Management

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2025 was a year consumed by the promise of change and the fear of what that change would bring. 

Manufacturing operations have always relied on continuous improvement as their fundamental operational excellence framework.

Congratulations to the winner of the Quality Caption Contest! See who won and what the winning caption is.

For much of my career, I’ve watched quality departments inherit a role they never asked for: the group that shows up when something goes wrong.

AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton said the quiet part out loud in a December interview with Fortune Magazine – that “companies investing trillions in artificial intelligence can only make their money back by eliminating human jobs.”

Cindy Farrer is the senior services manager of quality and supply chain at the Purdue Manufacturing Extension Partnership. She's an accomplished leader with over 35 years of global experience in manufacturing quality and supply chain management.

The concept of heroes with extraordinary abilities is far older than the comic books—which then became movies, which became television or streaming shows—that we know today. 

Since my early days in manufacturing, I’ve been participating in what is termed “digital twins.” It’s been largely covered and frankly overused in anything from construction planning to flight simulators.

When you are presented with serious challenges, how do you respond?

For the last 24 years, I have lived my life by the sounds of plastic injection machines.