Productivity
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Building a Winning Team: Continuous Improvement and Development
- July 7, 2024
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Innovation, Measurement, Productivity
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Every manager dreams of building a winning team. Every boss dreams of having a winning department. Every sergeant dreams of commanding a winning squad. Members doing the high-quality work that needs to be done, fulfilling every function, completing every pass, every play, every task, every order, and functioning as a single unit with a single
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Onboarding People Should Be About Finding Information
- May 22, 2024
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management, Productivity, Safety
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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The 5 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Every Manufacturer Should Measure
- April 17, 2024
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Manufacturing, Productivity
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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Perform an Annual ABC Analysis to Find New Profits
- March 6, 2024
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Productivity
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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Three Steps to Streamline the Hiring Process in the Digital Manufacturing Era
- July 19, 2023
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Management, Productivity
Hiring 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