Manufacture Smarter Blog

3/29/2019 - BY: ROGER TOMLINSON
With downtime, profitability and quality on the line, failure to properly maintain and keep up with equipment can quickly lead to major – and expensive – issues for manufacturers. With this in mind, the goal to achieve autonomous maintenance is growing among manufacturers as they strive to reduce risk associated with downtime or broken machinery, while also improving productivity and extending the lifetimes of equipment.

2/8/2019 - BY: MIKE BEELS
We tend to assume that every task we perform is essential in sustaining operations. But after analyzation from a Lean perspective, we might be surprised to discover that many of our activities are actually costing the organization time and money.

8/17/2018 - BY: GEORGE SINGOS
While company-wide alignment is essential to realizing strategic goals, progress cannot be made without maintaining a strong sense of how well the business is performing. This is where Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) come into play. By establishing, monitoring and analyzing KPIs, such as on-time delivery, changeover time or schedule bumping, companies will be equipped with the data and guidance necessary to align their business toward success.

7/27/2018 - BY: MIGUEL GOMEZ
What is the vision that drives your company? Why do you operate each day? What do you hope to achieve? Do your employees have the same goals? Many organizations find that their larger company visions can be forgotten in day-to-day firefighting. This is detrimental to success as workers at every level are left unaware of what they should be doing or how their work contributes to larger business goals.

5/11/2018 - BY: RON QUINKERT
Now that we’re five months into the year, it’s safe to say that most of us have long-abandoned our New Year’s Resolutions. Whether we were hoping to lose weight, get better sleep or save more money, we probably forgot about our 2018 missions just about as soon as the new year started.

4/27/2018 - BY: GEORGE SINGOS
Your company is working harder than ever before, with higher sales and faster production leading to the largest increase in revenue you’ve seen so far. Yet somehow profits are less than they were last year. How could this be?

3/9/2018 - BY: GEORGE SINGOS
The process of embracing new technology continues to confuse and discourage many small and medium-sized manufacturers. Although there is no established protocol in place for how to successfully transition to utilizing such technologies, the first step for all manufacturers is to understand the needs of their business.

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.