Management

  • Your Company’s Management Style is Driving Off Employees

    • June 12, 2024
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Leadership, Management
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    Winston Churchill is one of my heroes and I look to him as a leader I admire.

    Manufacturing does not have the reputation of being progressive or forward-thinking when it comes to management style, allowing their employees to grow and develop, or considering their employees’ mental health and feelings. Maybe you think it’s soft and you think, “We never had any of that nonsense when I was young! We just sucked it

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  • No More Company Cars

    • June 5, 2024
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Business, Management
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    I upset a few people when I put an end to company cars. But they cheered right up when I gave them a car allowance instead that allowed them to get paid to drive their own car.

    I’ll admit, I hate the idea of company cars. They’re a royal pain in the ass and they cause a lot of problems and strife within a company. One thing I did whenever I started in any new leadership role at a company was to eliminate the company cars completely. After all, we were in

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  • Onboarding People Should Be About Finding Information

    • May 22, 2024
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Business, Management, Productivity, Safety
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    Safety training should be an ongoing effort, not just part of the initial onboarding

    When you’re inducting new people into your organization, it’s not uncommon to present them with a lot of information, reading of the manuals, showing them how to operate the company software, and to actually perform their job. In fact, the first few days of most onboarding processes are all about the rules, policies, and procedures

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  • Empower Your People to Become Leaders When They’re Not

    • May 15, 2024
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Business, Management
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    Empower your people to act as leaders even when they're not. Let them make their own decisions and come up with their own ideas.

    I think I’m going to upset a lot of people with this one, so let’s see what happens. One way to empower your people to become leaders when they’re not managers is to eliminate the concept of DEI. Before I get a lot of hate mail, hear me out on this. I don’t mean that

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  • How to Stay Competitive in a Global Market

    • April 24, 2024
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Innovation, Management
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    Staying competitive in a global market means finding what your customers want and your competitors don't make.

    We are truly in a global market these days, and the cost of production in the United States makes cheaper overseas production much more attractive to a lot of buyers. Despite the push to “Buy American” and other campaigns, overseas manufacturers are slashing costs and paying their workers a less-than-optimal wage. That makes it a

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  • The 5 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Every Manufacturer Should Measure

    • April 17, 2024
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Management, Manufacturing, Productivity
    No Comments
    If you're not measuring your KPIs, how will you ever know if you're succeeding or falling behind? Do you even know what your KPIs are?

    Every manufacturer keeps track of their output and how many units they’re making and selling each month. (At least I hope they are! I’ve seen some operations where that’s a valid question.) But not every manufacturer measures the same KPIs, but they’re absolutely critical to keep track of on a monthly, weekly, or even daily

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  • New Tech Doesn’t Always Solve Old Problems.

    • April 10, 2024
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Business, Management
    No Comments
    Before you invest in inventory management software, you should have a reliable inventory management system in place.

    Last week, I talked about how I made sure our organization had the right discipline when it came to adopting an inventory management system. My concern was that if we didn’t have the right processes in place and the discipline to stick with them, then a new piece of technology wasn’t going to solve the

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  • How Managers Can Keep Unions on Their Side

    • March 27, 2024
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Leadership, Management
    No Comments
    I always tried to keep unions on my side by never surprising them and making sure they agreed with my decisions.

    I had a rule as a manager that I would never take union leadership by surprise. If anything, despite the traditional “management versus the union” conflict, I always believed they were an important part of my team. For example, if I was ever thinking of initiating a new process or major idea, I would share

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  • How Do You Plan for a Disaster or Crisis?

    • March 13, 2024
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Leadership, Management, Manufacturing, Safety
    No Comments
    It's important that you plan for a crisis or emergency so you can get your operation back up and running right away.

    Planning for a disaster for your business is never fun, and it can even be a little depressing. That’s because planning for a disaster or crisis is basically dreaming up all the scenarios that can befall your business and then imagining the worst-case scenario. Then you have to come up with all the things that

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  • Perform an Annual ABC Analysis to Find New Profits

    • March 6, 2024
    • Posted by: David Marshall
    • Category: Management, Productivity
    No Comments
    An ABC Analysis involves the Pareto Principle where you identify your best-selling items and cut the lowest-selling items.

    According to the Pareto Principle (also called the 80/20 rule), you’re wasting a large portion of your time on items and customers that don’t actually have an ROI for you. That is, 20% of your customers bring in 80% of your results, and 20% of your inventory brings in 80% of your sales. Conversely, 80%

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