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58 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2021 identify waste and capitalize on removing the waste and streamlining. This is all part of the continuous improvement process. As you be- gin 2021, review how you have become leaner during 2020. See what you have done as a re- action due to mandated restrictions, and then apply that proactively now that you had to plunge into it without thought. Now you can take a better look at becoming lean and take advantage of what this discipline can provide. Cheers to 2021! Be safe. Let's go! PCB007 Todd Kolmodin is VP of quality for Gardien Services USA and an expert in electrical test and reliability issues. To read past columns or contact Kolmodin, click here. virtual formats. In-person meetings have gone to cloud-based platforms such as Zoom, Micro- soft Teams and other options. Telecommuting has reduced cost and studies have shown actu- al improvements in productivity. Virtual busi- ness has become extremely popular as world- wide meetings can take place with no travel re- quired. In short, it's working. In manufacturing, many companies have been forced to reduce staff and hours while still providing the service their customers and part- ners expect, especially in the sectors deemed as "essential." This requires adjustments with reduced staff. Cross-training and multi-tasking with the reduced force is another example of becoming leaner. Becoming lean is a discipline of evaluating tasks, processes, layouts and inventories to Magnetars are spinning stellar remnants, left over from the explosion of massive stars. Magnetars stand out for their extreme magnetic fields: more than 100 trillion times stronger than Earth's magnetic field. STARE2 consists of three radio receivers, each about the size of a large bucket. They are located at Caltech's Owens Valley Radio Observatory; the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex operated by JPL; and near the town of Delta, Utah. STARE2 is not nearly as sen- sitive as CHIME but has a wider field of covering the whole visible sky and observes radio frequencies twice as high as those seen by CHIME. In addition to radio waves, other telescopes in space detected elec- tromagnetic radiation coming from the same area of the sky, specifically from a magnetar called SGR 1935+2154 (SGR 1935 for short). NASA's Swift and Fer- mi observatories, for example, which observe X-rays and gamma rays, re- spectively, picked up rumblings from the magnetar on April 27, the day before the massive radio blast. Other telescopes observed X-ray bursts simultaneously with the radio burst. (Caltech) A suite of radio antennas, including those making up Caltech's STARE2 (Survey for Transient Astronomical Ra- dio Emission 2) project, together with other ground- and space-based observatories, have captured over- whelming evidence to help unlock the mysterious cause of cosmic blasts known as fast radio bursts, or FRBs. These ultrafast radio flashes originate from distant galaxies, but until now, no one could say what was causing them. Researchers now demonstrate that the answer to the riddle likely involves a dead magnetic star called a magnetar. A Magnificent Burst from Within Our Galaxy