Business
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What Signals a Recession?
- October 16, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Measurement
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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
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Is Manufacturing Output Really Going Up?
- October 9, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Manufacturing, Productivity
There’s all kinds of talk that the manufacturing economy is heading for a recession, even as manufacturing output is on the rise. But you may be wondering how we even know this, especially as the rest of the economy seems to be doing so well, including having low unemployment in the U.S. When it comes
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What Is Standard Costing in a Manufacturing System?
- September 11, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Manufacturing, Measurement
If you’re new to manufacturing, you’ll soon learn about a standard costing system, which is the standard cost of an item including material, labor, and overhead. This creates an inventory value, which is not the selling price of the inventory, but the production costs of it. For example, if it costs you $150,000 to make
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Are You Serving on a Good or Bad Board of Directors?
- August 28, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Leadership, Management
As someone who has served on a board of directors at different times, I pay attention to corporate and nonprofit boards. A few weeks ago, I received an email newsletter from a fellow named Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures about his experience with boards of directors and the two types of problematic boards. He
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How Do Executives Deal With Impostor Syndrome?
- June 5, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business
I hear from a lot of people about their struggles with Impostor Syndrome, the fear that you’re not good enough for the job you’re supposed to do, and that you’re going to be discovered and outed as a fraud. The truth is the people who get Impostor Syndrome are not actual impostors. If anything, they’re
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Customer Confidence is Lost or Gained on Product Quality
- May 29, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Manufacturing, Productivity
A couple of weeks ago, I talked about how my old company changed an industry-standard method of production and acceptance of product quality by creating our own homegrown manufacturing process and instituting a policy of measuring every step of the process including cleanliness of the raw materials. Before that time, the standard reject rate was
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Managers Should Train With Employees
- May 8, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management
A few months ago, I talked about the importance of manufacturers providing training for their employees, especially if they were adopting new technology and processes. You could send your people off to a training school or your vendor partner to learn the new technology. Another option is to pay some of your vendor partners to
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The Downside of Digital Transformation
- February 27, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management, Measurement
While I’m generally high on digital transformation in this blog and talking about the upsides and positive benefits that come from it, I’m well aware that there are downsides to digital transformation. For one thing, artificial intelligence is not the panacea to all of your problems. You can’t just get an AI package, dump all
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Managers, not HR, Should Spend Time Doing Talent Recruiting
- November 28, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management
When it comes to finding new talent, the onus shouldn’t be on Human Resources to do all the work. HR can find potential talent by ticking off all the boxes, but it’s ultimately the manager who should be responsible for testing the individual skill sets and determining whether they would be a cultural and talent
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How Much Influence Should Employers Have In Employees’ Personal Lives?
- September 26, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management
There are all kinds of stories about social media misbehavior. In the early days of social media, there were plenty of stories about people who would complain about their jobs or their supervisors on Facebook and Twitter only to be fired once the company found out about it. Even today, there are stories of people