Things not working together. We’ve most likely all experienced it or witnessed a friend, colleague or family member struggle with it. Recently, hearing a colleague’s frustration I approached his desk to see what was happening.

With the signing of Proclamation 5249, President Ronald Reagan created National Quality Month. Since 1984, American companies have been observing National Quality Month as an opportunity to promote quality initiative awareness and celebrate the wins.

Last month’s column focused on statisticians and their need to transition to leaders. In order to do so, one must understand the difference between managing work/projects and leading others.

New changes to ISO 13485, published this spring as EN ISO 13485:2016, mean U.S. medical device companies that sell in Europe will need to integrate risk-based approaches throughout their quality management systems. The emphasis on risk management is the biggest of several changes in the third version  of ISO 13485.

Quality is the most common offshore problem cited by companies who have reshored to the U.S. As reshoring in U.S. manufacturing continues to grow, total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis remains a key, underutilized tool that companies can use to make the best sourcing decisions. 

Spires succeeds Peter Unger, who served as A2LA’s president and CEO for 20 years and continues to support the association in his position as president emeritus.

There’s a popular and effective exercise, taught in business schools everywhere, called a SWOT analysis. The concept is to analyze the entirety of a company, organization, or institution by listing its Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

There are a lot of industry buzzwords out there—the cloud, IoT, UX, Smart Factory—that are supposedly connected to the next renaissance of manufacturing. 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was signed by the twelve participating countries on February 4, 2016. 

In one of its simplest definitions, quality represents the state of conformance to requirements. To be able to determine this conformance, we need to compare the product or service to established standard.