Manufacture Smarter Blog

1/26/2018 - BY: CHUCK WERNER
“Lost but making good time” is never a positive situation for an organization, despite its comedic origins. Unfortunately, companies of all sizes suffer the impacts of this condition. The team might be working hard on activities that will not drive the bottom line. Or, worse yet, working on the most important initiative within the company and not know it.

1/19/2018 - BY: ROGER TOMLINSON
Completing a project on time and on budget is not an easy task to accomplish. Although there are many variables involved in this process, one way to ensure breezy project completion is to improve your project scheduling. How you choose to schedule your project plays a central role in predicting both the time and cost that will be involved in a project.

10/20/2017 - BY: ROGER TOMLINSON
It can often prove essential to be a proactive problem-solver in business. Even the smallest problem can snowball into an issue that is detrimental to the success of a company. As a result, many manufacturing facilities have found it more and more conducive to adopt a highly proactive approach towards managing their supply chain disruptions.

8/11/2017 - BY: ROGER TOMLINSON
A manufacturer’s focus each day must revolve around increasing production, reducing costs and generating profits—while simultaneously minimizing the risk of errors. This can be a delicate balance for manufacturers to achieve. That’s why implementing lean manufacturing is a critical component for success.

6/23/2017 - BY: CHUCK WERNER
When teaching a new group of Continuous Improvement (Lean and/or Six Sigma) students, it’s always critical to emphasize the importance of the first “team” activity of any project or kaizen— the process map. There are many benefits to process mapping. One is its highly visual nature.

5/5/2017 - BY: ANNA STEFOS
What exactly is Operational Excellence (OpEx)? It’s not easy to define since most people think only about the operational benefits associated with continuous improvement. In fact, true OpEx goes deeper and is designed to embrace an entire ecosystem of many interwoven roads of an all-inclusive, collaborative culture, with high impact to the business that has one goal.

4/7/2017 - BY: CHUCK WERNER
As a manufacturer, you should be keenly aware of the importance of 5S methodology for improving workplace performance through standardization. The ultimate goal of any 5S initiative is the successful implementation of the fifth step, SUSTAIN.

1/27/2017 - THE CENTER
“How can we do better?” It’s an ongoing question for business owners and managers.  In order to lead your organization towards sustained success in 2017, it’s imperative that you look for new ways to optimize organizational processes and operations. This will help leverage your company’s competitive advantage. 

11/4/2016 - THE CENTER
If you are interested in optimizing your organization’s capabilities and efficiencies to produce the best quality output possible at the lowest cost, it’s time to adopt Six Sigma methodology. Six Sigma is a measurement-based strategy for process improvement and variation reduction that utilizes DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control) as a road map to successful implementation.

10/28/2016 - THE CENTER
For small businesses in today’s global and technologically advanced market, it is crucial to maintain competitiveness and stay aligned with larger organizations.