Quality articles from March 2006

Quality archives from March 2006

Quality success and failure.(Editorial)
March 1, 2006... Will a company fail because of a lack of a robust quality system? Has it happened already? I recently had this question posed to me by a reader who was conducting research. My first reaction was, "Of course, the manufacturing landscape is...

Reed exhibitions launches Quality Expo China 2006.
March 1, 2006... One of the highlights of Reed's Assembly Technology Expo China 2006 (August 29 to 31, Shenzhen Exhibition and Convention Center) will be the Quality Expo China 2006, which brings together the cumulative knowledge of professional engineers and...

Giuliani impresses attendees at Six Sigma Summit.(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... MIAMI--Rudy Giuliani's speech, "The Best of Leadership at the 7th Annual Worst of Times," earned him a standing ovation from the packed audience at the 7th Annual Six Sigma Summit, January 23 to 26. More than 40 top Six Sigma companies...

Coming events.(Calendar)
March 1, 2006... APRIL 2006 2-3 PRESSURE SENSITIVE ADHESIVES SHORT COURSE AND 2006 SPRING CONVENTION, Norfolk, VA. Adhesive and Sealant Council, (301) 986-9700. www.ascouncil.org 3-7 ...

Metris acquires LK, 3D Scanners and Arc Second.(INDUSTRY NEWS)
March 1, 2006... LEUVEN, BELGIUM--Metris announces the simultaneous acquisition of LK Ltd. (Derby, UK), 3D Scanners Ltd. (London) and Arc Second Inc. (Virginia, WA). Total funds in excess of 35 million euro have been raised to finance the acquisition and...

Leica Geosystems Metrology Division integrates into Hexagon Metrology.(INDUSTRY NEWS)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... UNTERENTFELDEN, SWITZERLAND The Metrology Division of Leica Geosystems has been integrated as an additional business line within the present Hexagon Metrology organization. Leica Metrology develops, manufactures and markets portable...

CEOS and business leaders at WCBF'S Global Six Sigma Summit & Awards.
March 1, 2006... CHICAGO--WCBF's Global Six Sigma Summit announces a speaker panel of business minds and thought-leaders for leadership and senior executives to take quality to the next level. Malcolm Gladwell, best-selling author of The Tipping Point and...

FMA Foundation announces 2005-2006 board of directors.(Fabricators and Manufacturers Association Foundation)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Rockford, IL--The Fabricators and Manufacturers Association Foundation, announces its 2005-2006 board of directors. The FMA Foundation board members are: chairman of the board Roger Steel, FORMTEK Group; vice chairman Daniel Dechamps, Metal...

Surface texture gage capability--B46.1 surface metrology update.(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... CHARLOTTE, NC--Responding to industry requests, the B46 committee has created a simplified "Executive Summary" surface metrology guideline to be included in future standards. The executive summary establishes the key items necessary when...

Edmund Optics.(BUSINESS NEWS)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Edmund Optics (Barrington, NJ) announces that it has received $2.8 million in Department of Defense ManTech funding for the development of advanced manufacturing tools vital to producing complex conformal and advanced optical elements such as...

CIMCOOL Global Industrial Fluids.(ISO 14001 Certification)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... CIMCOOL Global Industrial Fluids (Cincinnati, OH) has received ISO 14001 Certification. ISO 14001 is a voluntary international standard that establishes the requirements for an environmental management system.

Redlake (San Diego, CA) and Geospatial Systems (Rochester, NY) announce an alliance to focus on aerial and terrestrial surveillance systems for military and commercial applications.(BUSINESS NEWS)
March 1, 2006... Redlake (San Diego, CA) and Geospatial Systems (Rochester, NY) announce an alliance to focus on aerial and terrestrial surveillance systems for military and commercial applications. Under this collaboration, Redlake and Geospatial will...

