All Features
Celia Paulsen
Nobody likes business to be slow. If you’re in a fast-paced world like manufacturing, seeing your machines or employees idle can drive a person insane. If you’re used to your production line working to capacity and suddenly business slows down, it can be a frustrating time.
When I was in the U.S.…
Jon Speer
Historically, risk management has been a complex and polarizing subject, with various stakeholders assigning different values on the probability and severity of harm. In the medical device industry, risk management’s high importance has led to the publication of standards such as ISO 14971,…
Greg Hoeting
Nuclear power has long been a clean, dependable source of energy throughout the world. However, as power plants age, concerns grow about their continued reliability. Many components make up the infrastructure of a nuclear power plant with the design intent to reduce radiation and contamination…
Ryan E. Day
As shelter-in-place orders make work-from-home (WFH) the new normal, some organizations are struggling with the transition to working as a remote team. But there are companies that have been doing so for quite some time, and we can benefit from their experience.
Covid-19 is forcing thousands of…
Knowledge at Wharton
Long stretches of empty supermarket shelves and shortages of essential supplies are only the visible impacts to consumers of the global supply-chain disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Unseen are the production stoppages in locations across China and other countries and the shortages of raw…
Alan Rudolph, Raymond Goodrich
We [Alan Rudolph and Raymond Goodrich] are both biotechnology researchers and are currently seeking to repurpose an existing medical manufacturing platform to quickly develop a vaccine candidate for Covid-19.
This process is used for the treatment of blood products such as plasma, platelets, and…
Evident Scientific
F unction often relates to form, and this is particularly true within the world of manufacturing. Rigorous quality assessment procedures ensure that components are manufactured according to their precise specifications before being assembled into the fully functioning whole. These assessments might…
Mark Rosenthal
Training Within Industry (TWI) job instruction is built around a four-step process titled “How to Instruct.”
Steps two and three are the core of the process: • Present the operation • Try out performance
I want to discuss step three: Try out performance
Teaching back as learning
All too often I…
Donald J. Wheeler
Lean production of multiple products is built on the assumption that the process aim can be properly set for each short production run. This article will describe how to set the process aim so that your short production runs can be on target.
In a lean production environment, without a bank of in-…
Jason Chester
Even in the midst of the pandemic, product safety and quality remain critical. For many manufacturers, complex quality management systems and procedures stand in the way of agile responses and effective operational optimization. Cloud technology provides the means to dramatically simplify quality…
Cheryl Carleton
The labor market is changing rapidly with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
Many organizations are laying off almost all of their workers, while others are considering which workers to lay off, which to furlough, and which to keep. Alternatively, some are expanding their labor forces.
When…
Amber Dance, Knowable Magazine
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
As Covid-19 cases fill the hospitals, among the sickest and most likely to die are those whose bodies react in a signature, catastrophic way. Immune cells flood and attack the lungs they should be protecting. Blood vessels leak; the blood…
Jay Arthur—The KnowWare Man
Story update 5/6/2020: The charts and some data have been updated to reflect the data available on the date this article was published.
During the Covid-19 stay-at-home order in Colorado, I've become increasingly frustrated by Covid-19 charts. Most of what I see are cumulative column charts, which…
Michael Dehoyos
The amount of risk that one is exposed to when running a business is vast. Some risks may result in severe legal or financial trouble or cause the business to shut down. Mitigating these risks is a major aspect of successfully running a business.
Every aspect of a business has certain risk factors…
Julius DeSilva
ISO 9001 certifications have seen a decline during the past two years, per data from ISO. Some say the standard has gotten too complicated with the introduction of organizational context, risk-based thinking, and the removal of mandatory documented procedures. Even a few of QMII’s clients have…
Bruce Hamilton
Most lean folks use 5 Whys daily to problem solve, but relatively few are familiar with a clever problem-solving device developed 30 years ago by Deming Prize winner Ryuji Fukuda, called the why-not diagram.
Because objection is a natural human response to new ideas, Fukuda created the why-not…
Kathleen Wybourn
Business continuity is a relatively simple idea. Plan ahead so you can keep your business successful during times of difficulty. Key management transitions, loss of a major customer, the impact of a lawsuit, perhaps a fire or an earthquake. But what if that “difficulty” is a global public health…
Donald J. Wheeler, Al Pfadt
Each day we receive data that seek to quantify the Covid-19 pandemic. These daily values tell us how things have changed from yesterday, and give us the current totals, but they are difficult to understand simply because they are only a small piece of the puzzle. And like pieces of a puzzle, data…
Del Williams
We are all familiar with flash memory storage devices, the inexpensive “thumb” drives that you stick into your laptop to store and transfer data. However, there are much more rugged industrial flash drives that perform mission-critical storage functions built into systems that you rely on almost…
Stanislav Shekshnia
Corporate boards across Europe are reacting to the coronavirus pandemic in three ways. For some, it’s business as usual. “Crisis is the business of the CEO; the board does not need to adjust its workings,” the chair of one such board told me. Other boards are going in the opposite direction,…
Jennifer Chu
The brain is one of our most vulnerable organs, as soft as the softest tofu. Brain implants, on the other hand, are typically made from metal and other rigid materials that, over time, can cause inflammation and the buildup of scar tissue.
MIT engineers are working on developing soft, flexible…
Naphtali Hoff
Since rolling out my “four-step” productivity plan, I have seen the need to include an added step that focuses on leadership. After all, if we are going to get more from our people, we need to use our leadership position to motivate others, create a healthy work environment, and engage others in…
The Hechinger Report
Students generally learn about moles, atoms, compounds, and the intricacies of the periodic table in college, but Daniel Fried is convinced kids can learn complex biochemistry topics as early as elementary school.
Fried is an assistant professor of chemistry at Saint Peter’s University in New…
Stephanie Parker, Knowable Magazine
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
An anthropologist looks at the myriad ways we link food to place—and whether it really could make a difference.
“Local food” is a term loaded with virtue for many people. Some with environmental concerns lean toward local because food…
William A. Levinson
The phrase “flatten the curve” means to slow the transmission of the coronavirus (Covid-19) in order to spread the total number of cases out over a longer period of time. This will avoid overwhelming the healthcare system.1 The model is accurate as presented throughout the internet, but it also…
