Digital Transformation

  • 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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    Smart manufacturing technology can reduce labor costs and increase productivity and profits.

    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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  • Improve Productivity in the Back Office

    • August 7, 2019
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Digital Transformation, Measurement
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    New technologically-advanced machines can help you improve productivity in your factory.

    When you embrace measurement as a way to improve productivity of your manufacturing processes, you’ll find all sorts of problems you never knew existed. When we started measuring everything at Robroy, we not only found different problems and issues in different facets of our manufacturing facilities, we discovered that there was a 16 percent rejection

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  • Four Things to Know Before Undertaking Digital Transformation

    • May 22, 2019
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Digital Transformation, Manufacturing
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    Manufacturing equipment. Your equipment will even change in a digital transformation.

    Taking on a digital transformation — not just switching from an analog process to a computerized one — but actually transforming your manufacturing process from a staff-and-labor driven process to one that’s managed more by computers is going to be a serious undertaking. We underwent a digital transformation at a Duoline factory I ran several

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  • Can 3D Printing Change Your ABC Analysis?

    • April 24, 2019
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Digital Transformation, Manufacturing
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    This industrial 3D printer can print out furniture. It's the future of 3D printing and manufacturing. It's amazing what 3D printing can do to a company's inventory costs.

    Companies that regularly perform an ABC analysis on their products may be able to change how often they cut their products and reduce their inventory if they could embrace 3D printing. It would help them reduce the amount of inventory and raw materials they store, which could make some nonprofitable items profitable ones. Here’s how.

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  • How to Use Digital Transformation and Evolution In Your Manufacturing Company

    • March 27, 2019
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Digital Transformation, Manufacturing
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    The panel discussing digital transformation at the Plastics News Executive Forum in Naples, FL, March 2019

    A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of serving on a panel — Digital Transformation and Plastics Manufacturing — at the Plastics Executive Conference in Naples, Florida. The panel was moderated by my good friend, Nanette Gregory, senior partner at NSG Consulting, and I was joined by Rajiv Menon, founder of Informulate; Gary Stein,

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  • Panel Discussion: Digital Transformation and Plastics Manufacturing

    • March 20, 2019
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Digital Transformation, Leadership, Manufacturing
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    The panel discussion at the Plastics News Executive Forum.

    A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of serving on a panel at the Plastics Executive Conference in Naples, Florida. The panel was entitled Digital Transformation and Plastics Manufacturing, and it was moderated by my good friend, Nanette Gregory, senior partner at NSG Consulting. I was joined by Rajiv Menon, founder of Informulate; Gary

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  • How We Used Automation to Increase Productivity, Reduce Errors, and Reduce Waste

    • March 6, 2019
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Digital Transformation, Innovation
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    A factory automation system in Germany, not the automation system I oversaw at Robroy.

    Several years ago, when I was the president of Robroy, we were faced with a problem of how to deal with an old business that was run down, obsolete, and had an employee retention problem (we would lose 20% of our workforce every time we conducted a random drug test). This was my world without

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  • What Life Was Like Before AI and Digital Transformation

    • February 20, 2019
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Digital Transformation, Measurement
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    The fiberglass line at our old Duoline factory.

    For some executives, it’s hard to imagine life before artificial intelligence and digital transformation. There’s always been automation and computers helping facilitate decision making and measurement. But I know that pre-AI world all too well, having spent most of my career in that part of the manufacturing history. The result was often poor quality, stifled

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