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Quality

E-Baldrige Can Help Assess, Improve Your Organization

A new, web-based tool called e-Baldrige Organizational Profile can help determine whether an organization is ready to use the performance excellence criteria for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award as a way to assess and improve performance.

The e-Baldrige tool asks a series of questions regarding an organization’s environment; relationships with customers, suppliers and other partners; and challenges. Other questions focus on describing your organization’s competitive environment, key strategic challenges and system for performance improvement. Questions include, “What is your organizational culture?” “What are your key customers’ requirements for your products and services?” “What are your key strategic challenges?” and “How do you maintain an organizational focus on performance improvement?”

Using e-Baldrige takes only a few minutes and will help identify key gaps and areas for which an organization has conflicting, little or no information. Being able to develop an organizational profile is the starting point for self-assessment as well as submitting an application for the Baldrige Award. In conjunction with e-Baldrige, a very popular beginner’s manual to Baldrige called Getting Started with the Baldrige National Quality Program has been updated and also can help an organization assess its strengths and develop a plan for improvement.

The e-Baldrige Organizational Profile, the Getting Started brochure, the Baldrige performance excellence criteria, and other tools and information are available on-line at www.quality.nist.gov or by calling (301) 975-2036.

Media Contact:
Jan Kosko, (301) 975-2767

 

 

Performance Excellence

New Video, CD Spotlight Strategies of 2000 Baldrige Recipients

NIST has released a new set of audiovisual materials showcasing the 2000 recipients of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the Baldrige National Quality Program. A VHS videocassette contains two versions of a program (short at 13:30 minutes and long at 53:30 minutes) that features the successful strategies of the award’s latest honorees: Dana Corp.-Spicer Driveshaft Division, KARLEE, Operational Management International Inc. and the Los Alamos National Bank.

Also included on the videocassette are “A Journey Worth Beginning,” encouraging organizations to apply for the Baldrige Award; “A Uniquely Rewarding Experience,” explaining the role of the examiners who evaluate award applications; and “Take the Journey: A Baldrige Invitation to Small Business,” featuring the CEOs of the small business award recipients discussing how Baldrige helped them improve performance. A CD-ROM package includes all five video programs, as well as the Baldrige Performance Excellence Criteria for 2001, presentations given by the 2000 award recipients at the Quest for Excellence XIII conference held April 22-25, 2001,and other information.

The audiovisual materials are available from the American Society for Quality, P.O. Box 3066, Milwaukee, Wis. 53201, (800) 248-1946. Item no. T1092 is the CD ROM for $35. Item TA997 is the videocassette for $20.

For more information on the Baldrige National Quality Program or the Baldrige Award recipients, contact the Baldrige National Quality Program, (301) 975-2036, nqp@nist.gov, or see the BNQP web site at www.quality.nist.gov.

Media Contact:
Jan Kosko, (301) 975-2767

 

 

 

Information Technology

June Symposium Showcases Interactive Digital TV

The arrival of interactive digital television is creating exciting opportunities for TV producers, advertisers, broadcasters, consumer electronic manufacturers, the computer industry and more than 240 million American viewers.

Interactive DTV is the convergence of traditional television, computers and the Internet. This combination will lead to new forms of electronic commerce, video-on-demand, targeted advertising, enhanced viewing experiences and broad applications such as electronic learning and health care.

NIST is hosting the second annual Digital TV Application Software Environment (known as DASE) international symposium on June 19-20, 2001, at the agency’s Gaithersburg, Md., headquarters. The symposium on interactive TV and the emerging standards in the industry will include sessions on topics of interest to the entertainment industry, broadcasters, consumer electronics manufacturers, software developers and computer hardware manufacturers. Speakers will include representatives from companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Nielsen Media Research, Sharp Labs, Sony Electronics and Sun Microsystems. Gloria Tristani, commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission, will be the keynote speaker.

DASE Symposium 2001 is co-sponsored by the Convergent Information Systems Division of NIST’s Information Technology Laboratory and the Advanced Television Systems Committee.

More information about DASE Symposium 2001, including access to online registration and a complete agenda, is available at www.dase2001.nist.gov. For information on the NIST and ATSC T3/S17 consortium's collaborative effort to develop a DASE standard, go to www.dase.nist.gov.

Media Contact:
Philip Bulman, (301) 975-5661

 

 

 

Materials

Microtester 'Stresses' Electronic Packaging

Throughout its 100-year history, NIST has been known as a leader in testing large objects (such as bridges, cars and sections of ship hulls) for stress and strain effects. Now, NIST’s Materials Reliability Division in Boulder, Colo., has added stress and strain testing at the other end of the spectrum with a new ability to test electronic interconnects at the micrometer level.

