David Marshall
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Innovative Companies Need to Devote Resources toward Smart Manufacturing Technology
- December 18, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Manufacturing
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With today’s smart manufacturing technology, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, sophisticated measurement technology, and better/deeper analytics, companies that aren’t taking advantage of these advances are almost certainly doomed to fail. A recent article on SupplyChainBrain.com wondered whether smart factories could revive the productivity of U.S. manufacturing. Short answer, yes. Long answer, very much so.
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Why Hiring is Going Down While Output or Skilled Labor Hiring is Going Up
- December 11, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Manufacturing, Productivity
Depending on which news source you read, manufacturing jobs are on the rise or they’re dropping faster than gravity. Some states are seeing major layoffs, while other states have hundreds, or even thousands, of new job openings for manufacturing labor, especially skilled labor. The overall trend seems to be on an upward slope for a
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How Do you Get Your Staff to Buy Into Your Goals?
- December 4, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
When you’re a leader, getting your staff to buy into your goals and overall vision is not just a transactional event. You don’t just offer them something in exchange for supporting you. It’s not their job to automatically buy into your vision. And you can’t just do it because you’re the boss. That’s not leadership,
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What are the Economics of Sustainability vs. Remediation?
- November 27, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Leadership, Safety
Companies that spend a lot of money on remediation, and are doing it only to avoid penalties and fines, are going to end up having bigger and more expensive problems than they were hoping for. When I was at Robroy, we had an old Duoline factory that was costing us $2.5 million every year in
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Philosophy of Constant Cleaning in a Factory
- November 20, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Productivity, Safety
A friend was recently telling me about when he worked in a restaurant. When there were only a few customers, his manager used to say, “If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean,” which is something I’ve heard myself over the years. It’s an important sentiment in some situations, like waiting tables at a
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Who Should Lead and Fund Retraining, Government or Business?
- November 13, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Productivity
During the Obama administration, the federal government put a lot of money into retraining and education for workers who had lost their jobs due to the 2008 recession. And while I think it was a good idea for the government to help fix the economy in this way, I wondered if government was really the
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How Can Lenders Help Small Businesses to Grow and Succeed
- November 6, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Manufacturing
I’m not a fan of business credit or companies taking out big bank loans in order to buy a piece of equipment. When I was the President of Robroy, I always made sure we had the cash available to purchase machinery, and that there was an ROI to replace what we had spent. However, there
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Why Not Just Cut Everyone’s Hours During a Downturn?
- October 30, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management
When you see that an economic downturn is on the horizon, just like the one we’re seeing now, the knee-jerk temptation for many managers is to start making layoffs and staffing cutbacks. “We need to reduce expenses by 10 percent, so let’s just cut 10 percent of the workforce.” That works in the short run,
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How Do You Recession-Proof Your Business?
- October 23, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Innovation, Productivity
Trying to recession-proof your business is like hurricane-proofing your house. Now, we don’t get many (actually, any) hurricanes in Central Texas, but I’ve got friends in Florida who tell me all about it. They tell me the hurricane-prep is almost comical to watch: Five days before a major hurricane will make landfall, all the people
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What Signals a Recession?
- October 16, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Measurement
I believe we’re in a global manufacturing recession, it just hasn’t been fully reported yet. If you look at the quarterly earnings reports of the U.S. stock exchange, we don’t see that many companies that are showing top-line revenue growth, or they’re only showing very minimal revenue growth, which could be part of a price