On the evening of April 14, I boarded a plane to London, where I was scheduled to teach a series of continuous improvement classes.

The Toyota Production System and U.S. health care improvement share a long history. What lessons can health care leaders learn from Toyota’s recent production troubles?

I challenge myself each day to hear something different. Sometimes this is about education, liberals, conservatives, tree-huggers, or many other opinions and topics that counter my perspective.

(DrScore.com: Winston-Salem, NC) -- Patients’ interest in directing their own health care, combined with increasing comfort using online sources to seek and share information, are reasons why the physician-rating website DrScore.com has experienced

(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- The 2010 Baldrige Regional Conferences are set for Sept. 14 in Newport Beach, California, at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Spa; and Sept. 28 in Nashville, Tennessee, at the Franklin Marriott Cool Springs.

(EtQ: Famingdale, NY) -- EtQ announces that its chief executive officer, Glenn McCarty, will be presenting a free, one-hour webinar, “Managing Your Risk Has Its Rewards: How Quantitative Risk Assessment Is Applied to Your Quality Management System,” on June 9 at 1 p.m. EDT.

(Olympus Corp.: Tokyo) -- Olympus Corp. will commence international sales of the 38DL PLUS ultrasonic thickness gauge. This new nondestructive testing device allows objects to be inspected without the need for destruction or disassembly.The gauge will go on sale in Japan in fall 2010.

(AME: Rockford, IL) -- Advanced Machine & Engineering Co. (AME) announces the unveiling of www.ame.com, the company’s new corporate web site.

(Plex Systems: Auburn Hills, MI) -- Plex Systems Inc., provider of the No.

(SICK: Minneapolis) -- SICK, a global manufacturer of sensors, safety systems, machine vision, and automatic identification products for factory and logistics automation, announces the launch of the world’s first high-speed 3-D camera with high-quality color capability.