Michelle Bangert

Daniella Picciotti still remembers her first auditing experiences. On a supplier audit with more senior colleagues, it was difficult to determine her role. 

A focus on customers should help any organization improve. Satisfy the customer and success will follow, or so the thinking goes. And it makes sense. Without customers, the best product or service is irrelevant.

If you’re looking for more data in less time, 3D scanning may be a good choice for your application.

The MD&M East, Atlantic Design & Manufacturing, EastPack, ATX East, PLASTEC East, and Quality Expo came to New York this week.

Long-time quality professionals agree: the industry is not the same as when they started. No longer are quality managers seen as the police officers of the plant, checking to make sure nothing has gone wrong.

The ASQ World Conference in Fort Worth, Texas, brought people from around the world together to talk about quality and change. The sessions discussed Quality 4.0, digital disruption, and continuous improvement.

While there are many important quality management principles, this time we will look at continuous improvement. Perhaps the idea most commonly associated with quality, it means never being satisfied with the status quo.

While you may be familiar with the concepts behind additive manufacturing, the inspection methods themselves may not be as well known.

Additively manufactured parts face unique testing challenges. Along with many aspects of additive manufacturing, testing and inspection of additively manufactured parts is now being studied. Last October the ASTM International Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence announced its first set of R&D projects.

The robotics industry is not slowing down. Last year the robotics industry shipped more robots to North America than ever before. And companies today are figuring out that they can utilize machine vision and robotics in many new applications.