QMS & EMS London

The 2nd Maintenance Squadron’s Precision Measurement Equipment Laboratory (PMEL) at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier, Louisiana, calibrates and maintains an inventory of more than 6,700 pieces of equipment for Team Barksdale. With countless tools and test equipment used by ground crews every day, one shop is responsible for maintaining the standard of accuracy and calibration of the equipment. By ensuring the most accurate tools and equipment at Barksdale, the PMEL streamlines workflow and saves the Air Force money by having one centralized location on base.

For the better part of five decades, commercial access to space has been limited by the high cost of flight operations. However, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) has rewritten the rules by adopting a new business model and cutting-edge technologies to enhance reliability and reduce the cost of space access. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy (currently under development) will be the world’s most powerful rocket, with three Falcon 9 cores and more than twice the payload-to-orbit capacity of the space shuttle, but at only one-third the cost. It is expected to be the first rocket to break the $1,000-per-pound-to-orbit barrier, less than a tenth as much as the NASA space shuttle.

With an ever increasing of people continuously migrating to cities to enjoy a better quality of life, the quality of our environment is suffering as a consequence. The theme of Earth Day 2014 is Green Cities, which will help to raise awareness of just how important it is to sustainably address these issues and ease the pressure placed on our environment. Cities all over the world will take action, but a number of them are already leading by example... Ecocleen has created an infographic highlighting the top 30 greenest cities on the planet. Enjoy.

They've got a real problem on their hands in America. A gap is growing between manufacturing workers set to retire in the next 10 to 15 years and the workers needed to fill their vacancies. Despite the exciting and innovative things happening in the manufacturing industry, Millennials’ outdated perception of shop-floor jobs is increasingly precluding them from following the manufacturing career path. And Gen-Z, thumb deep in their smart phones, have an even greater disconnect. The reality is manufacturing continues to evolve with other industries. Many of today’s workers have tech-savvy jobs that require using software to model products with 3D visualization tools, mining big data with analytics, and automating assembly with robotics. From procurement to design, building, delivery, and service, there are considerable opportunities for the workforce—not to mention extensive room for growth—at some of the world’s largest companies.

Part one of this series discussed the importance of increasing visibility into adverse events to assess their criticality and apply corrective action if necessary. In this instalment we will look into another essential element of the quality management system (QMS): document control... or lack thereof.