CeTaQ Americas.(website, www.cetaq.com)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... CeTaQ Americas (Hudson, NJ), CeTaQ GmbH and CeTaQ Asia now have a single Web site in common, www.cetaq.com. Pages on the site are available in German or English, plus a page of links to relevant IPC standards and other information.

Mitutoyo.(gets Navy deal)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... The U.S. Navy's Calibration department chose the Mitutoyo (Aurora, IL) Legex 12128 to replace their old CMM and advance their Metrology R&D department. The largest of the Navy's five systems commands, Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA)...

PANalytical.(new regional application laboratory)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... PANalytical, (Almelo, the Netherlands) a supplier of analytical instrumentation and software for X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) announces the opening of its new regional application laboratory, located in...

IC Interconnect.(International Organization for Standards certifications)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... IC Interconnect (Colorado Springs, CO) announces its successful completion of the registration audit for the International Organization for Standards/Technical Specifications (ISO/TS) 16949:2002 and 9001-2000. This standard encompasses the...

Mahle Technology Inc.(new technical center)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Governor Jennifer M. Granholm joined Mahle Technology Inc. (Stuttgart, Germany) officials to celebrate the company's technical center expansion in Farmington Hills, MI. Mahle's $6.7 million investment doubles the size of its R&D center and will...

Ultratech Tool & Design Inc., Fond du Lac, WI, has been awarded the ISO 9001:2000 quality certification.(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... Ultratech Tool & Design Inc., Fond du Lac, WI, has been awarded the ISO 9001:2000 quality certification. The company produces and designs small to large progressive, draw, compound and station dies. Prototyping, building fixtures and precision...

AIT Group joins Decisioneering's Six Sigma Partner Program.(Advanced Integrated Technologies Group Inc.)(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... DENVER -- Decisioneering Inc. announces that Advanced Integrated Technologies Group Inc. (AIT Group) has become a member of Decisioneering's Six Sigma Partner Program. As a Six Sigma Partner, AIT Group will begin using Crystal Ball software in...

2005 machine tool consumption tops 2004 through November.(Brief article)
March 1, 2006... MCLEAN,VA -- November U.S. machine tool consumption totaled $245.04 million, according to the American Machine Tool Distributors' Association (AMTDA), and The Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT). This total, as reported by companies...

In memory of Ren Owen.(Obituary)
March 1, 2006... FRANKLIN PARK, IL -- Ren Owen, Sloan Valve Company's vice president of business development, passed away on January 6, 2006. "Sloan is a privately owned company that will be celebrating its 100 year anniversary this year," says Chuck Allen,...

Spiraling up: making real, high-level continual improvement is more of an issue than the speed of improvement.
March 1, 2006... Is your company continually improving or continually stuck? I think this is an important question to determine if a company is using their quality system to gain a strategic advantage over their competitors. Juran illustrated this in his...

Should you buy masters for your thread ring gages? Keeping setting plugs on hand can be beneficial.
March 1, 2006... Gage users who have had bad experiences with rings that have not been set properly or who are just trying to keep their gage costs down, often ask "Should I buy masters for my thread ring gages?" This is especially so when special thread rings...

Color moves into the digital realm: as technology improves, manufacturers are managing the color process through digital sampling.
March 1, 2006... Ensuring consistent, accurate color from design to production has always been complex--and remains so today. The key to advancing efficient color production has involved technology that advances color communication. Consider the potentially...

Can design processes be improved?
March 1, 2006... Anyone who has faced a production problem with a need to solve it by using production data can relate to the notion of a brain teaser. The brain teasers presented here are based on real-world situations encountered by workers in manufacturing...

Vision system simplifies texture inspection: no software development or programming is required for this inspection automation processor.
March 1, 2006... Traditionally, texture inspection and pattern analysis have been problematic for machine vision processors. To remedy this, Sightech Vision Systems Inc.'s (San Jose, CA) PC Eyebot combines selectable imaging functions with a trainable format to...

