productivity
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How We Used Automation to Increase Productivity, Reduce Errors, and Reduce Waste
- March 6, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Innovation
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Several years ago, when I was the president of Robroy, we were faced with a problem of how to deal with an old business that was run down, obsolete, and had an employee retention problem (we would lose 20% of our workforce every time we conducted a random drug test). This was my world without
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What Life Was Like Before AI and Digital Transformation
- February 20, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Digital Transformation, Measurement
For some executives, it’s hard to imagine life before artificial intelligence and digital transformation. There’s always been automation and computers helping facilitate decision making and measurement. But I know that pre-AI world all too well, having spent most of my career in that part of the manufacturing history. The result was often poor quality, stifled
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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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How Can a Department Like HR Measure Itself?
- July 25, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Measurement
Plenty of people understand how relatively easy it is for a manufacturing operation to perform objective measurements on its output. Each machine is capable of performing X number of actions per hour, and each associate is also capable of producing X number of units in that hour. You can measure units produced, downtime, and even
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How Can You Reduce Your Transaction Costs?
- July 18, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Manufacturing, Productivity
In the non-manufacturing world, a transaction is an easy process. When you buy a shirt, you give money to the store, and they give you a shirt. That’s a transaction. In the manufacturing world, a transaction is a more involved process. A customer sends a purchase order that orders 1,000 shirts (normally, economists like to
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Nepotism Destroys Company Culture & Productivity
- May 30, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Productivity
If there’s one thing I don’t like about companies is nepotism. If you’re in a family business, nepotism is a productivity killer. And it was certainly the cause of a lot of my headaches when I first started working at Robroy. In those early days, we were running three 8-hour shifts in the factory, and
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How to Deal With a Naked Guy in Your Rafters
- March 22, 2017
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management
I saw a lot of things in my days as president and COO of Robroy Industries. But never in my 21 years did I expect to see a naked man in the rafters. It seems the man, we’ll call him Randy, had been doing the same job every day for 25 years. He was an
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How I Doubled Output By Cutting Head Count by Nearly Half
- March 15, 2017
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management, Manufacturing, Productivity
When I first started with Robroy, we needed an awful lot of cleanup, not only because the facility was dirty, but because there was a lot of nepotism in the organization that resulted in an awful lot of unproductive people working for us. Nepotism is never a good idea in an organization, and we had
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The Time I Locked My Own Son Out of a Meeting for Being Late
- March 8, 2017
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Productivity
I’m one of those sticklers for timeliness. You know, “early is on time, on time is late.” That idea was drummed into me very early on in my career. It means if you have a meeting at 10:00 a.m., you don’t show up at 10:00. You show up at 9:55 so you’re ready to start
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Improve Productivity and Morale by Reducing Interruptions
- February 15, 2017
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Innovation, Manufacturing, Measurement
There are a number of factors that go into improving productivity of your associates, and by extension, your plant workflow. Not only do you get more things done, but you can make your associates happier to boot. Keeping associates productive throughout their shift with as few interruptions as possible actually enhances morale, and makes their
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