Innovation Column Features

Jeff Dewar's picture
Jeff Dewar
This photo shows the Milky Way (from the Latin via lactea), part of our galaxy as seen from Earth. It’s a barred spiral galaxy, essentially a flat disk of at least 100 billion stars. Our galaxy is...
MIT Management Executive Education's picture
MIT Management Executive Education
Design thinking is an innovative problem-solving process rooted in a set of skills. The approach has been around for decades, but it only started gaining traction outside of the design community...
Davis Balestracci's picture
Davis Balestracci
In my last column, I reflected back on my career to date and issued a challenge. Based on the relatively lukewarm response, let’s see whether I can engage a few more of you to join me on my...
Frank Defesche's picture
Frank Defesche
Until recently, most quality departments were unable to select their own quality management system (QMS) software. Think about it. From hardware sizing to system requirements, database types to...
Lee Vinsel's picture
Lee Vinsel
Fully automated cars are still many years away. Amid the government activity and potential for social benefits, it’s important not to lose sight of smaller improvements that could more immediately...
Patrick Nugent's picture
Patrick Nugent
Sponsored Content A simple fact in manufacturing is that everyone has to measure. However, measurement is not simply about inspection; manufacturers need the right tools to increase quality,...
Mike Richman's picture
Mike Richman
Our most recent episode of QDL from Friday, Sept. 29, 2017. featured news, technology, and two great interviews. Let’s have a closer look: “Domestic Cars Fail to Keep Up With International...
Graham Ross's picture
Graham Ross
Why doesn’t machine translation (MT) work for all languages? There are currently more than 7,000 languages worldwide. If each of those had four dialects, that would be more than 28,000 language...
Mary McAtee's picture
Mary McAtee
True to my profession as an engineer, I am a total geek at heart and proud of it. Spending time in automobile museums always fascinates me. It excites me to see a prescient innovator from the past...
Beth Colbert's picture
Beth Colbert
When we think of champions of manufacturing today, we tend to think of some of the big companies such as Boeing, Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM. But companies don’t form themselves, and...
Austin Thomas's picture
Austin Thomas
Since commercially available 3D printers came out a few years ago, their capabilities have radically expanded. At first, they could only print little things out of plastic, but now people have...
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest's picture
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
Our Sept. 22, 2017, episode of QDL was decidely techie, covering artifical intelligence, the internet of things, Manufacturing Day, and a cool color-matching tool that uses your smart phone....
Ryan E. Day's picture
Ryan E. Day
Every other day I stumble over an article about losing jobs to artificial intelligence (AI), AI being the demi-savior of mankind, or being the digital antichrist. So, exactly what is AI and what’s...
Joshua Fairfield's picture
Joshua Fairfield
Internet-enabled devices are so common, and so vulnerable, that hackers recently broke into a casino through its fish tank. The tank had internet-connected sensors measuring its temperature and...
William Hang's picture
William Hang
It seems to happen to every company, big or small, newcomer or seasoned expert. You ship a product design off to a manufacturer, and something goes wrong on the manufacturer’s side. The problem...
Innovating Service With Chip Bell's picture
Innovating Service With Chip Bell
What if you were required to fill out an online form if you wanted the phone number or address of an enterprise with which you wanted to do business? Let’s say you were driving to a meeting at...
Jeffrey Phillips's picture
Jeffrey Phillips
Lately I’ve been reading about the efforts to build or create innovation accelerators. Universities, businesses, and even cities and regions are talking about innovation and the need to create...
Benjamin Jones's picture
Benjamin Jones
What does hailing a ride with Uber have to do with 19th-century geometry and Einstein’s theory of relativity? Quite a bit, it turns out. Uber and other location-based mobile applications rely on...
Greg Hutchins's picture
Greg Hutchins
I live in the Northwest of the United States. We are now the small business and startup mecca of the country. Why? San Francisco and Silicon Valley are too expensive. So, folks are moving in droves...
Greg Anderson's picture
Greg Anderson
In part one of this series, I described the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation Center and its mission to test innovative payment and delivery models, and to implement the...