Final Four Trivia

Posted on March 31, 2011 by PQ Systems

No number one seeds advanced to this year’s Final Four in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament which is leaving many sports fans wondering if the bracket selection process has room to improve. (Perhaps they should use a flow chart to reassess their process and address some of these issues?) The last time all number one seeds made it to the Final Four was in 2008. How many times, including this season, have no number one seeds advanced to the Final Four?

Comment below with your guesses and we’ll reveal the correct answer on Monday, April 4th.

Rooting for the underdog?

Posted on March 24, 2011 by PQ Systems

Sixteen teams have made it through to the next round of the 2011 NCAA Men’s basketball tournament and among the teams are a few underdogs. (You know you love them!)

The CHARTrunner chart below shows the lowest seeds to ever make it to the Sweet 16. (Source: NCAA.org)

Which team is your favorite underdog this year?

Who made the cut again and again…

Posted on March 16, 2011 by PQ Systems

We’re celebrating the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament with some historical statistics directly from NCAA.org.

The following chart is a list of the top 25 universities who have the highest all-time #1 seed placements at the start of the tournament.

Which team are you rooting on to win the 2011 NCAA Men’s basketball tournament?

Software tip: GAGEpack printer issue

Posted on March 1, 2011 by David Shattuck

David Shattuck Shortly after GAGEpack 9.0 was released last fall, we began to get calls from users who were having trouble printing labels after upgrading to the new version. Naturally, our GAGEpack development team grew concerned, and launched an investigation to track down the problem and resolve it. Our findings surprised us.

After talking with users who were experiencing these problems and doing a hefty bit of testing internally, we were eventually able to isolate the trouble to those systems that were using all three of these components: GAGEpack 9.0, Windows XP, and Brother printers. Any user running a different version of GAGEpack, a different version of Windows, or a different type of printer would have no label problems at all.

This was an extremely peculiar conclusion, because we knew that each of those three components will work correctly on its own or combined with just one of the others. If GAGEpack 9.0 works fine with Windows XP and it works fine with a Brother printer, why do we see problems when GAGEpack 9.0 tries to work with both Windows XP and a Brother printer at the same time? It was quite a mystery. Our tech sleuths were all over it.

As it turns out, the trouble lies with the drivers that Brother has published to enable their printers to communicate with Windows XP. These drivers were last updated in March 2002. In software terms, they are ancient. This was not a problem in GAGEpack 8.5 because every version of GAGEpack released since the early 1990s had been written in Microsoft’s VB6 programming language. However, VB6 has been officially unsupported as a software development language since March 2008. GAGEpack 9.0 is written in the new VB.net, which was extremely young and not commonly used the last time the Brother Windows XP printer drivers were updated.

Windows XP is going to be around until at least April 2014, and we hope that Brother will update its antiquated drivers before then. In the meantime, if you are a GAGEpack 9.0 user struggling with this problem, we offer two solutions. The first option is to upgrade your operating system to a newer version of Windows. Windows Vista and Windows 7 both work great with the label printing. If you decide to go that route, I recommend Windows 7, for reasons far too numerous to discuss here. The second option is to replace your label printer. During our testing on this issue, we purchased a Dymo printer to replace the Brother p-touch that we’ve been using for many years. The new Dymo hasn’t given us any trouble.

Based on these findings, we’re recommending non-Brother printers to our customers who may be in the market for replacement printers.

Reader survey: Charity challenge results

Posted on February 8, 2011 by PQ Systems

In December, we asked you to tell us your favorite among four international charity groups. Our donation to these groups will be proportionate to the interest you have expressed. Thanks for your responses! Here are the results:

Data in everyday life: Top Super Bowl scores charted

Posted on February 4, 2011 by PQ Systems

High scores usually mean exciting games. What are the highest-scoring games in Super Bowl history? See this chart.

Source: http://betting.betfair.com/us-sports/nfl/super-bowl/the-5-highest-scoring-super-bowls-of-all-time-231210.html

An invitation to share: Help us support world charities

Posted on December 15, 2010 by PQ Systems

We invite you to help us celebrate this holiday season and wind up the final days of 2010 by voting for one of four international charitable organizations listed below. We will count the votes, and PQ Systems will make donations to these organizations, based on the proportions of those voting for each charity.

