safety
-
Stay Focused on Employee Health & Safety
- June 16, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Safety
No CommentsAs a manufacturing manager, the worst words you can hear are “workplace injury.” Manufacturing is not necessarily a safe job, and people can get hurt just doing their work. Even with all the employee health and safety training, policies, and personal protective equipment, people can still get hurt on the job. That creates a lot
-
How Important is Ongoing Safety Training in a Manufacturing Operation?
- February 10, 2021
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Manufacturing, Safety
Ongoing safety training is critical in any manufacturing operation. It’s not just a one-and-done, set it and forget it type of operation. Safety training is absolutely essential because your first priority in your business is human life. You absolutely, positively have to protect that above everything else; there are no two ways about it. Protecting
-
Manufacturers, Focus on Recovery and Grooming the Workforce for 2021
- December 9, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Management
I recently read an article in the Hartford (Connecticut) Business Journal (as one does, when you live in Central Texas) recommending that manufacturers should focus on recovery, technology, and grooming the workforce in 2021. While the numbers are specific to Connecticut, they represent a larger trend in the United States. Their big concern in January
-
My Four Non-Negotiables: #1 – Safety
- March 11, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Safety
Over the years, I have developed a management philosophy I call the Four Non-Negotiables. Over these next four weeks, I’ll share what each of them are and what they mean. This week is about Non-Negotiable #1, Safety Safety is often strongly encouraged, or at least given lip service, in most organizations, but it’s something management
-
How I Created The Four Non-Negotiables That Defined My Leadership Style
- March 4, 2020
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Manufacturing
Over the years, I’ve developed a management and leadership philosophy that has served me well as I progressed further in my career. As I moved further up my career ladder, I saw problems that I was able to fix by calling on these solutions. They became so important to my style that I started calling
-
What are the Economics of Sustainability vs. Remediation?
- November 27, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Business, Leadership, Safety
Companies that spend a lot of money on remediation, and are doing it only to avoid penalties and fines, are going to end up having bigger and more expensive problems than they were hoping for. When I was at Robroy, we had an old Duoline factory that was costing us $2.5 million every year in
-
Philosophy of Constant Cleaning in a Factory
- November 20, 2019
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Management, Productivity, Safety
A friend was recently telling me about when he worked in a restaurant. When there were only a few customers, his manager used to say, “If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean,” which is something I’ve heard myself over the years. It’s an important sentiment in some situations, like waiting tables at a
-
What are Some Common Safety Issues in Manufacturing?
- December 26, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Manufacturing, Safety
For the most part, safety is usually a function of paying attention to your surroundings and avoiding situations that can cause you a problem, like failing to wear your personal protective equipment, or running across a hydraulic-powered conveyor line. These safety violations fall more on the “benign” end of the spectrum, where people didn’t mean
-
An Unusual Approach to Manufacturing Safety
- December 19, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Manufacturing, Safety
In a typical manufacturing operation, safety policies are always the responsibility for management to create and for the associates to follow. But I thought that was always backwards: management didn’t have to worry about safety, since they weren’t actually operating the machinery, and the associates knew better about what would actually work and what was
-
The Time There Was Nearly a Knife Fight on My Factory Floor
- November 7, 2018
- Posted by: David Marshall
- Category: Leadership, Management, Safety
You run into all kinds of problems when you’re managing a factory and running a business. I’ve had to fire people for sleeping on the job. I locked my own son out of a meeting for being late. And I once had to talk a naked guy down out of the rafters. So it shouldn’t
- 1
- 2