All Features
Del Williams
In industry, gas-fired boilers have been the standard for decades to produce steam and heat process water. However, not all boilers are created equal in terms of safety. By definition, combustion-fueled boilers can emit harmful vapors, leak gas, and even cause explosions and fires.
In a recent…
David L. Chandler
Virtually all wind turbines, which produce more than 5 percent of the world’s electricity, are controlled as if they were individual, freestanding units. In fact, the vast majority are part of larger wind farm installations involving dozens or even hundreds of turbines whose wakes can affect each…
Lauren Dunford
Industry 4.0 has been a hot topic for years now, for good reason: 86 percent of manufacturing C-suites say digital transformation is a priority, and about 91 percent of industrial companies are investing in digital factories. Yet Industry 4.0 has also become a buzzword in many ways, as so many…
Bruce Hamilton
With GBMP’s 18th annual Northeast Lean Conference on the horizon, I’m reflecting on our theme, “Amplifying Lean—The Collaboration Effect.” The term collaboration typically connotes an organized attempt by unrelated, even competitive, parties to work together on a common problem; for example, the…
William A. Levinson
Inflation has skyrocketed during the first half of 2022, which also saw a sharp downturn in the stock market in response to the Federal Reserve’s increase in interest rates to reduce demand. This resulted in a bear stock market and raised the prospect of an economic recession. The nonpartisan…
Del Williams
Food processors have long sought a safer, more energy-efficient means to convey product with less spillage, breakage, or downtime due to necessary cleaning and maintenance. Although tubular drag conveyors have offered these desired attributes compared to belt, bucket, or pneumatic systems, many in…
Jeremy L. Boerger
You may not be familiar with the term “information technology asset management” (ITAM), but most businesses deal with it on a regular basis (for better or worse). ITAM is what helps control the costs of computers, servers, software, and services used to create the computing environment modern…
Kevin Ketels
The conditions that led to a shortage of baby formula were set in motion long before the February 2022 closure of the Similac factory tipped the U.S. into a crisis.
Retailers nationwide reported supplies of baby formula were out of stock at a rate of 43 percent during the week ended May 8, 2022,…
Albert Rees, Joe Vernon
The pandemic had many consequences for manufacturing companies, the most prevalent being supply chain disruption. In light of these disruptions, it is paramount that organizations establish robust and reliable operations to ensure productivity targets are met—especially as consumer demands continue…
James J. Kline
Big data is a relatively new phenomenon. Its use is increasing in many organizations. But, as with many new processes, its use cuts both ways. It has positive benefits to both the organization and customers. It also has its potential downside. This piece looks at both with respect to the quality…
Brandon Cornuke
Manufacturers work hard to minimize disruptions to their operations and invest significant resources to minimize production risk. They also are under constant pressure to find new ways to deliver more value to their customers. Sustainable business growth is critical to delivering this value. Many…
Emily Newton
There’s no better time than now. As a species, we need to mitigate the effect we have on our planet. There are many ways to do this—namely, through green and eco-friendly initiatives—but one sector is having the biggest impact of all: the industrial and manufacturing sector. In the 2010s, the…
Harish Jose
T he dictum, “purpose of a system is what it does” (POSWID) is famous in cybernetics, attributed to the management cybernetician Stafford Beer.
Beer notes: “A good observer will impute the purpose of the system from its actions and thus from the resultant state.”
Hence the key aphorism and acronym…
Bruce Hamilton
In 1985, about the time I was discovering there was a better way to produce products, The Natural, a film about an aging baseball player with extraordinary talent, was garnering multiple Academy Awards. This archetype concerning natural “God-given” abilities is common in Western culture—in sports…
Knowledge at Wharton
Negotiating a salary increase or a job promotion ranks high on the list of hard conversations to have at work, and it doesn’t get any easier without a plan.
“People think, ‘I’m just going to knock on their door, sit down with them, and noodle around and see where this goes.’ That’s not a plan,”…
William A. Levinson
Ryan Day1 describes how the rise of independent auto dealers is a “gray swan” event for the automobile industry. This was not only bound to happen, as observed by the author, but also long overdue. The article states, “...current state laws prohibit OEMs from selling new vehicles directly to…
Anthony Tarantino
In 2007, Nassim Taleb described black swans as highly improbable events that had dramatic or even catastrophic effects on markets and economies. Until recently, it seemed that such events were indeed rare.1 There’s now a major rethinking with the world entering the third year of the Covid-19…
Bruce Hamilton
The level of excitement was high in our machine shop as we drew closer to our goal of less than 9-minute changeovers on the BNC lathe. (See Part One of this story for how we got there.) Setup improvements had so far reduced changeover time to 20 minutes, cutting the economic order quantity from…
Jonathan Gilpin
The world of procurement is often tricky. It involves choosing one appropriate candidate, ultimately benefiting them while rejecting and disadvantaging others.
That said, it isn’t just the businesses picked that will profit from winning the contracts; it’s also their supply chain, their local…
Bruce Hamilton
We had been working with the Toyota Production System Support Center (TSSC) for two years to build a model line in our assembly department. As we moved from small batch production to one-by-one, the results had been astounding: Customer lead time reduced from two weeks to one day, crew size cut in…
V R Vijay Anand
As the world moves toward a new, post-pandemic normal, industries must leverage digital transformation at an accelerated pace. This is already happening. According to IBM, 67 percent of manufacturers have accelerated digital projects since Covid-19.
Although improved operational efficiency is…
Bruce Hamilton
Every February, there are welcome reminders that spring is on the way. The first for me is a witch hazel bush in my front yard that defies subfreezing weather to produce fragrant yellow flowers. Then, a few weeks later, crocuses and winter aconites will emerge from the snow. The cycle continues…
Keith Groves
The lean manufacturing movement evolved from a desire to reduce waste and inefficiencies and improve productivity on the shop floor. Many manufacturers have also benefited from the resulting continuous improvement mindset as engaged employees became empowered to change things for the better.…
Anthony Murphy
Kendrick Plastics is an IATF/TS 16949-certified, tier one and tier two supplier of interior decorative trim components and assemblies to the automotive industry. Located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, its 300,000 sq ft engineering and manufacturing facility has more than 50 presses serving fully…
Jamie Flinchbaugh
Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from the new book People Solve Problems: The Power of Every Person, Every Day, Every Problem (Old Dutch Group, 2021) by Jamie Flinchbaugh.
For anyone reading this who is familiar with my teaching, this will come as no surprise: Problem-solving tools are not the key…
