manufacturing management
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How to Handle Firing Someone: A Practical Approach
- September 20, 2023
- Posted by: Nanette Gregory
- Category: Business, Leadership, Management, Manufacturing
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Firing someone can be a challenging and emotional task for any employer or manager. You often have empathy for the other person, you're worried about their future and their family, and some small part of you (hopefully) is concerned about their well-being. But as the leader, it's your job to protect the company. You have -
How Has Manufacturing Leadership Changed In the Last 40 Years
- July 5, 2023
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Manufacturing
The more leadership changes, the more it stays the same. This is true for manufacturing leadership, if not leadership in general. In a lot of ways, the things it takes to be a leader now are not the same things it took back in the 70s, but in some ways, they’re exactly the same. Back
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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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Want to Be Lean? Improve Customer Value
- April 21, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Manufacturing
So many companies have bought into the Lean philosophy, which can be downright silly at times. Not that the idea of streamlined operations is silly. Not at all. When I think of all the money companies have wasted over the years with bloated operations and “that’s the way we’ve always done it thinking,” I imagine
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Quality is a Function of Attention to Detail
- March 17, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management
How do you drive quality in an organization? If you believe in the old business adage that a fish stinks from the head down, then you know where it has to start. It starts with your vision, your philosophy, and your commitment to quality. It requires that you make it a priority and then drive
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How Do You Deal With Supply Shortages? How Can You Prevent Them?
- March 10, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Manufacturing
Here’s a scenario. Let’s say you’re expecting a shipment of needed parts in order to fill an order of your own. Maybe you’ve got a customer who’s waiting on you, or you’ve got a big installation that you’re working on. Your supplier calls you and says, “I’m sorry, we’re out of this part you need
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What It’s Like Working With Just-In-Time Manufacturing
- March 3, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Manufacturing, Productivity
One of the things manufacturers often come up against is the issue of just-in-time manufacturing. You find it with large manufacturers that mass producing a lot of products for larger projects. Just-in-time manufacturing means that your products or parts show up at another manufacturer’s plant or a project site just in time to be used,
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How Do You Maintain the Right Inventory Levels Without Resorting to Just-In-Time or Bulk Ordering?
- February 24, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Manufacturing
The story of just-in-time inventory is one used to frighten young manufacturing operations managers: automotive manufacturers are so tight on their just-in-time manufacturing require their vendors to deliver their shipments at a specific minute or else they’ll be fined thousands of dollars for every minute of delay. Operations managers hear this and begin considering all
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You Don’t REALLY Need to Create a Lean Operation, Do You?
- August 12, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management
We hear a lot about lean manufacturing and lean principles these days, but it’s kind of a catchword. I’ve never been a big fan of buzzwords because they only complicate something that’s already simple, but I don’t think “lean” necessarily means anything special. For the most part, I’ve found you don’t need to be “lean”