Productivity
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Three Steps to Streamline the Hiring Process in the Digital Manufacturing Era
- July 19, 2023
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Management, Productivity
No CommentsHiring workers, regardless of the era, has been all about people. Too many companies are trying to streamline the hiring process and automate it, and they’re missing some real gems. You can’t walk away from the interpersonal parts of hiring, but companies are trying, and they’re losing out on the possibility of hiring a superstar
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How to Improve Your Workers’ Skills in the Digital Manufacturing Era
- July 12, 2023
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Productivity
A friend once told me a story: He worked for a software company as their sales and marketing director. This was a small company serving a small niche audience. The owner of the company insisted that my friend enhance his skills to cover different roles at the company. So he wanted my friend to learn
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Why You Should Provide Cross-Training to Your Employees
- June 28, 2023
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Manufacturing, Productivity
Cross-training is going to be a critical function of the work you do in your factory. Not only does it help your workforce and their mental health, it increases their skills and makes them more valuable to your organization. But more importantly, it also reduces the risk of injury. Years ago, when I was at
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When Should You Do Maintenance and Repairs On Your Machines? Why?
- June 21, 2023
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Manufacturing, Productivity, Safety
Your factory’s maintenance program should be ongoing, not as a repair-as-needed reactive process. You need to be as proactive and preventative as possible. Basically, there are two kinds of maintenance you should be doing: 1) Heavy maintenance and 2) Running maintenance. Heavy maintenance:Once a year when you check everything and do all the heavy stuff
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Increasing Productivity Doesn’t Always Mean Working Harder
- June 14, 2023
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation, Management, Manufacturing, Productivity
As much as I hate to say it, the key to increased productivity really is “work smarter, not harder.” But it’s more than just finding little tricks and hacks that help people do their job much faster, or having people start working a little faster than they were before. If you really want to increase
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Remote Work is Hurting Professional Growth
- August 10, 2022
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management, Productivity
Last week, I wrote about how remote work is ruining water cooler conversations and making it harder for people to have those simple conversations that lead to great innovations. I said: Or they have a company culture where it’s acceptable to pop in on a colleague at their cubicle or desk. In open-concept offices, people
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We’re Missing the Water Cooler Conversations
- August 3, 2022
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Productivity
The American workforce has been largely working remotely for the last two years, and for the most part, everyone has loved it. (Well, almost everyone. I’m not a fan of it.) They love working at home, they don’t miss the commute, and many people are even leaving their jobs (without another one in the wings)
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Is There Still a Place for Old-School Manufacturing?
- October 13, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation, Manufacturing, Productivity
In these days of digital manufacturing and additive manufacturing, there’s still a call for old-school manufacturing with hydraulic presses, forging and extruding metal products, stamping and punching, and so on. There’s still a call for old-school manufacturing because there are some things that you just can’t automate. One reason is that you don’t have scale,
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Automation Makes Work (and Life) Better For Workers
- August 18, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Manufacturing, Productivity
Automation is changing the face of manufacturing. It may be taking away some of the low-paying jobs, but it’s also taking people away from the heavy, backbreaking work on the floor. It’s giving people new opportunities to do much easier work and to even learn new skills and gain new knowledge. That leads to higher-paying
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Apply the “Touch It Once” Productivity Principle to Manufacturing
- June 9, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Manufacturing, Productivity
I often hear about the “Touch It Once” principle from productivity experts. The idea is that as soon as you pick up an item — say, an email or a piece of mail — you deal with it immediately. You don’t set it down to do later, you deal with it at that moment. That