has long been either an accident or a matter of trial and error. Steel, for instance, was developed over hundreds of years by people who didn’t know why what they were doing worked (or didn’t work). Generations of blacksmiths observed that iron forged in charcoal was…