Jeffrey G. Stark is president of Sensor Products Inc.

(ALG Inc: Santa Barbara, CA) -- Perception is a powerful force in consumer-buying behavior. Consumers often base beliefs about quality on the emotional connection they have made with a brand, regardless of the actual quality associated with its products.

Just imagine for a moment that you are a major league baseball player in 1990. If you wish, you can even choose your name and position. Perhaps you would like to be a pitcher, let’s say, Dodger Lemens, or a hitter, perhaps Marcus McWired or Al Roidriguez.

Ken Appel is the manager of regulated industries for Veriteq.

The boys slumped against the wall of the dugout; you could read the despair on their faces. “What’s the point?” mumbled the right fielder.

(SME: Dearborn, MI) -- Kermit the Frog once declared, “It’s not easy being green.” But SME and Purdue TAP are making it easier for manufacturing professionals to become green workers—one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. work force.

(ISO: Geneva) -- The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is carrying out a survey of existing and potential users of ISO 9001, the global benchmark for quality management, to gather feedback to help decide whether the standard needs further improvement and, if so, what needs mod

(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- Researchers are characterizing a new technique as a neat solution to the “needle in a haystack” problem of nanoscale microscopy, but it’s more like using a flashlight to find a coffee table in the dark instead of walking around until you fall over it.

Ken Appel is the manager of regulated industries for Veriteq.

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efore Michael Mercer established his consulting company, he accumulated more than 30 years of quality improvement experience at 3M. That experience led him to develop a deep trust in the power of Minitab Statistical Software.