Blog

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.

January 22, 2018

Congressman Kevin Cramer supported bipartisan legislation passed by the House of Representatives to provide tariff relief on imported goods for American manufacturers.

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January 19, 2018

74% of supply chain companies have experienced supply chain disruption at least once, based on a recent Business Continuity Institute study. A similar number of respondents (72%) admitted to not having full visibility of their supply chain. Lou Feretti, Project Executive at IBM, and Pierre Mitchell, Chief Research Officer at Spend Matters, discussed supply chain risk in a webcast on 5/4. The two pointed out the challenges and complexities of supply chain risk, and how to overcome them. One issue that was frequently brought up was the visibility within the supply chain.

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January 19, 2018

Real GDP grew 3.2 percent in the third quarter, boosted by strength in consumer and business spending and net exports and extending the 3.1 percent gain seen in the second quarter. According to new data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, manufacturing added 0.24 percentage points to top-line growth in the third quarter, with mixed results for the sector. Real value-added output grew by 2.0 percent for manufacturers in the third quarter, buoyed by a 7.5 percent growth rate for durable goods firms but weighed down by a 4.1 percent decline for nondurable goods businesses. The latter were hit hard by recent hurricanes, especially in chemical and energy markets.

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January 11, 2018

The most important aspect of starting a food manufacturing operation is Food Safety. Nothing will be more important to you and your business than never having a customer become sick, or injured, or worse from consuming your product. Food Safety in the food manufacturing world is overseen by the FDA, State and Local authorities, and many times large distributors of your product. Generally this oversight will consist of on-site audits. An auditor will walk through your operation from start to finish and will conduct a paperwork review of your production records.

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January 4, 2018

The second draft of the update to the National Institute of Standards and Technology's cybersecurity framework, NIST 1.1, may prove to be more impactful than the original version released in 2013, Larry Clinton, president and CEO of the Internet Security Alliance (ISA), said Wednesday.

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January 2, 2018

Manufacturing remains a critical force in both advanced and developing economies. But the sector has changed, bringing new opportunities and challenges to business leaders and policy makers.

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December 28, 2017

Lean Certification is an evolutionary journey where your knowledge and experience work together to create a depth of expertise upon which you can keep building. It weaves innovative ways of thinking and doing business with real-world applications and results. Lean Certification not only helps you attain the knowledge, it validates it. It is the only nationally recognized Lean Certification program; using standards developed and judged by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) in partnership with Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) and the Shingo Institute.

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December 21, 2017

Every year, I take some time to look at what manufacturing clients across the MEP National NetworkTM are saying about the future and the challenges they face. It’s usually part of my New Year’s resolution to take the time to step back and consider what is happening with our manufacturing clients and their businesses. This exercise provides a peek into the hearts and minds of the CEOs who run the over two hundred thousand small manufacturers across the U.S. whom MEP supports. It always provides me with some insight into important market intelligence to guide future activity.

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December 14, 2017

Bismarck, ND – Impact Dakota and the ND Trade Office, along with the support from a number of planning partners and sponsors, will be holding ExporTechTM. This proven program is designed to help North Dakota manufacturers and other interested companies who want to be proactive internationally by helping them boost their sales through profitable exports. The program will be held in the first quarter of 2018.

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December 7, 2017

It's no secret that Amazon is changing the way American manufacturing works. But there's more to the issue than just the idea that retail is different. People are buying things online much more today, instead of shopping local. That's changing whether some companies can stay in business, and is a problem especially for smaller stores and shops that cannot compete with Amazon's prices or selection. Looking beyond that, though, to manufacturing, means considering much more than just the retail sector. Here are three important issues to consider when it comes to how How the "Amazon Effect" is Changing the American Manufacturing Industry Forever.

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