Manufacturing
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Greenfielding can Help Integrate Several New Pieces of Tech Into a Manufacturing Facility
- January 8, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Manufacturing
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How do you bring 10 new projects together at once? If you’re looking to make major wholesale changes in your operation, how do you do it without interrupting the flow of what’s already there? How do you revamp an entire facility, replace old machines with new ones, old processes with new, and even old mindsets
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Innovative Companies Need to Devote Resources toward Smart Manufacturing Technology
- December 18, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Manufacturing
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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Why Hiring is Going Down While Output or Skilled Labor Hiring is Going Up
- December 11, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Manufacturing, Productivity
Depending on which news source you read, manufacturing jobs are on the rise or they’re dropping faster than gravity. Some states are seeing major layoffs, while other states have hundreds, or even thousands, of new job openings for manufacturing labor, especially skilled labor. The overall trend seems to be on an upward slope for a
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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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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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When Should Companies Adopt Manufacturing Automation?
- September 25, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Manufacturing
We’ve already decided that manufacturing automation is eventually going to be a commonplace manufacturing method. But when and how much is up to each individual company. Will they embrace it quickly and try to transform the entire company? Will a new company try to build itself on manufacturing automation? Or will older, larger companies slowly
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Manufacturing Automation: Don’t Laugh at the Bear That’s About to Eat You
- September 18, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Manufacturing
Manufacturing automation is changing the workplace and changing our jobs, and we can’t ignore it or pretend it’s not going to happen to our industry. It happened before in the 1970s and ’80s when simple robotic arms began handling some of the tedious lifting and placing of heavier and unwieldy objects, like car doors and
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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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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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Four Things to Know Before Undertaking Digital Transformation
- May 22, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Manufacturing
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