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MIT News
The Bernard M. Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program (GEL Program) recently revamped and relaunched Engineering Design and Rapid Prototyping (D-PRO), a Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics course last taught in 2012. It was updated to center on a new multidisciplinary project focused on…
Gleb Tsipursky
The future of work—of hybrid and fully remote workers—will require upskilling of employees for organizations that wish to succeed in the post-Covid world. Leaders who want to seize a competitive advantage in that future will need to benchmark their training initiatives for best practices on…
Brittney McIver
At some point, every medical device company will encounter an issue that requires an internal investigation. Whether it’s due to a nonconformance, complaint, CAPA, or an audit issue, you’ll have to conduct a failure or root cause investigation to pinpoint why the issue occurred in order to resolve…
Marc Lepere
As the war in Ukraine rages, finance professionals on Wall Street and in Europe recently attracted outrage by suggesting that investing in arms manufacturers should be treated as ethical investing. In the fight against tyranny, they argued that such an investment “preserves peace and global…
David Chandler
Industrial processes for chemical separations, including natural gas purification and the production of oxygen and nitrogen for medical or industrial uses, are collectively responsible for about 15 percent of the world’s energy use. They also contribute a corresponding amount to the world’s…
Knowledge at Wharton
Negotiating a salary increase or a job promotion ranks high on the list of hard conversations to have at work, and it doesn’t get any easier without a plan.
“People think, ‘I’m just going to knock on their door, sit down with them, and noodle around and see where this goes.’ That’s not a plan,”…
William A. Levinson
Ryan Day1 describes how the rise of independent auto dealers is a “gray swan” event for the automobile industry. This was not only bound to happen, as observed by the author, but also long overdue. The article states, “...current state laws prohibit OEMs from selling new vehicles directly to…
Bryan Christiansen
Top management often struggles to approve large sums required for annual maintenance because the expense is seen as a necessary evil. As a result, if a business encounters short-term financial constraints, the first place it looks for savings is maintenance.
This is why your maintenance budget can…
Anthony Tarantino
In 2007, Nassim Taleb described black swans as highly improbable events that had dramatic or even catastrophic effects on markets and economies. Until recently, it seemed that such events were indeed rare.1 There’s now a major rethinking with the world entering the third year of the Covid-19…
NIST
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have discovered a potential source of error when using acoustic waves to measure the properties of fluids such as blood. Their discovery raises the possibility of more accurate diagnostic tests for certain types of blood…
Bhaskar Ramakrishnan
To ensure vehicular and pedestrian safety, it’s imperative that brake discs are of superior quality to enable safe braking distances, which is a key metric. Any imperfections on a brake disc can cause safety hazards, heating of the brake assembly, and increased wear and tear. Maintaining tighter…
Susan Robertson
Every year in the spring, Amy B., a buyer for a large retail chain store, hosts an Easter egg-decorating, team-building party, where she and a bunch of her suppliers spend an entire afternoon coloring and bedazzling hard-boiled eggs. None of them bring their kids.
They do this for the sheer…
ISO
After lengthy wrangling, the 2021 COP26 climate summit ended with 197 parties agreeing to the new Glasgow Climate Pact. It will get countries to strengthen their CO2 emissions-cutting targets for 2030 by the end of next year, and formally recognize the need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions…
Del Williams
From design to prototyping to manufacturing and scaling up, manufacturing is fraught with risk. Machining of critical parts may not be on the front burner until well into a product’s development. This isn’t in stakeholders’ best interests.
Take products with semiconductors as a component, for…
Ben Bensaou
Not every CEO can be the next Steve Jobs, constantly conjuring up game-changing new ideas and revolutionary products. But what all CEOs and senior leaders can be are champions for innovation within their own organizations. They are the ones who can help give their employees the freedom and space to…
New Vista
‘I just want to avoid spinning gauges all day.”
We hear this from manufacturing professionals all over the world. We were discussing this recently with a manufacturer in Wisconsin that machines large quantities of threaded parts. Their customer requires them to “go” and “no-go”-verify every part.…
Edmund Andrews
Seems everybody has a horror story about health insurance: Kafkaesque debates with robotic agents about what is and isn’t covered. Huge bills from a doctor you didn’t know was “out of network.” Reimbursements that take months to process.
It’s no secret that healthcare in the United States is…
Ethan Drower
Launching a service-based business is so appealing to entrepreneurs because these businesses are the easiest to start with no capital. Any person can launch one simply by creating a website outlining their offerings and promoting their service for free on social media. On the other hand, product-…
Bill Kalmar
For years, when I was the director of the Michigan Quality Council during Gov. John Engler’s administration, we reviewed businesses across the state and looked for world-class service. What we found was that meeting and exceeding the expectations of customers was of paramount importance. And…
Kara Baskin
Which companies deploy machine intelligence (MI) and data analytics successfully for manufacturing and operations? Why are those leading adopters so far ahead—and what can others learn from them?
MIT Machine Intelligence for Manufacturing and Operations (MIMO) and McKinsey & Company have the…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
Recently I was interviewed by Rocky Buckley, a strategic business coach and creator of the Power Persona Project. We discussed an aspect of success that I wish I could give to everyone: the concept of a positive temperament or mental state. So I decided to share the conversation.
Rocky: Is success…
Bryan Christiansen
Even though it is notoriously resistant to change, the maintenance industry is not immune to the advances in maintenance automation. Things like data collection and analysis, inventory management, resource scheduling, and work order management have been automated for years, thanks to computerized…
Theodoros Evgeniou, Ludo Van der Heyden
Technology has always been a double-edged sword. While it’s been a major force for progress, it has also been abused and caused harm. From water power to Fordism, history shows that technology is neither good nor bad by itself. It can, of course, be both, depending on how it’s used.…
Wade Schroeder
On May 12, 2021, President Biden signed the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity. Among other items in the order was a requirement that every vendor that supplies the federal government with software must provide a software bill of materials (SBOM) with their product.
Given that…
Donald J. Wheeler
Acceptance sampling uses the observed properties of a sample drawn from a lot or batch to make a decision about whether to accept or reject that lot or batch. Although the textbooks are full of complex descriptions of various acceptance sampling plans, there are some very important aspects of…
