David Marshall
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How Did We Prototype New Products and Research New Ideas?
- September 19, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation
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Whenever we worked on new products at Robroy, we would often have to prototype them, as well as research new ideas that would lead to new processes and systems. Of course, we couldn’t just create a new product and start producing it en masse; we had to research it, prototype it, and test it before
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Four Strategies for Reducing Workplace Injuries
- September 12, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Manufacturing, Safety
When you run a manufacturing facility, one of your biggest concerns could/should/will always be workplace injury. Manufacturing, with all of its moving parts and massive machines, are a risky place to work. And you can talk about safety all you want, but that doesn’t mean your workers will necessarily be safer. When I was at
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How Can You Retain Good People After Investing So Much In Them?
- September 5, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
With unemployment being as low as it is, it’s difficult to keep employees around because they can afford to be more mobile. People are more transitory. They often change companies to make more money, take a higher position, or even just because they want a change of scenery. They’ll even move from city to city
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How to Avoid Business Debt
- August 29, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Measurement
Business debt is the one killer to a company’s bottom line, and you need to avoid it whenever possible. If you’re not careful, you can get in over your head and spend most of your profits trying to dig out from it. Whenever I had a position of leadership in any organization, I always brought
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How to Earn Loyalty of Your Associates and Partners
- August 22, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
I shake my head sometimes when I hear executives complain about the lack of loyalty from their employees, and yet they never hesitate to lay off a bunch of them just to keep their shareholders happy. They treat their employees like replaceable cogs in a machine but are surprised when their employees leave for another
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How to Maintain the Right Inventory Levels
- August 15, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management, Measurement, Productivity
A serious problem facing many manufacturers is tying up cash reserves by keeping too much inventory or too many raw materials on hand. Finished products don’t move as quickly as you thought, or you made more than you needed “just in case,” or you bought a lot of raw materials because you got a bigger
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Should Manufacturers Pay for Education to Shore Up Skilled Labor Shortage?
- August 8, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation, Management, Manufacturing
There’s a skilled labor shortage in this country, but not the kind that you might think. While there are still plenty of people to fill regular manufacturing jobs, there are high-paying, skilled labor jobs that are going unfilled because the companies can’t find enough people with the degrees or training to actually do the work.
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How Can a Department Like HR Measure Itself?
- July 25, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Measurement
Plenty of people understand how relatively easy it is for a manufacturing operation to perform objective measurements on its output. Each machine is capable of performing X number of actions per hour, and each associate is also capable of producing X number of units in that hour. You can measure units produced, downtime, and even
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How Can You Reduce Your Transaction Costs?
- July 18, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Manufacturing, Productivity
In the non-manufacturing world, a transaction is an easy process. When you buy a shirt, you give money to the store, and they give you a shirt. That’s a transaction. In the manufacturing world, a transaction is a more involved process. A customer sends a purchase order that orders 1,000 shirts (normally, economists like to
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How Do You Measure the Cost Benefits of Safety?
- July 11, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Manufacturing, Measurement
You often hear about the costs of accidents and injuries to a company, and those are usually based on a specific incident or accident. For example, if an associate injures herself on the job and has to seek medical attention for $10,000, then the cost of that accident was $10,000. You also hear about cost