Click here to vote! – Voting is now closed.

International Committee of the Red Cross

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is an impartial, neutral and independent organization whose exclusively humanitarian mission is to protect the lives and dignity of victims of armed conflict and other situations of violence and to provide them with assistance.

Heifer International

Heifer International is a global nonprofit with a proven solution to ending hunger and poverty in a sustainable way. Heifer helps empower millions of families to lift them out of poverty and hunger to self-reliance through gifts of livestock, seeds and trees, and extensive training, which provide a multiplying source of food and income.

Doctors without Borders

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971. Today, MSF provides aid in nearly 60 countries to people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe, primarily due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from health care, or natural disasters. MSF provides independent, impartial assistance to those most in need. MSF reserves the right to speak out to bring attention to neglected crises, to challenge inadequacies or abuse of the aid system, and to advocate for improved medical treatments and protocols. In 1999, MSF received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Oxfam International

Oxfam is an international confederation of 14 organizations working together in 99 countries and with partners and allies around the world to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice. They work directly with communities and seek to influence the powerful to ensure that poor people can improve their lives and livelihoods and have a say in decisions that affect them.

Hurray! World Quality Month is here!

Posted on November 1, 2010 by PQ Systems

Remember National Quality Month? October was at one time designated in this way, to call attention to improvement of products and processes across the nation. PQ Systems celebrated at that time with an international quality conference, a giant banner posted across the front of our building, and ongoing articulation of our quality mission. World Quality Day was at that time celebrated in November.

The two have now combined, emphasizing the global realities of quality and its importance in an increasingly global trade system. November is the time to bring attention to the impact that attention to quality continues to have in every part of the world. In more sober economic times than those of past celebrations, banners and meetings may no longer be part of the mix, but we continue to expand the reach of our products and services that help organizations around the world demonstrate proof of their own quality.

To see how World Quality Month is being observed around the world, go to the ASQ blog: http://asq.org/blog

What are you doing to call attention to the quality of your products and processes?

Share your charting story, create a charting innovation

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Steve Daum

Steve Daum You are looking at a chart. You are going through an analysis and interpretation process. What data is being represented? How important is the data? Does the chart signal any changes? Does the chart show anything that is “bad” or “good?” Does the chart offer proof of quality?

Ultimately, you want to answer the question: is any action required based on what I see?

Now, think about the workflow leading up to this. How did the chart get created? How was the data gathered? What part of the process was difficult or error prone? Would it have been possible for you to miss this chart among your other tasks?

At PQ we’ve been pondering questions like these for more than twenty years. We are working hard on our products and services to reduce friction in your quality improvement processes. If you have a charting story to tell, please share it with us; who knows, it may lead to the next great quality improvement solution.

Software tip: GAGEmail – The secret treat included with GAGEpack

Posted on October 13, 2010 by David Shattuck

David Shattuck When I do a product demonstration of GAGEpack and I arrive at the segment where I talk about GAGEmail, I often find myself introducing it by saying, “I wish more people knew about this.” In fact, it is not uncommon for me to come across veteran GAGEpack users who are unaware that they have a program like GAGEmail at their disposal.

GAGEmail is a tiny program designed to run in the background and continuously scan GAGEpack databases to watch for upcoming gage servicing events. When it finds an event, it will e-mail a reminder to the person responsible for that gage. This proactive approach to calibration reminders makes GAGEmail unique among GAGEpack‘s notification methods. Normally, users must remember to remind themselves of upcoming events by checking their reports or filtered gage lists. With GAGEmail, the reminder is entirely automated.

In addition to being automated, these reminders are also quite flexible. The user can specify which types of events trigger e-mails, how far in advance of the event they should be sent, who should receive them, and what they should say.

The reason I wish more people knew about GAGEmail is because it does not cost anything extra to use; GAGEmail is included with every license of GAGEpack purchased since version 8.5. In order to use it, customers simply need to install it using their GAGEpack disk or download it directly from the GAGEpack page on our website.

As always, I am available to offer assistance with setting up GAGEmail. You can call me at 800-777-5060, e-mail me at support@pqsystems.com, or leave questions for me below.

PQ Systems – Quality Blog

Proof of quality.