Innovation
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How Do You Recession-Proof Your Business?
- October 23, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Innovation, Productivity
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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
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What a Tail-less Cheetah Can Teach Us About Partnerships
- June 26, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation, Management
Take a look at this video. It’s of a mother cheetah and her cub that I took while I was on a safari in Natal, South Africa. I used to own a company in South Africa in the 70s, and I like to return to South Africa from time to time to visit old friends.
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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
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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Lessons Learned During a Factory Refurbishment
- January 23, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation, Manufacturing
When we redesigned and refurbished an old fiberglass liner factory, one of my big concerns was worker safety. We had seen a lot of injuries in the plant over the years, and it was not a clean factory to begin with. We wanted something that was cleaner, could operate with fewer associates, and had more
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Innovation: Make Something When You Don’t Have the Equipment
- November 21, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation, Manufacturing
Sometimes I think we’re spoiled in this country (and I include myself in that sweeping generalization). For many companies, the solution to a problem is to throw money at it. Years ago, we had a plant that was faced with frequent absenteeism and drug test failures, a plant that created a lot of excess pollution
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How We Helped the Oil & Gas Industry Save Millions
- November 14, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation, Productivity
When it comes to innovation, some companies look for problems to fix and then fix them. That doesn’t mean they create the problems. Rather, they look for a problem or a pain point that people might have and then figure out a way to solve it. Then they market that solution and hope the people
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How Did We Prototype New Products and Research New Ideas?
- September 19, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation
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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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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Claudia Steed and the Be Uncommon Initiative
- May 23, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Innovation
I’m not a big fan of fitting in and being just another face in the crowd. I love standing out and being known for doing good and interesting things. So I started a philosophy at Robroy called Be Uncommon. It means, if you’re living in the shadow of giants, (i.e., your company is small and
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What Role is Automation Going to Play Over the Next 20 Years
- February 7, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation, Manufacturing
Believe it or not, automation and robotics are going to improve our economy and our employment numbers, and can even help improve the education of our workers. U.S. unemployment is low, we have a vibrant economy, and we’re likely to have selective immigration, which means if we’re going to continue to grow, we need to