All Features
Clare Naden
It’s been about a year since the Covid-19 pandemic turned our world upside down, and that includes the world in which we work. Certainty has hung up its hat, normality looks unlikely to return, and unpredictability is here to stay for the long term. How can organizations manage in this context, and…
Sébastien Breteau
It’s been about one year since the Covid-19 impact intensified from a seemingly isolated health scare to a worldwide, ubiquitous tragedy that has upended daily life as we know it. Ever since consumers first faced widespread product shortages of essential items during the early days of the pandemic…
Elizabeth Benham
Each year during national Weights and Measures Week (March 1 to 7), we celebrate the contributions made by the weights and measures community to ensure accuracy and fair competition in commercial transactions based on weight or measure. This year’s theme, “Measuring Up to the New Normal,” was…
Nate Burke
Undeniably, the power of data is unmatched. With an abundance of data collection opportunities available online, and with an increasing number of businesses taking them, the potential and value of such information is richer than ever before. And businesses are benefiting.
Particularly where data…
Esteve Garriga
There are many important issues to be considered in the food industry, such as consumer tastes, environmental impact, and economic aspects, but the most important is food safety.
Although current food safety management system (FSMS) certification schemes around the world are highly effective, I…
Mark Schmit
During the Sept. 18, 2020, session of the “National Conversation with Manufacturers,” our three West Coast manufacturing leaders on the panel kept coming back to their critical need for skilled workers.
The conversation was one in a series of 11 virtual listening sessions hosted by the National…
Lucca Henrion, Duo Zhang, Victor Li, Volker Sick
One of the big contributors to climate change is right beneath your feet, and transforming it could be a powerful solution for keeping greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.
The production of cement, the binding element in concrete, accounted for 7 percent of total global carbon dioxide emissions…
James Wells
When is a product “good enough” to accept? This is the classic challenge of quality. High customer expectations demand that suspect products be thoroughly scrutinized and a high standard set for their release. Customers expect this, and quality staff strive to achieve it.
The other side of the tug…
Yoav Kutner
Like business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce, business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce allows customers to purchase parts and supplies via an online portal. The difference is that in B2B e-commerce, both the customers and suppliers are businesses, and the customers may or may not be the end users of the…
Jose Luis Alvarez
Alexander Hamilton, one of the United States’ founding fathers, famously called energy the most important characteristic of the executive branch of government. “A feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of the government,” he said in the Federalist Papers. “A feeble execution is but another…
Gleb Tsipursky
Negotiators, even professional ones, make surprisingly many wrong decisions that doom negotiations that should have succeeded. Many of these mistakes relate to overestimating how well they can read the feelings and thoughts of other parties in the negotiation, as well as the extent to which the…
Aarti Gumaledar, Sameer Hasija, V. Paddy Padmanabhan
Globalization of trade and decades-long innovation in supply chain networks have resulted in significant benefits for all stakeholders—greater efficiencies, lower costs, and greater access to markets, to name just a few. Yet Covid-19 has exposed vulnerabilities in global supply chains. Dispersed…
Ashley Y. Metcalf
Lean supply chains are designed based on several key principles. First, the general philosophy of lean is to reduce or eliminate nonvalue-added waste. The concept of reducing waste is always beneficial to organizations. We should continuously strive to reduce things like wasted time, wasted effort…
Jill Neimark
If you’ve ever stayed in a relationship too long or stuck with a project that was going nowhere, you’re not alone. Humans are generally reluctant to give up on something they’ve already committed time and effort to. It’s called the “sunk costs” phenomenon, where the more resources we sink into an…
Catherine Cooksey
New employees at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are often surprised to learn that our agency is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. How could this be? On the surface it seems that the missions of the two organizations couldn’t be more different. The Department of…
Clare Naden
Never have we been more acutely aware of the importance of reliability when it comes to laboratory testing. As the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted, the development of accurate diagnostic tests plays an important role in outbreak management.
Whether a laboratory develops its own test…
Shaneé Dawkins
What do first responders do? It’s an easy question, and I used to think I knew the answer. Firefighters put out fires; police officers enforce the law; emergency medical system (EMS) workers treat injuries; 911 operators answer 911 calls and dispatch first responders to the scene. Simple, right?
I…
Steven Ouellette
What is the most important thing for your business to be working on right now? Would everyone else working there agree? Is everyone working toward the business’s goals? How do you know?
Most businesses in my experience cannot answer these questions. There may be metrics, but they are not…
Sheronda Jeffries
Since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, UK officials have seized millions of substandard face masks at Heathrow Airport. These masks could have put millions at risk for contracting or spreading the Covid-19 virus.
Industry and governmental organizations including the Therapeutic Goods…
Philippe Aghion
Imagine a ship at sea, at risk of sinking in a tempest. Is it better to empower the crew to do whatever it takes to save the ship, or should every decision be made by the captain and top officers? Similarly, what should the optimal form of firm organization be during a severe downturn? The need to…
Corey Brown
Lockout/tagout (LOTO) procedures are common in industrial and manufacturing environments. Despite this, failure to adequately train employees on LOTO procedures continues to be one of the U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration’s (OSHA) top 10 most frequently cited violations during…
Grant Ramaley
As the 2020 pandemic threatened world health, a large number of unscrupulous companies began generating fake International Organization for Standardization (ISO) quality management system (QMS) certificates in an attempt to fool governments into buying personal protective equipment (PPE),…
Matthew Bundy
Untitled Document
Burning plastic cart carrying a fax machine, a laptop computer, and a three-ring binder. Click here for larger image. Credit: FCD/NIST
Several centuries ago, scientists discovered oxygen while experimenting with combustion and flames. One scientist called it “fire air.” Today,…
Zach Winn
This story was originally published by MIT News.
These days businesses have enough to worry about without thinking about their insurance. Unfortunately, tasks like managing insurance claims and completing annual renewals require a lot of thinking.
The startup Newfront Insurance is seeking to…
Gleb Tsipursky
Should quality professionals be worried about the new Covid strains originating in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and elsewhere, and recently identified in the United States?
Authorities have focused on downplaying concerns about vaccine effectiveness against these new variants. While some…