manufacturing
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Innovation: Make Something When You Don’t Have the Equipment
- November 21, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation, Manufacturing
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Sometimes I think we’re spoiled in this country (and I include myself in that sweeping generalization). For many companies, the solution to a problem is to throw money at it. Years ago, we had a plant that was faced with frequent absenteeism and drug test failures, a plant that created a lot of excess pollution
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Four Strategies for Reducing Workplace Injuries
- September 12, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Manufacturing, Safety
When you run a manufacturing facility, one of your biggest concerns could/should/will always be workplace injury. Manufacturing, with all of its moving parts and massive machines, are a risky place to work. And you can talk about safety all you want, but that doesn’t mean your workers will necessarily be safer. When I was at
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Should Manufacturers Pay for Education to Shore Up Skilled Labor Shortage?
- August 8, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation, Management, Manufacturing
There’s a skilled labor shortage in this country, but not the kind that you might think. While there are still plenty of people to fill regular manufacturing jobs, there are high-paying, skilled labor jobs that are going unfilled because the companies can’t find enough people with the degrees or training to actually do the work.
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Why You Should Measure Your Scrap Output?
- July 3, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Manufacturing, Productivity
In the past I’ve talked about the importance of measuring every part of a manufacturing company, from machine output to associate productivity. I’ve even said the back office people should be quantifiably measured too, including departments like HR and Purchasing, and even the executives. That also means measuring your scrap output. While it may seem
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What Role is Automation Going to Play Over the Next 20 Years
- February 7, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation, Manufacturing
Believe it or not, automation and robotics are going to improve our economy and our employment numbers, and can even help improve the education of our workers. U.S. unemployment is low, we have a vibrant economy, and we’re likely to have selective immigration, which means if we’re going to continue to grow, we need to
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The Cost of Environmental Infractions is High, Can Include Jail Time
- December 3, 2017
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Safety
Manufacturers who contaminate, pollute, and commit environmental infractions as part of their manufacturing process aren’t only risking a guilty conscience or the shouts and disparagement of environmental activists. If your manufacturing company is found to be committing environmental infractions, you run the risk of being sent to jail as well. For years, I worked closely
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Industrial Engineering is a Lost Art
- November 22, 2017
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management, Manufacturing
This month’s blog posts seem to be all about remote work. And this week isn’t any different because I was thinking about my friend, Bob Blair. Bob is a retired industrial engineer, who only ever came out of retirement to do some work for me and Robroy. Otherwise, he spends half the year in Canada
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Workers Affected By Safety Rules Should be the Ones Creating Safety Rules
- September 13, 2017
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Safety
Last week, I talked about the importance of having a disaster recovery plan, including offsite data backup storage, while I was at Robroy. We updated our plan every year, exercised our tornado and fire drills at least twice a year (so the emergency lighting could be double-checked and replaced). We even had people certified in
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The Importance of Measuring ROI in Manufacturing
- July 5, 2017
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Manufacturing, Measurement
For the last few weeks, I’ve been talking about important leadership qualities, and how being persistent and decisive was key in automating one of our oldest, dirtiest, and most hazardous manufacturing processes. (We were hand galvanizing certain pipes, and the galvanization chemical contained arsenic!) So we tore out all the hand-operated process and built up
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Move From Failure to Failure With a Smile
- May 24, 2017
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Manufacturing
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. I’ve always been a big fan of Winston Churchill, and as I was growing up, I adopted several of his quotes as philosophies to live by. This month, I’ll discuss four quotes that have guided me over my professional