The planning of environmental or reliability testing becomes a question of sample size at some point. It’s probably the most common question I hear as a reliability engineer: How many samples do we need?

Having recently bought some furniture at a big box store, I couldn’t help seeing these three dreaded words were boldly printed on the outside of the carton: “Some Assembly Required.”

There’s a well-known quote by Henry Ford that goes like this, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” It’s fair to note that some don’t believe he actually said that, but let’s go with it.

Middle managers could take the lead in a changing corporate world, if they would only recognize that their primary value is emotional, not functional. Once again, middle managers appear to be on the wrong side of history.