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.
Where do most companies fall short after they have had a strategic planning meeting?
It’s time for a digital workforce transformation. Modern manufacturers have to juggle evolving expectations for workplace flexibility, pay, career paths and benefits. They also have to take into account the changes in the ways employees learn and access information. The most obvious example of this is how employees turn to their smartphones – whether for a just-in-time answer to an unexpected problem or as a replacement for traditional training and development channels.
Susan Murray Carlock is the Vice President of Business Development at Mursix Corporation. Her family has worked for 33 years to expand the company’s capabilities and the industries it serves.
Business-savvy and balanced by personal commitment best describe Susan. Growing up around her family’s company brought manufacturing – and the people who make it happen – close to her heart. Through this connection, she has a natural ability to head up the company’s efforts in serving long-standing customers, earning the trust of new ones, and creating a positive tone from the front office to the back dock.
Besides working at Mursix, Susan serves as Chair of Purdue MEP’s Board of Advisors. She works to better the state’s economy as a member of the Conexus Indiana Executive Council
The ability for manufacturers and suppliers to connect has never been more important. The domestic supply chain is quickly evolving due to advanced manufacturing breakthroughs and growing demand for electric vehicles, solar batteries and other high-tech innovations.
It’s National Bake Week here in the U.S. If you’re celebrating in your own kitchen, you may find yourself needing some aluminum foil. Whether you need a sheet of foil to keep that apple pie warm or you’re making something in an aluminum foil baking pan, foil has lots of uses in a baker’s kitchen.
Here at NIST, we do a different kind of baking, but we often use the same foil you use in your own kitchen. You won’t see our creations on The Great British Baking Show, and you definitely don’t want to eat them.
Manufacturing is Indiana’s largest industry sector, accounting for 26% of the state’s economic output and employing more than 520,000 Hoosiers. Cutting-edge partnerships, programs and collaborations have resulted in Indiana leading the nation in developing new and better manufacturing workers.
As the manufacturing industry continues to evolve with new opportunities, Indiana remains committed to innovative collaborations that ensure awesome opportunities for Hoosiers, manufacturers and partners across the country. Find out more about what specifically makes Indiana a national leader in this critical area.
Jessica Ingle is like a lot of women who are juggling work, family and life. And she’s managed to excel at it all, including her 18 years of climbing the career ladder at Impact Washington, the Washington state MEP Center and part of the MEP National NetworkTM.
As she reflects on Women’s History Month, she’s thrilled to see more women joining the manufacturing world. “We can bring a unique perspective to this community that historically has been mostly male. And with new perspectives comes innovation,” Ingle says.
Achieving business excellence within a company comes from optimizing a work environment to deliver desired goods and services. Lean manufacturing is a production method aimed primarily at reducing times within the production system as well as response times from suppliers and to customers. Companies employ this strategy to increase efficiency. By receiving goods only as they need them for the production process, it reduces inventory costs and waste, resulting in increased productivity and profit.
We know that the existing workforce development system isn’t working as efficiently as it could, so companies need to try every strategy in the book to retain their workers (rather than expect to replace departing workers with new ones).
Asia Dillon is not your average 15-year-old high school student in New Orleans, Louisiana. She has already made a name for herself as a manufacturer. Asia is the owner of Sassy A Cosmetics. Asia sees opportunities where others might not. For example, her younger sister suffers from eczema, which makes her lips so dry that they crack and peel. Asia’s sister didn’t like the lip balm their mother gave her.
From this experience, Asia saw there was a need for a new and different kind of lip gloss. She wanted to create something that would soothe her sister’s lips – using all natural ingredients. Sassy A’s product line has grown to include lipsticks, lip creams and lip balms. With a love for science and for mixing things together, it’s easy to see how this ambitious teen ended up in the manufacturing industry.