3+ hour, 17+ min ago   (1306+ words) Susan Holt Simpson / Unsplash Some of my colleagues have recently been pushing multivariate charts. These charts combine several different process outcome values into a single number that’s placed on a chart. Unfortunately, this theoretically elegant approach breaks down in practice…...

3+ hour, 10+ min ago   (514+ words) There’s a number that stopped me in my tracks recently. U.S. manufacturers spent about $32 billion training and upskilling their people—a 22% jump from 2019—and the average worker now logs close to five more training hours a year than they did…...

1+ day, 3+ hour ago   (1092+ words) When I began working in electronics nearly three decades ago, environmental compliance was relatively linear: Identify a regulatory change, contact suppliers, review evidence, update product status, and retain the records. That model still matters, but it’s no longer enough. Regulations…...

1+ week, 1+ day ago   (446+ words) Traditionally, engineering, manufacturing, and service teams have worked in separate systems with limited visibility into one another’s processes. This fragmentation often creates gaps in traceability, slows decision-making, and makes it difficult to identify the downstream effects of engineering changes. The…...

1+ week, 2+ day ago   (745+ words) As this article is being written, the (final draft) FDIS ISO 9001:2026 global vote has concluded, and we should soon see the new published requirements. If published as drafted, which is widely expected, one of the most significant changes is an…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago   (1202+ words) The vision system scanned the part and logged a pass. The SPC chart stayed inside its control limits. The line kept moving. Three weeks later, the customer complaint arrived. The defect had been there the whole time, sitting just inside…...

3+ week, 3+ hour ago   (247+ words) Every industry has blind spots. Sometimes the problem is not a lack of expertise, or even information, but of connection. But there’s the rub: AI used correctly. And who decides what is correct? Octave is paving the way for not…...

3+ week, 2+ day ago   (784+ words) Manufacturers are exploring artificial intelligence, but most are still struggling to scale it across operations. According to the latest Sikich Manufacturing Industry Pulse survey, 92% of manufacturers are actively exploring AI, yet roughly three-quarters of respondents remain in research or pilot…...

4+ week, 4+ hour ago   (1305+ words) Vitaly Gariev / Unsplash A third source for this hazardous idea that the XmR chart requires normality is a failure to understand what standard deviations tell us. Regardless of what probability model you may use, you will always have approximately 95% within…...

4+ week, 4+ hour ago   (390+ words) The next advantage in business will come from leaders who can manage machine labor as deliberately as they manage people. Professor Ethan Mollick at Wharton framed this as AI management after watching executive MBA students use ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Claude…...