Today’s electronic products, such as cell phones or personal computers, contain complex microchips that can be subject to the same stress and strain as a bridge girder or a train rail. To measure resistance to these stresses, NIST has developed special mechanical test apparatus and techniques. A recent technical paper discusses a microscale “skyhook” type tensile-test technique that has been used successfully to evaluate electron-beam-evaporated aluminum films with gauge sections one micrometer by 10 micrometers by 180 micrometers, under both optical and scanning electron microscopes.

The “skyhook” is a sharp-pointed tungsten rod whose tip is slightly blunted to match the diameter of a hole in the specimen. It is mounted on a base instrumented for force measurement and the combination is called the “force probe.” Platforms for the microscopes used with this system accommodate a three-axis micromanipulator to hold the force probe. During the test, tension is provided by moving the appropriate axis of the micromanipulator. The force signal from the deflection of the springs on the force probe and the axial displacement of the micromanipulator are recorded several times a second. Surface images of the deforming specimen are stored every few seconds.

This procedure for tensile testing of thin films is believed to be the first that has been demonstrated to be applicable to specimens fabricated through a conventional commercial CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Silicon) process. The specimen footprint, approximately 400 micrometers by 700 micrometers, can be accommodated within a test chip. Only the postprocessing step to remove the silicon from beneath the specimen is non-standard.

To obtain a copy of paper 13-01 describing the microscale tester, contact Sarabeth Harris, NIST, MC 104, Boulder, Colo. 80305-3328; (303) 497-3237; sarabeth@boulder.nist.gov.

Media Contact:
Fred McGehan, (303) 497-3246

 

 

 

Electronics Manufacturing

Data Exchange Standards Advance

Back-and-forth exchanges of engineering data within the complex web of makers of market-ready electronics products, contract providers of manufacturing services, and suppliers of components and materials just got easier—as well as faster, cheaper and more efficient.

These are the benefits to be gained from a new set of data-exchange interfaces devised by 16 industry, government and university collaborators and now moving into the realm of Internet-based business practices. The so-called Product Data eXchange (or PDX) suite of specifications was developed by the Virtual Factory Information Interchange Project, an effort organized by the National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative and led by NIST, Intel Corp. and Celestica Inc.

In late April, the first PDX specifications passed a major milestone toward widespread industry adoption. The 400-company RosettaNet consortium approved six Partner Interface Processes™ that are based on VFIIP-developed interfaces. These same specifications also are progressing toward formal adoption as standards by the IPC-Association Connecting Electronics Industries, a trade organization with nearly 2,700 members.

Use of the VFIIP’s technical outputs by both RosettaNet and IPC was pursued from the start of the project. Joint adoption ensures consistency in standards, reducing the potential for incompatibilities that undermine data exchanges and impede progress toward more effectively integrated supply chains, explains NIST’s Barbara Goldstein, a leader of the VFIIP. These standards and others under development take Internet-mediated business dealings beyond procurement/order fulfillment and into the domains of design, manufacturing and assembly.

For more information on the status of product data exchange standards generated by VFIIP to date, visit the NEMI web site at www.nemi.org and click on “Press Kit: RosettaNet Conference Demo.” For more information on the project and NIST’s participation, contact Barbara Goldstein, (301) 975-2304, barbara.goldstein@nist.gov. A description of NIST’s technical work can be found at www.eeel.nist.gov/811/manufacture.html. Information on the IPC’s proposed 2570 series of supply chain communication standards is available at www.gencam.org/html/standards/productstds2510.html#2570.

Media Contact:
Philp Bulman, (301) 975-5661

 

 

 

Manufacturing

History of Pioneering NIST Facility Chronicled

Automating the Future: A History of the Automated Manufacturing Research Facility 1980-1995 (NIST SP 967), recently published by NIST as part of its centennial celebration, chronicles 15 years of collaboration between government, industry and academia that linked robots, computers and machine tools into what American Machinist magazine once called “the free world’s largest and most advanced public research facility for the study of automated manufacturing.”

The 98-page book recounts the effort that led to one of the first demonstrations of the feasibility of an automated factory. It highlights metrological, technological and management innovations that not only contributed to the success of the AMRF but have now found their place in factories across the nation. These include robotic technologies such as grippers, quick change wrists and image processors; machine tool innovation such as laser interferometer tracking devices, tool wear monitors and special magnet-resistant skin; and standards promoting seamless interfacing between computers.

Readers of Automating the Future will understand how the AMRF’s achievements illustrate the benefit of multisector sharing of expertise and knowledge; provide insight into how recent manufacturing advances have shaped industry and government; and show the impact of automated manufacturing on the American economy.

A single copy of Automating the Future: A History of the Automated Manufacturing Research Facility 1980-1995 is available by contacting Barbara Horner, (301) 975-3400, barbara.horner@nist.gov. Multiple copies may be ordered after May 30, 2001, from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402; (202) 512-1800. Ask for stock no. 003-003-03679-0.

Media Contact:
John Blair, (301) 975-4261