David Marshall
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How to Work With a Manufacturing Consultant
- January 26, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Manufacturing, Productivity
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Manufacturers that want to work with a manufacturing consultant can easily find someone who will walk into your business, pick your pockets, and leave, never feeling a sense of ownership of the outcome. But very few consultants can actually deliver on the improvements they promise, so the best way is to pay a manufacturing consultant
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What Will Manufacturing Look Like 50 Years From Now?
- January 19, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Manufacturing
Industry Week recently asked what manufacturing will look like 50 years from now. Author Irene Patrick, senior director of the Industrial Innovation/IIoT Group, Intel, wrote about the eight driving factors that she thought manufacturers would be facing around 2070. It was an interesting prediction, and it’s a fun mental exercise to imagine the machines I
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How Much Should Manufacturing Be Concerned About the Environment?
- January 15, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
Like it or not, whether you believe in climate change or not, the manufacturing industry should be very concerned about the environment, period. I certainly understand a lot of industry is living with legacy technology, dealing with machines that are 50 – 60 years old but are still operational. And legacy tech does not recognize
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Greenfielding can Help Integrate Several New Pieces of Tech Into a Manufacturing Facility
- January 8, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Manufacturing
How do you bring 10 new projects together at once? If you’re looking to make major wholesale changes in your operation, how do you do it without interrupting the flow of what’s already there? How do you revamp an entire facility, replace old machines with new ones, old processes with new, and even old mindsets
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Don’t Fall In Love With Your Deals
- December 24, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management
As a manager or a salesperson, you’re going to have plenty of opportunities to make all kinds of deals, partnerships, and financially-beneficial arrangements with other parties. Whether it’s a project you’re going to sell, services you’re going to buy, or even the purchase of, or merger with, another company. The problem is that many of
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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
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