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Knowledge at Wharton
There were no Olympic medals up for grabs when Sim Yi Hui and Jane Lee, the co-founders of the Singapore Women’s Everest Team, set out to recruit team members to climb the world’s tallest mountain in 2004. “When we first formed the team my goal was just to climb the mountain,” Sim Yi Hui told me…
Suzanne Schwartz
During National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which took place in October, the public and industry were encouraged to understand the importance of cybersecurity and to be vigilant when it comes to the technology we rely on every day, including helping patients remain confident in the safety of…
William A. Levinson
Sept. 22, 2018, is the deadline for registration to ISO 9001:2015, and this seems to allow organizations plenty of time to make the transition to the new standard. The good news is that, despite the radical changes to the standard’s structure, the underlying requirements are not particularly…
NIST
The U.S. Commerce Secretary, Penny Pritzker, has named four organizations as the 2016 recipients of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest presidential honor for sustainable excellence through visionary leadership, organizational alignment, systemic improvement and…
Mike Richman
Hard as it may be to believe, a close analysis of our extensive trove of behavioral data on the Quality Digest user group indicates that more than a handful of you don’t regularly watch our regular weekly web TV show, Quality Digest Live, which broadcasts from our studio in Northern California…
ASQ
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When flood waters ravaged portions of Colorado in September 2013—killing crops, inundating homes, and buckling many miles of roadways—countless federal, state, and municipal government workers sprang into action helping citizens. State and federal government agencies spent…
Cole Cooper
A production part approval process (PPAP) is used by companies to establish confidence and rules in a production process. In a sense, it gives customers a view into their suppliers’ manufacturing capabilities.
A PPAP is required when there is a new part, engineering changes, tooling changes,…
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—…
Sudeep Pasricha
American mining production increased earlier this decade as industry sought to reduce its reliance on other countries for key minerals, such as coal for energy and rare-earth metals for use in consumer electronics. But mining is dangerous—working underground carries risks of explosions, fires,…
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…
Ryan E. Day
Handheld X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyzers are proven analytical tools commonly used for the fast, easy, accurate, and nondestructive identification and analysis of metals and alloys. Common applications include metal alloy identification for quality control, scrap sorting and positive material…
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…
Rodney Petersen
Acronyms. The world, and especially the government, is overflowing with them. You’d be hard-pressed to pick a favorite. People might even look at you funny if you suggested that you had one. I’m lucky enough to have my favorite one on my business card: NICE—the National Initiative for…
Brooke Pierce
When Congress passed the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), “risk” moved front and center as a feature of provider reimbursement models. These days, terms such as “at risk” and “risk-based” are used more and more, but what do they really mean? And why should healthcare…
The business environment is fraught with more threats and opportunities than three years ago, due to disruptive technologies, the internet of things, more demanding customers, and increasing regulations. Organizations, which must keep pace with these developments, are concerned with their ability…
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…
Marci Crane
Of the myriad ways in which the Earth’s inhabitants could potentially be destroyed, a zombie apocalypse is undoubtedly one of the least impressive. Though a zombie apocalypse is decidedly scary, unpleasant, and would “get the job done” as the unromantic expression goes, it tends to lack the…
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…
Industrial companies are facing critical challenges rooted in slow growth, globalization, the effect of disruptive technologies, and unforeseen competitive threats. A new report from global management consulting firm, L.E.K. Consulting, reveals how those companies are responding—and what the…
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…