All Features
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…
Andrew Maynard
In 2014, more than 32,000 people were killed in car crashes in the United States. In 2012, more than 2 million Americans visited the emergency room as a result of car crashes. An estimated 94 percent of the crashes that caused these injuries and fatalities are attributable to human choice or error…
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…
Festo Didactic
Manufacturing in the United States and Canada is marked by negative stereotypes left behind from 1955. Repetitive and simplistic duties in grimy workplaces, without a chance to change or advance a career, are the images most people see when they imagine what it means to work in a factory. But, a…
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…
Taran March @ Quality Digest
I hate banks. I’ve hated them since I was a drifty teenager who had a volatile relationship with math and trouble coming up with the required documents proving my adultness. My first checking account had less to do with the paltry sum I owned than it did with running head-on into the vast 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…
Fred Schenkelberg
We establish reliability goals and measure reliability performance. Goals and measures can be related; however, they’re not the same, and neither do they serve the same purpose.
Recently, I’ve seen a few statements that seem to confuse the role of statistical confidence when establishing a goal.…
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…
Gabriele Suder
The costs of global terrorism on business go beyond the destruction caused in the attacks and actually impact the value of brands and supply chains for products, new research shows. It can give a competitive edge to some companies while destroying others.
During the 15 years since the Sept. 11,…
Nir Kshetri
It’s looking increasingly likely that computer hackers have in fact successfully attacked what had been the pinnacle of cybersecurity—the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Reports have emerged of claims by a hacking group called the Shadow Brokers that it had breached the network of, and…
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…
It’s no surprise to many consumers that some retailers and brands think that packaging—although necessary—isn’t really something to invest a lot of time, money, or effort in.
Consider the box. Many would look at it as an inconsequential container. It’s the thing you must rip, cut, tear, or…
Brooke Pierce
Think back to your last car, truck, or SUV purchase. What did you want to know before spending so much money?
More than likely, you first wanted to know the price range of the type of car you were considering. You might have also wanted to know what features were standard on the various makes and…
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…
British Assessment Bureau BAB
There are hundreds of security breaches that happen every day but in the end, they fall into three main groups: malicious, intentional, or criminal; system glitches; and human error.
The IBM “2015 Cost of Security Breach Survey” conducted by Ponemon Research, catalogs 49 percent of the breaches…
Thinh Nguyen, Rachel E. Sherman
One question that product sponsors often ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is whether their medical product will be regulated as a drug, a device, a biologic, or as a combination product—and in the case of the latter, which FDA component will regulate it.
One way sponsors may…
Jon Speer
Did you know that during the first six months of 2015, 69 percent of 510(k) submissions were rejected the first time? And that up to 75 percent of first-time 510(k) submissions are regularly sent back? I heard this and thought it was a crazy statistic. Is it really that high?
Then I spoke with a…