Impact Dakota Blog is a blog dedicated to supporting North Dakota’s manufacturing community improve People, Purpose, Processes and Performance. Entries provide information on opportunities, new ideas, quick tips, celebrations of success, and well, frankly, anything to help you become a better manufacturer.
Most manufacturers are working diligently on “getting better.” The question is: for what purpose? I’m frequently told that cost reduction and implementing employee ideas are the goals, and they’re not bad reasons to take action. They are not, however, the reason your business exists.
Without manufacturing, the room where you make dinner would be rather stark and barren. There’d be no pots, no pans, no stoves, no spatulas, no appliances – big or small. There’d be no way to prepare the meals that give you and your family sustenance. With no counter, there wouldn’t even be a place to set down your coffee cup!
t’s spring break for my 6-year-old grandson Bruce, and I’m spending the week with him in Oakland, California. What to do? We make a couple of trips to the park, looking for rocks on Treasure Island (that was a bust). When did the days get so long? Searching the internet for fun things to do with kids, I find the Jelly Belly Candy Company (link is external) in Fairfield, CA offers free factory tours.
“Buy Made in the USA Products ” and “Buy American” might sound like nothing more than a slogan advanced by American manufacturers to sell made in the USA products. But the truth is that there are many reasons to consider buying American-made clothing, American made toys, and other US-manufactured goods. We’ve listed just a few of the benefits of buying American below:
The pace of digital transformation in the manufacturing industry is relentless. But as Kevin Bull, Product Strategy Director at leading digital business services provider Columbus UK explains, digital transformation is not just about deploying emerging technologies – it’s about using the data collected to create new business opportunities, better understand and meet customer expectations, and put in place a future-proof digital strategy. In this article Kevin discusses five key takeaways from the recently published Manufacturing 2020 industry report.
In an exchange with a colleague the other day, I shared a phrase my grandmother often used to say, “nothing’s so bad it can’t get worse.” Throughout my life, I have thought about those words and how grateful I am to have never adopted such an outlook on how I lead or live my life. During my weekends, I work as a certified leadership coach and have had many people share such experiences of having been exposed to similar messages and the affect those messages have had on their lives.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that manufacturers added 24,000 workers in April, extending the 22,000 gain seen in March. It was the seventh consecutive month with robust growth in hiring in the sector, averaging 26,571 per month over that time frame. As such, the latest jobs numbers confirm that the labor market has tightened significantly, with manufacturers increasing employment by a rather robust 19,000 per month on average since the end of 2016. That is quite a turnaround from the sluggish job growth experienced in 2016, and it is a sign that firms have continued to accelerate their hiring as the economic outlook has strengthened and demand and production have improved considerably.
Recently, we learned five things that surprised us about additive manufacturing for small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs). These insights came from a group of MEP National NetworkTM practitioners who participated in a workshop at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) and NIST Measurement Science for Additive Manufacturing (MSAM) Program staff to share research, benchmarking data and client field experiences. The primary focus was the need for standards in additive metals manufacturing.
I’ve been on a kick lately to get all of our clients thinking about how they can use a scorecard to run their businesses better. It’s certainly made a huge difference for us at Stoneridge Software in that we have a much better idea of the key indicators and how they are performing each week. I talked to a client yesterday and they asked me the common question, “What metrics should we have on our scorecard?” How should you decide which business scorecard metrics matter the most to your company?
As a small and medium-sized manufacturer (SMM), can you reasonably begin to adopt smart technologies through a lean transformation approach as part of your continuous improvement journey?