If you ever get a chance to watch an aircraft being built, take it. Walking through the aircraft hangar at Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, CA, facility, you will see two unmanned aircraft, each with a 130-foot wingspan, parked behind yellow tape. The scale of the aircraft and the desert setting make it feel like a movie set.

The pervasiveness of rubber and plastic products is hard to overstate. They are everywhere, and they have been around for a while. In the case of rubber, it’s been in use since the early 1800s. While rubber and elastomers (from “elastic polymers”) previously had slightly different meanings, today for all practical purposes they are synonymous. 

If you subscribe to Quality, it seems safe to assume that quality is a priority for you. But even when it is a priority, achieving high levels of quality is an ongoing challenge that requires effort from every member of the organization every day.

NASA. Volkswagen. BP. It’s not hard to find examples of quality gone awry. The consequences of the Challenger disaster, VW’s Dieselgate, and the Deepwater Horizon were tragic and far-reaching. While these are some of the most well-known incidents, stories of quality failures are numerous and almost constant.

Each application within the automotive manufacturing process requires a unique set of testing requirements.

If you’re curious about what the plant down the road is buying, we have some answers for you. And if you’re wondering what types of equipment are popular right now, we’ve looked into that as well. In our 19th Annual Spending Survey, we also looked to identify the change in your approach to quality today as compared to a year ago, the spending on quality equipment and services overall, and the change in the budget within categories.

John Jennings describes how he once had to deal with an unusual problem. A pregnant employee came to him and said that a coworker put a curse on her unborn child. He asked the other coworker, did you put a curse? When the coworker said yes, he told them, “You have to take it off.” So they did.

The United States ranks as one of the top manufacturing locations in the world. According to Brookings Institution’s Global Manufacturing Scorecard released in July, the United Kingdom and Switzerland were the top ranked nations in overall manufacturing environment (both with 78 points out of 100). However, the United States was just behind with 77 points.

Quality and job satisfaction seem to go hand in hand. Only 7% of respondents were not at all satisfied with their job, according to our 18th Annual State of the Profession Survey. 

SEATTLE – Where were you on the night of August 5, 2012? At this time the Curiosity Rover was landing on Mars.