Business
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Billie Traywick: Lessons Learned From a Career in a Male-Dominated Industry
- May 13, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Leadership
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I recently had a chance to ask some of my old colleagues to contribute a guest article to my blog. “What do you want us to write about?” they asked. “How about something you’ve learned in our years working together?” I said. Billie Traywick was the Controller at Duoline Technologies and VP of Operations at
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How Do You Quickly Pivot During a Crisis?
- April 25, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management
When you think of an aircraft carrier, you tend to think of them as slow-moving, unwieldy vessels that are best suited to going in a straight line and needing half a day just to execute a turn. But you would be wrong! A Nimitz-class aircraft carrier can make a 180-degree turn in a matter of
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What Goes into a Contingency Plan For Your Operation?
- April 11, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management
As we’re rolling into the coronavirus shutdown, and companies are working from home, or even furloughing workers until we can all go back to work, many companies are thinking about, dusting off, or even writing their contingency plan and disaster recovery plan. A disaster recovery plan is the (very large) document that tells you what
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What Goes Into a Disaster Recovery Plan?
- February 26, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management, Safety
We’ve had enough natural disasters over the last several years, that any company that doesn’t have a disaster recovery plan is just begging for a company-ending problem to hit them. A disaster recovery plan is the way your company can survive terrible tragedies, like a fire that sweeps through your building, a tornado or hurricane
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How to Work With a Manufacturing Consultant
- January 26, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Manufacturing, Productivity
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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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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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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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