Assessing multisensor measurement accuracy: currently there are no standards for multisensor machines. How can we use our best knowledge of the measurement process and related conditions to estimate uncertainty values?
March 1, 2006... Whenever operators ask, "What is the accuracy of your multisensor machine?" Technically, an accurate answer is, "Excellent." This surprises many people who are expecting a quantitative "[+ or -] X-type" answer. But, the correct definition of...

The hard facts about plastics testing: plastic's usage and importance is growing. What special hardness testing considerations does it have?(Cover story)
March 1, 2006... Material quality is often synonymous with how well a material meets its performance expectations. For many manufactured materials, both metallic and non-metallic, the correct hardness is requisite for that material to perform. For plastics, mix...

Push for paperless: the document control of today is an integrated system accessible anywhere, anytime.
March 1, 2006... Document control/management spending is ranked as the third most planned software purchase for 2006, estimated at $46.6 million, according to Quality Magazine's capital spending survey (December 2005, p. 52). As more manufacturers look to...

Get the most out of Six Sigma: these nine steps can help your company live up to its Six Sigma investments.
March 1, 2006... Since its success at General Electric in the early '80s, Six Sigma has become the process improvement method of choice within manufacturing environments. But a growing chorus of experts has begun to wonder whether their often sizable investment...

Lean success improves line-transfer strategy.(case studies from Flinchbaugh Engineering)
March 1, 2006... By embracing lean thinking, employee-owned Flinchbaugh Engineering (York, PA) aggressively developed its line-transfer business into a viable alternative to offshore outsourcing. It has grown from a supplier of pivot shafts for one company into...

Combined audits save time, money.(about HOPE, a civil and human rights organization)
March 1, 2006... Focus: HOPE, a civil and human rights organization founded in 1968 after the Detroit riots, has become a leading provider of precision machining to the North American automotive OEM market. Focus: HOPE Manufacturing (Detroit) was established in...

Testing solution.
March 1, 2006... The MTS Insight electromechanical testing solution provides companies and research institutions a single source for all of their research, process development, product manufacturing and quality testing. The product performs simple monotonic...

Focusing optics.
March 1, 2006... High-power density focusing optics (HPDFO) for the professional and XL series laser systems offer VersaLaser customers the option to use their CO2 lasers for metal marking. The technology reduces the focused spot size and produces finer, more...

SPC software.
March 1, 2006... Synergy 2000 is used in quality assurance applications to monitor and react to process variation during production and inspection. The software provides a full complement of tools that support Six Sigma quality initiatives and works for...

Simulation software.
March 1, 2006... The DEFORM-HT heat-treating simulation software provides quantitative information on critical process and part-specific variables. Its heat-treating simulation package can fully integrate its results with related predictions for...

Bore gage inspection.
March 1, 2006... The 604 Series wireless RF radio modules transmit bore gage-measured values directly to a PC. The miniature radio modules are a technology leap forward to wireless gage interfacing by replacing gage connecting cables and interface boxes....

Intelligent camera.
March 1, 2006... With the addition of the Ethernet/IP communications protocol to all Impact series intelligent vision cameras, the cameras can communicate with third-party industrial products such as PLC's, I/0 devices and industrial sensors. Ethernet/IP is...

Software upgrade.
March 1, 2006... The SPC Quality Suite automates data collection and analysis on the plant floor. This software helps quality professionals to improve their manufacturing processes in real time, before defects occur. It offers a clean and simple interface,...

Firmware upgrade.
March 1, 2006... The firmware upgrade for the Allen-Bradley InView P22R message displays includes independent line control that allows different information to appear on the display's two message lines at the same time. Messages can be programmed for each line...

Waveform digitizer.
March 1, 2006... The ATS460 family of 14-bit PCI waveform digitizers can sample two simultaneous analog inputs at rates up to 125 MS/s on each channel. The PCI digitizer family is targeted for the needs of OEM customers and applications involving ultrasonic...