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.
In North Dakota's extremely competitive business environment, organizations are realizing the need to fully utilize employees' knowledge and skills to gain the advantage over competing companies.
ISO certification has been the “talk of the town” for various manufacturers. The topic has been particularly popping up because for the first time since 2008, the ISO 9001 industrial and commercial standards are being upgraded. These standards are reviewed every five years, and this review is extremely important as changes to the marketplace occur.
One of the recent 2-day kaizen events that I facilitated included improving the warehouse operations at a manufacturing facility. This was a hands-on project and we got rid of obsolete items and consolidated many partially filled boxes of products which resulted in 50% more storage space. This, in combination with the reconfiguration of warehouse layout and adding of surplus rack system from a sister company resulted in a net increase of close to 70% in warehouse storage capacity. This helped the company to avoid building an addition to the warehouse which was estimated to cost about $100,000.
I don’t normally watch horror movies, but there is a correlation between the movie “Saw” and ransomware, in particular a variant called JIGSAW. This is pretty scary stuff — the first thing you see is the creepy image of Billy the Puppet from the horror film “Saw” on your computer screen, then you find out that your data is no longer yours.
As another year draws to a close, it is natural to look back and reflect on the challenges and accomplishments we shared, individually, organizationally, and as an industry.
As the clock strikes midnight and we turn the page on another year, manufacturing around the world is pursuing a future vision for business that will transform the rule of competition, how work will be performed, how companies will be organized, and how leadership must lead.
Today is the 225th anniversary of Alexander Hamilton’s report on manufacturing to Congress. Wow! 225 years?! Ok, I realize that only us true manufacturing wonks will get all jazzed up about this epic historic event, but I believe that everyone in this country should celebrate this day the same as we do the 4th of July. Why should we? Well, I’ll tell you why.
They say opposites attract. While my husband and I have many important things in common, we are complete opposites in one area. He’s a “risk taker,” and me … well, not so much. Rather than being labeled as “risk adverse,” I prefer the term “caution giver.”
Whether they’re behind the scenes assembling products or helping you parallel park your car, robots are already playing a big role in our day-to-day lives.
The Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) is a public-private partnership with a national network of thousands of trusted business advisors, manufacturing experts, and partners who support one another in discovering and leveraging services and programs for manufacturers. Each quarter, MEP Centers, which are located in every state within the U.S. and Puerto Rico, submit success stories of what they have accomplished working with manufacturers in that state. You can find these success stories archived on the MEP website.