What's the relationship of innovation to improvement? This Quality Progress article gives you the answer and explains how ISO 9004-2009 can serve as a blueprint for organizing your operation to innovate more effectively. Author Natalia Scriabina, managing director of Canada's Quality Professionals' Resource Center, reviews some of the key tools for spurring innovation and stresses that both innovation and improvement campaigns depend on careful analyses of data and information. ISO 9004:2009, she explains, recommends a broad application of improvements and innovations, including products, technology, processes, management systems, and organizational structure. Listen to a podcast featuring the author. 

Collect measurements with handheld gages (calipers, micrometers, etc.) and other instruments and send to your PC using GageWay interfaces, WedgeLink keyboard wedges, or transmit wirelessly with MobileCollect. The configurability of our products allows them to be used with any SPC or data acquisition software. Watch our short video product review!

Add video capability to any Hawkeye Borescope! Video allows you to inspect parts faster and more comfortably, view images with others, and record images for documentation or e-mail transmission.

With the new WS 3880 wafer scanner from Rudolph Technologies, manufacturers get fast, comprehensive post-fab inspection of advanced 3D IC packages. The scanner, targeted for volume manufacturing, features an ultra-high-resolution 3D sensor designed specifically for micro bumps as small as a few microns. Also new from Rudolph: the NSX 320 Automated Macro Inspection System for edge trimming metrology, wafer alignment for bonding, and inspection of sawn wafers on film frames.

When you use the new DataMan 500 barcode reader, you don't need optimum placement to scan products twice as fast as previous models, claims the vendor. Powered by a proprietary vision chip called VSoC™, the device employs flexible lens options and field interchangeable lighting to provide greater depth of field (see video demo). And you don't require a host PC to translate the reader's data to a PLC or central network.

One expert writes in Quality Digest that Black Belt training frequently spends too much time on statistical tools, and not enough on planning experiments associated with improvement projects. Steven Ouellette, chief consultant for the Center for Statistical Solution, says too much time and money is often wasted collecting data or designing an experiment before QC professionals really understand the problem. And that entails researching the process variables that need to be controlled in experiments.

Need to brush up on designing for quality? This ASME book on Taguchi Methods by expert Teruo Mori probes the key issues involved in developing robust technology, including quality philosophy, strategies/planning, and statistical analyses. You'll get new insights on two-step robust design, parameter design, tolerance design, quality loss function, and orthogonal arrays. You'll also see these methods at work in real-life case studies from industry.

The network solution from METTLER TOLEDO for statistical quality control (SQC) of filling processes in food and pharmaceutical companies.

FreeWeight.Net not only systematically records and eliminates product defects, but it also drastically reduces unnecessary costs through overfilling. Pharmaceutical operations use FreeWeigh.Net to ensure quality control in compliance with FDA 21 CFR Part 11.

We do internal video inspections of process piping and mechanical systems using bore scopes, flexible fiberscopes, conventional pipe inspection systems as well as high heat cameras, tractor mounted pan and tilt cameras, and submersibles. Our cameras range in size from 2 mm right up to large vessel and tank inspection systems. From AcuFlow Services.

With its new state-of-the-art testing facility in Rockville, MD, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission increases its lab space by 250%. The new National Testing and Evaluation Center will feature such new equipment as a tilt table that will measure all-terrain-vehicle road stability, and new chambers to conduct mattress flammability testing and carbon monoxide alarm testing. See updates on the agency's latest product recalls, ranging from air conditioners to yard tractors.

Event data recorders (EDRs), commonly known as "black boxes," may soon be required for all new light vehicles sold in the U.S. The proposed new rule would cost industry about $25 million. However, Design News reports that engineering groups like IEEE are urging that lockout devices be installed as part of EDRs to prevent unauthorized downloads. About 20,000 cars are towed every day in the U.S. with insecure data.

The emerging smart grid demands more accurate energy management than ever before, and ASMgrid claims to answer that need for the smart meter industry. The system-on-chip's new metrology platform promises 0.1% accuracy over a dynamic range of 2000 to 1. It features a high-precision, multi-channel analog front-end for current and voltage sensing, with scalability to handle single-phase and poly-phase meters. Also included: hardware and software to detect tampering and prevent energy theft.

Ariel Corp., an Ohio manufacturer of gas compression equipment, has trimmed inspection time by 90% using portable 3D coordinate measuring machines. The company operates two GagePlus units to pass/fail parts ranging in size from a few inches and weighing 13 lbs to a 20,000 lb machine more than 13 ft long. By verifying dimensions of a feature after each machining step, Ariel pinpoints process errors that can cause material waste and lost production time.

The Tristar II is an automated, three-station, surface area and porosity analyzer capable of increasing the speed and efficiency of quality control analyses, with the accuracy, resolution, and data reduction to meet most research requirements. The instrument features a krypton option, allowing measurements in a very low surface area range.

The Phantom v641 from Vision Research is the second generation v640 camera. It's smaller and lighter than its predecessor, with a number of new convenience features requested by users. More info...

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If you're a QC engineer in the medical device industry, get set for even tougher scrutiny by the FDA. A blogger in the safety research field notes that the agency recently called manufacturers together to underscore problems that in in 2010 resulted in 89 warning letters for Quality Systems deficiencies. The agency urged manufacturers to step up their own surveillance of suppliers, because increasingly recalls reflect problems created by suppliers, but owned by the manufacturers.

Americans are used to " Buy American" slogans in car buying, but as Consumer Reports notes, global manufacturing has muddied the waters in determining how much of a car is actually made in America. The magazine cites these percentages of U.S-made parts from the top three sales leaders in May: Chevrolet Malibu (75%), Nissan Altima (60%), and Ford Fusion (20%). This ABC interactive tool gives the percentage of U.S.-sourced parts for several models.

Can Six Sigma Fix Government?

At least three Republican presidential hopefuls have taken the pledge, if elected, to apply Six Sigma methods across the federal government, with the goal of trimming waste by 25% annually. How practical is it to employ this proven quality tool to government operations? What are the major roadblocks — and the chances for success?

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