While watching the local and national news recently, I hearkened back to the 1950s when TV news was void of all the theatrics and proud puffing.

I am in Japan helping to lead one of our lean manufacturing benchmarking trips.

Manufacturing is getting easier in many ways, at least as far as the technology is concerned.

(ACSI: Ann Arbor, MI) -- Customer satisfaction has improved for major household appliances and is at or near all-time highs for personal computers and big-ticket consumer electronics such as televisions, according to a report released by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).

(The Delta Group: Greenville, SC) -- CareChex, a division of The Delta Group specializing in rating the quality of hospital and physician care, has released three new studies that reveal broad disparities between the quality of U.S.

During my recent travels, I have noticed an increasing tendency toward formalizing organizational quality improvement (QI) efforts into a separate silo. Even more disturbing is an increasing (and excruciating) formality.

Most organizations are reluctant to set prices too low or too high because exceeding the boundaries on either side yields damaging consequences.

(RAND Corp.: Santa Monica, CA) -- When looking for a new physician, patients are often encouraged to select those who are board-certified or who have not made payments on malpractice claims.

Jamie Goldstein from Newton, Massachusetts, was 15 years old and an aspiring car designer when he sculpted an elaborate car design in clay.

The multiwelled microplate has long been a standard tool in biomedical research and diagnostic laboratories but could become a thing of the past, thanks to new electronic biosensing technology developed by a team of microelectronics engineers and biomedical scientis