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.
Buyers generally have a good understanding of their company’s needs, however, too many assumptions and too little structure can result in mistakes when selecting suppliers. To ensure the best decisions are made, buyers need to reflect on their current decision making process. Dr. Cuneyt Altinoz has a long history of working in supply chain and offered frequent pitfalls made when selecting a supplier. Review the following list of common mistakes to make sure your company is on the right track.
Previously I wrote a blog about the differences across the 50 states as measured by manufacturing value added per employee. The differences across the states were quite large and I suggested that much of that variation was a function of the mix of industries in each state. While this mix may not be the absolute predictor for manufacturing growth, it is undoubtedly an important and interesting factor to consider when researching optimal manufacturing efficiency.
I think we’ve taken this pumpkin spice thing too far. Don’t get me wrong, I love fall. That first crisp evening when you need to put on a sweater, the crunch of leaves under your feet, homecoming football games, but pumpkin spice? It’s obvious that the pumpkin spice council’s marketing team has done an outstanding job because it’s in everything now: cookies, chocolate candy, ice cream, oatmeal, pancakes, marshmallows, and now even in a special “limited edition” of my favorite breakfast cereal.
In my last post, I told you about the signs you should look for if you are interested in accessing grant funding. They included adding employees, increased capital investment and being negatively impacted by foreign trade. Be sure to look for these signs and go back to re-read the post to see the others!
I walk through a potential client’s shop and a new piece of machinery catches my eye. I ask the company leader if he applied for any grant funding to offset the purchase, and he looks at me with a blank or inquisitive stare. He then says, “I didn’t know I could get grant funding.”
Cybersecurity, at this point in the technological age, has become a household word. Every week, almost like clockwork, it seems there is a story on the news about a newly discovered hack or data breach often made possible by poor cybersecurity practices. Many of these incidents are focused around stolen data, which resides in our IT, or information technology, infrastructure. However, the breaches that interest me are those that affect the systems and devices that monitor and manipulate much of the world around us and have real-world health and safety consequences if they are compromised. These extremely important systems and devices are known as operational technologies, or OT.
NDSU’s Northern Plains Ethics Institute is set to host a presentation by Reza Maleki, Impact Dakota senior business adviser. He is scheduled to present “Automation: Boon or Curse” Thursday, Oct. 19, at 3:30 p.m. in the A. Glenn Hill Center’s room 300.
I was at an end of summer family barbeque the other day, and two of my nephews, 16 and 20 years old, were in attendance. As the day progressed, they spent most of the day fixated on their phones, from watching YouTube videos of cats and playing games, to tweeting and instagramming photos.
Cybersecurity is everyone’s business! As personal computing devices become even more pervasive, the chances of falling victim to a cyber-attack rise higher and higher. With continuous use of email, social media, banking apps, etc., the list of vulnerabilities to which we have opened ourselves is ever-growing. Hackers often use an unsuspecting individual’s error, like a weak password or clicking a suspicious link, to gain access to larger institutions or to organize large-scale denial-of-service attacks.
I spoke at a manufacturing conference in St. Louis this week, and thoroughly enjoyed the keynote speaker, Jennifer McNelly, President of 180Skills. 180Skills provides online career and technical education that fills the manufacturing skills gap (you should check them out for your workforce development needs!).