The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced that five organizations will receive the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s only presidential award for performance excellence.

And they are a terrific way to engage young people, a key to addressing the workforce challenges facing manufacturers.

Deadline for submitting concept papers during the first stage of the application process is Sept. 30, 2024.

If you have questions about additive manufacturing, the experts are here to help. From ASTM to ISO to countless additive manufacturers, there is an organization that can address your specific application.

As an alternative to CMMs, production engineers have the option of deploying versatile, noncontact optical inspection systems that allow for the implementation of first-article or random part inspection in a fast, nondestructive way.

For decades, many manufacturers have counted on robots to tirelessly produce parts of predictable quality. One of the key attributes of robots is their repeatability, which means that their tool tip will return to the same pre-programmed location with a known and relatively small error.

KinAiry is the comprehensive, independent solution for laser tracker evaluation, utilizing NIST’s Interim Field Test Procedure IR-80161.

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. 

To find out more, Quality spoke with John Nesi, Vice President of Market Development at Rockwell Automation, and Bryce Barnes, Senior Manager of Cisco Systems’ Machine and Robot Segment globally under Cisco’s Internet of Things Manufacturing Solutions Group.

May has served as acting director since June 2014