Check out the November 2020 edition of Quality: Training in the age of COVID-19, SPC intangibles, future-proof your quality system, gages for screw thread inserts and much more!
The U.S. manufacturing industry’s skilled labor shortage has been widely reported in the past decade. Millions of jobs became vacant due to the retirement of baby boomers and economic expansion.
Quality and compliance are all about consistency and repeatability. Change is often seen as a risk. These are times of dramatic change, with a new digital manufacturing paradigm and ongoing pandemic both accelerating the rate of transformation.
Screw thread inserts (STI) require the threaded hole to be inspected prior to inserting the threaded insert or coil. The dimensions and tolerances for the gages used to inspect these threads have been a bit confusing over the past 30 years.
The first half of 2020 found manufacturers having to pivot in the face of unprecedented challenges. Many had to halt production or, at the very least, slow production due to decreased demand and onsite worker limits.
So your team has been charged with selecting, purchasing and implementing a key manufacturing system like SPC. In addition to searching for qualified vendors, these teams are tasked with building a financial case for return on investment.
Throughout my career I have seen the power in recognizing people’s efforts. Additionally, numerous studies have shown that when people feel appreciated and get recognized, they are more engaged, motivated, and productive.
A merchant has a fox, a rabbit, and a head of lettuce and sits on the edge of a river. He has a small raft capable of carrying only himself and one item at a time, but without his supervision, the fox will eat the rabbit, and the rabbit will eat the lettuce.
The first time it happened was in 2009. I was about to take the helm of a 34-foot catamaran in the British Virgin Islands as captain, my baptism into the world of “bareboat” sailing. “You’re good to go,” said the dockhand.
One would hope that once a calibration laboratory has been accredited by a recognized agency, you could take the uncertainties shown on their scope of calibration at face value.
After learning something truly exciting, there is something extraordinarily satisfying in sharing it with someone else. Children do this all the time. They take the new information directly to an adult—usually a parent or caregiver—and the words pour out of their mouths, torrents of energy and pride.
When Wilhelm Rontgen discovered X-rays in the 1890s, he almost immediately discovered the imaging applications of this hitherto-unknown type of radiation, and experts in the medical community and the industrial nondestructive testing community rapidly seized on the potential this new science of radiography offered.
Medical devices, both the actual equipment and patient hardware, are some of the most regulated items in all of industry. Medical manufacturers are held to the highest of standards and these typically equal, and can even exceed, the aerospace and nuclear sectors.
Additive manufacturing has clearly been a major disruptor in sectors where it has been adopted, and this disruption propagates through the supply chain.
Since the rise of additive manufacturing (AM) in the 2010s, many businesses across the world are now looking at this method of manufacturing to see where it can add benefits across the supply chain.