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Daily industrial news and top headlines for plant and maintenance managers
Lean Manufacturing: The Skinny On The Facts
January 9, 2013 8:00 am | by Frank Hill, Stratus Technologies | Comments2012 has come and gone. With a new year staring us down, it’s time for new resolutions. Resolutions involve change, which can be tough for manufacturers. Many manufacturers are conservative in their approach to changing IT solutions — solutions they have become extremely reliant upon and familiar with.
Margin Meltdown: When Costs Drop, Should Prices Follow?
January 8, 2013 8:01 am | by Eric Hills, Chief Evangelist & Senior Vice President, Zilliant | CommentsYou finally pushed those price increases through — to reflect the fact that your input costs have been going up — and the market takes another turn. Input costs are now speeding in the opposite direction and your customers are expecting — or rather, demanding — price decreases.
Big Brother Takes The Wheel
January 4, 2013 8:00 am | by Meaghan Ziemba, Associate Editor, PD&D | CommentsWhile I am all for the advancement of automobile safety, I wonder if placing black boxes in cars is stepping over the privacy boundary? A recent article, “Black Boxes in Cars Raise Privacy Concerns” discussed the placement of event data recorders, also known as black boxes, being placed in new cars and light trucks – such a development caused me to raise an eyebrow.
The Real Cost Of That Pool Toy
January 2, 2013 8:01 am | by Laurie Keyser Brunner, President, MainStream Management LLC | CommentsWhen we think about profitably manufacturing goods, China is at the top of the list, followed closely by Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia. But, I am here to report that manufacturing in America is alive, if not exactly well. And, the best of U.S. manufacturers can compete with—and beat—the cost of overseas production.
Reshoring 101: Right-Sizing U.S. Manufacturing, Part 2
December 19, 2012 8:05 am | by Tim Hutzel, Managing Director & Researcher, MainStream Management LLC, & Dave Lippert, President, Hamilton Caster & Manufacturing Co. | CommentsThe companies that sent their manufacturing to foreign countries soon discovered there were frustrations and costs they never anticipated. They found that differences in language made communicating product specifications and manufacturing instructions to their offshored sources difficult. They learned that cultural differences made it difficult to motivate the foreign companies to respond quickly to their needs.
Manufacturers Lead The Way To A Stronger Future
December 19, 2012 8:04 am | by Mark Hoper, Vice President of Expositions & Media, Fabricators & Manufacturers Association | CommentsThe FMA can’t predict how many conveyors are going to be sold in 2013, but we can talk about capital expenditures for the metal forming and fabricating machine tools used to produce equipment essential to the food industry. The good news is that investments are increasing across the board. That translates to more efficient production of the equipment that creates efficiencies for food production.
Reshoring 101: Right-Sizing U.S. Manufacturing, Part 1
December 18, 2012 8:09 am | by Tim Hutzel, Managing Director & Researcher, MainStream Management LLC, & Dave Lippert, President, Hamilton Caster & Manufacturing Co. | CommentsThe story of how the United States lost its place in manufacturing dominance and why jobs were shipped offshore is highly relevant for business executives, government leaders, and anyone interested in understanding their true impact on the country and what it will take to reestablish America’s prominence as a manufacturing leader.
Manufacturing Visibility: A Competitive Advantage
December 12, 2012 8:06 am | by Andy Vabulas, CEO and Owner, I.B.I.S., Inc. | CommentsCapturing and sharing manufacturing information requires a strategic approach that identifies what should be tracked, with whom to share information, and how to leverage this manufacturing visibility into improved operations and business performance.
Crowdfunding Fuels Innovation
December 11, 2012 8:09 am | by Ryan Sauer | CommentsWhile it continues to be controversial in more conservative investment circles, crowdfunding is on its way to becoming a major source of venture capital for upstart companies. With passage of the JOBS Act in April of this year, President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress cleared the way for crowdfunding to be both legal and regulated.
A Tour Of Methods
December 11, 2012 8:06 am | by Alan Nicol, Executive Member, AlanNicolSolutions | CommentsEstablish a culture of continuous improvement around a central, common method for solving problems. Adopt one of the common or popular ones, or use them as inspiration for your own. Each organization has its own culture. It is a natural phenomenon of any group of social creatures. We can either let our culture form around us as it may, or we can deliberately cultivate it to be what we desire.
Demystifying Monte Carlo
December 7, 2012 8:09 am | by Alan Nicol, Executive Member, AlanNicolSolutions | CommentsA very powerful, but little used, statistical modeling method is Monte Carlo Simulation. Read on to see how practical and simple it can be to predict the outcome of a design before it is complete. One of my favorite tools, garnered from practicing Design for Six Sigma, is the Monte Carlo Simulation method.
Addition, Subtraction, Division
December 3, 2012 12:07 pm | by Krystal Gabert, Editor, Food Manufacturing | CommentsFood processing mergers and acquisitions can be rough water to navigate, especially for plant floor employees and plant managers who initially might seem immune to the effects of such high-level corporate decisions. Recent changes at Kraft Foods Group and others can be instructive for those undergoing corporate changes in their own companies.
Perfect Experiences Are Ruining Tech Education
December 3, 2012 11:05 am | by Joel Hans, Managing Editor, Manufacturing.net | CommentsBetter, and more polished, interfaces make it easier for more people to sit back and play iOS games or watch something on Netflix, they also create a dangerous abstraction — a distance between the user and the actual technology that functions it.
The Importance of Learning Styles In Training
December 3, 2012 11:04 am | by Mike Collins, Author, Saving American Manufacturing | CommentsI have always been interested in learning styles and how people learn. If you read the literature on this subject, there is a lot of academic research on everything from neuro-linguistic programming to basic cognitive skills. Academics don’t seem to agree on a particular model, and appear to love writing theoretical research papers more than finding practical applications for education and training.
My First Trade Show & The Digital Revolution
November 30, 2012 8:08 am | by Abbigail Kriebs, Associate Editor, Industrial Distribution | CommentsFor companies in modern America and across the globe, the digital revolution is every bit as unsettling today as the financial crisis was in 2008. The ways in which we interact today are so different from what we have encountered in the past. Social media has given corporations and their products a face of their own; a presence that people can interact with and relate to, for better or for worse.
