Editor’s note: The following is from a transcript of a forgotten speech given in Tokyo in 1978 by W. Edwards Deming for the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE). Because the original was a poor photocopy, there are small portions of text that could not be transcribed.

In publishing, anniversary issues sit in the ambiguous space between news and marketing. News because, at 40 years and counting, it’s not every magazine that makes it to middle age in these times.

As part of QD’s 40th anniversary hoopla, we wanted to hear from those in the quality field. Tribal knowledge is real and valuable. What you’ve learned as a quality professional can help others starting out in the field.

X-ray fluorescence (XRF) is an analytic method used to define the elemental structure of a material. Companies use specific XRF instruments when determining the chemistry for a sample of a material. How is this done?

When I began my medical device career, I started as a product development engineer.

Does this situation sound familiar? You’re sitting in a meeting, and you and your colleagues are energetically discussing how to handle an important issue or challenge.

In September 2021, I was fortunate to attend the FABTECH conference in Chicago, a sprawling trade show with what must have been billions of dollars of manufacturing equipment on display: robots, automation, 3D printers, you name it.

There are various nondestructive testing (NDT) methods we can employ to evaluate the condition of different machine components, without the need to stop and disassemble the equipme

We’re experiencing rapid change, political and economic uncertainty, employee shifts and a war for talent, and the still-evolving “future of work.” A lot seems out of our control.

Believe it or not, the technology that brought you Bitcoin is beginning to make waves in the food manufacturing industry. This technology, called blockchain, is a digital ledger maintained across several computers, then linked through a peer-to-peer network.