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.
Nearly 1 in 6 Americans get sick from foodborne illnesses every year. Approximately 3,000 die each year. The FSMA is intended to significantly reduce these mostly preventable occurrences in the food manufacturing industry. The FSMA is a sweeping law which was passed in 2011 and has given the FDA great responsibilities and enhanced jurisdiction. The FDA has worked with industry, manufacturers, trade groups, and the general public to publish a series of Rules which have the full effect of law. As these Rules have become published they have been set with deadlines for compliance.
Lean defines waste, or muda, as anything in your organization’s processes that does not add value for the end customer. By identifying and eliminating waste using lean principles, manufacturers and businesses ultimately increase productivity and profit.
The Bureau of Statistics reported that 2.9 million workers were injured or became ill in 2015 while on the job. The reported figure represents an approximate rate of 3 cases per 100 employees, a slight improvement from the previous year's 3.2 figure. While this is good news, employers have a ways to go in order to ensure the safety of their people.
Blogging might be an important marketing strategy for other industries, but for manufacturers, it’s not that relevant… right? Wrong.
The Lean Enterprise Certification Program (LECP) provides your key staff with a working knowledge of the principles and best practices of Lean. It is the only nationally recognized Lean Certification program; using standards developed and judged by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME).
GE recently released a great TV commercial to jumpstart an effort to employ 20,000 women in STEM roles by 2020 that asks, “What if we treated female scientists the way we treated famous actors, TV personalities and models?” I really love this ad because it shows the first woman to receive the National Medal for Science in Engineering, Millie Dresselhaus, getting full celebrity treatment including selfie requests, an emoji likeness, and an overflow crowd at a lecture.
While we always hope for the best, we also must be prepared for all situations. In this second part series about strategic planning, we’re discussing Business Continuity Planning.
Strategic and business planning is critical for manufacturers. Sometimes, companies are reluctant to engage in planning because they view it as an interruption to every-day productivity. It can seem challenging to justify investing time into planning while your products need to be made, but strategic planning is instrumental in saving your organization time and money in the long-term.
Lean manufacturing, also known as lean production (or simply as "lean"), is the systematic method that eliminates various types of waste in a manufacturing process. Lean takes into account waste created through overburden and unevenness in production workloads. Lean reveals what processes or components add value and which processes do not add value. This is done by reducing or eliminating everything else in the process to find the most efficient work path. Value is defined from the customer’s perspective and is very intuitive.
I’m a bit emotional these days. My youngest—my baby—just graduated from high school. It’s the end of an era for our family: The years of homework, packing lunches, attending sporting events, and endless nagging to study for exams are finally over. It’s a bittersweet time as a mom. If I think about it too much, I get a little teary-eyed. I’m so proud of my son—he got into his dream school with a full scholarship!—yet I worry if we’ve taught him everything he needs to know. I’ve been waking up at night, thinking of things I still need to tell him. He assures me, with an eye roll that only a teenager can do, that he knows everything. I just hope we’ve done enough to prepare him.