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Lean Triage for Hospital ERs
By S. Bala

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The United States spends 16 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care, more than any other nation. Although that investment has produced medical experts and breakthroughs envied the world over, a great majority of U.S. citizens are unhappy with the end results. When the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund conducted a poll of U.S. health care consumers last year, 69 percent expressed strong dissatisfaction with the current health care system. In a 2007 survey, the same group found U.S. respondents twice as likely to support a complete overhaul of their system than those from Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Great Britain, and Australia--all nations that spend half as much GDP as the United States on health care.

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2008 Calibration Software and Services Directory
By Quality Digest

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Welcome to Quality Digest’s 2008 Calibration Software and Services Directory

On the following pages you’ll find nearly 200 companies that can help you properly calibrate your measurement equipment. Included in each listing is the company name, address, telephone and fax numbers, web address, and a key showing whether the company in question provides calibration software (SW), services (SVC), or both. Further information, including detailed descriptions of these companies’ products and/or services, can be found online at www.qualitydigest.com/content/buyers-guides.

Quality Digest hasn’t evaluated, nor do we endorse, any of the following calibration software and/or service providers. This directory is intended to be used as a guide; please contact the companies themselves for further information.

Good luck in your search for the right calibration software and/or services provider.

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Getting the Most from Multisensor Metrology
By R. Stephen Flynn

What Is Multisensor Metrology?

Multisensor metrology is dimensional measurement on a measuring machine that utilizes two or more different sensor technologies to acquire data points from features and surfaces of a part to perform more measurements than would be possible on a machine using a single sensor. Most multisensor machines are motorized and use software that repeats predetermined measurement sequences without the need for user interaction.

Most articles about measuring devices, instruments, or systems describe what they do and how they work. The manufacturers of these systems want readers to know about the innovation and technology that went into them. However, the missing part of such articles is how to use the measuring system to get the information that the user needs to make decisions. This article looks at multisensor metrology from a user’s perspective.

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Dimensional Measurement
By Quality Digest

 

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Manufacturers of all kinds depend on the accurate measurement of products and parts to ensure that they conform to the needs of their customers. Whether for size, shape, weight, length, or depth, proper dimensional measurement can mean the difference between a happy customer and a lost contract.

The three guides in this section will help you ensure proper dimensional measurement. The 3-D Measurement buyers guide provides a listing of major companies offering high-tech coordinate measurement machines and other 3-D measurement equipment. Companies listed in the Optical Dimensional Measurement Systems buyers guide and/or the Vision Systems buyers guide amplify the power of sight for product inspection and approval.

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Examining On-Machine Verification
By Philip Hewitt

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On-machine verification (OMV) is a recent innovation that combines existing technologies to solve more complex measurement problems on machine tools. Many machine tools are equipped with probing systems, and using the probe for simple part setting is an established process. Simple macro-based probing cycles allow the user to measure basic features such as faces, corners, and bosses, and these can be combined to create rudimentary inspection reports. These basic solutions are restricted to simple 2-D measurement because 3-D measurement is just not practical. Although skilled operators can sometimes adapt probing macros to measure along compound angles, this becomes too difficult and too time-consuming for complex, curved surfaces.

OMV solves these problems using graphical 3-D software methods to program the measuring sequences. The programming and reporting tools from inspection software are combined with machine tool post-processor expertise to create a measuring solution for machine tools.

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Non-Normal Distributions in the Real World
By Tom Pyzdek

One day, early in my quality career, I was approached by my friend Wayne, the manager of our galvanizing plant.

 "Tom," he began, "I've really been pushing quality in my area lately, and everyone's involved. We're currently working on a problem with plating thickness. Your reports always show a 3-percent to 7-percent reject rate, and we want to drive that number down to zero."

 I, of course, was pleased. The galvanizing area had been the company's perennial problem child. "How can I help?" I asked.

 "We've been trying to discover the cause of the low thicknesses, but we're stumped. I want to show copies of the quality reports to the team so they can see what was happening with the process when the low thicknesses were produced."

 "No problem," I said, "I'll have them for you this afternoon."

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Real-Time X-ray Inspection
By Gil Zweig

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Real-time X-ray inspection systems have been used in quality assurance applications for more than 25 years. In electronics manufacturing, for example, X-ray inspection ensures the registration of drilled holes to internal pads of multilayer printed circuit boards. In electronic assembly applications, X-ray inspection ensures the quality of hidden solder bonds of surface-mounted components such as ball-grid arrays, as seen in figure 1 below.

Now real-time X-ray inspection is becoming an important tool for ensuring the quality of many medical devices. These devices incorporate a diversity of materials, including polymers, rubbers, steel, titanium, ceramics, and glass. Real-time systems employ fluoroscopic imaging devices to display the device’s X-ray image in a video format.

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2008 State Quality Awards Directory
By Quality Digest

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Welcome to Quality Digest’s 2008 State Quality Awards directory. On the following pages you’ll find a state-by-state summary of available awards, contact information and award summaries, including who may apply and deadline dates. We’ve done our best to include only the information that we’ve personally confirmed, but we nevertheless recommend that you contact award administrators directly to verify important dates, requirements and other critical data.

We wish you the best of luck on your journey to quality award recognition.

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Process Mapping for Knowledge Transfer
By George Pesansky

The challenge to increase productivity with fewer resources has lead to dozens of methodologies and toolkits to help organizations meet their objectives and become more profitable and effective.

One principle consistent with all those methodologies, and that makes enormous practical sense, is to leverage what you already know. This means harnessing the single greatest resource in any organization--the knowledge of its own people.

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Six Sigma
By Quality Digest

 

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Incredible as it seems, Six Sigma is now more than 20 years old and still going strong. The methodology saves companies huge sums of money by redefining processes and reducing defects. Long a staple of quality improvement at manufacturing plants, Six Sigma is now penetrating into sectors such as health care, government agencies, service organizations, and many more. Increasingly, lean precepts such as eliminating waste and more efficiently organizing workspaces have become integrated with Six Sigma project. The result, lean Six Sigma, has become prevalent across industry.

This section contains the Six Sigma Services and Software buyers guide. This directory can help you implement, maintain, and improve your organization’s Six Sigma efforts. Embracing the Six Sigma path often leads to stunning improvement in a very short period of time—the companies found in the following pages can help you get there. Those with the acronym “SVC” following their listing offer Six Sigma services; those with a “SW” offer Six Sigma software. Many, you’ll note, offer both.