Whenever I talk to organizations about open, connected ways of working, this question inevitably comes up: “How do you get leaders to do it?”  It’s a problem. Most often, managers simply don’t have the time to learn a different way of leading. Or their habits are so deeply ingrained that doing…

The F-35 was billed as a fighter jet that could do almost everything the U.S. military desired, serving the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy—and even Britain’s Royal Air Force and Royal Navy—all in one aircraft design. It’s supposed to replace and improve upon several current—and aging—aircraft…

Our customers, suppliers, and peers seem to confuse reliability information with mean time between failure (MTBF). Why is that? Is it a convenient shorthand? Maybe I’m the one confused, maybe those asking or expecting MTBF really want to use an inverse of a failure rate. Maybe they aren’t…

Sponsored Content Your life as a nondestructive testing (NDT) inspector is not always easy. And if you’re engaged in rope access inspections, you face additional challenges. Whether you’re dangling from a rope 30 feet in the air or hanging over the ocean from a platform rig, you have to be choosy…

For decades, audit management has centered on paper checklists, with tracking moving to Excel spreadsheets in more recent years. Despite growing adoption of cloud-based manufacturing software, many auto suppliers still rely on paper checklists and spreadsheets to manage audit programs. There’s a…

‘You want me to pull the kids out of school for what?” I could tell that my wife didn’t like my idea because she had used the tone she uses when I say something that is, to employ the pet phrase she employs in such instances, “really stupid.” “For Guaspari Family Quality Day,” I replied. “We take…

I have just returned from a trip to Dubai to speak at an innovation conference there. This is my third trip to Dubai, and I always come away consistently amazed at what the people and the government are doing. When I return to the States, people ask me what Dubai is like. I joking tell them that I…

Jerome said his biggest problem was time management. He was overloaded, deadlines were getting missed, and he was stressed. Managing his team was his biggest time drain. “When they ask me questions, I get stuck spending time with them instead of doing my own work. And when I don’t hear from them…

The following is an excerpt from Kelly Graves’ book, The Management and Employee Development Review (CRC Press, 2016). When Darwin first made famous the term “survival of the fittest,” I don’t believe he was talking about the strongest species, or the fastest, but rather those species most able to…

The most recent decade has seen rapid advances in connectivity, mobility, analytics, scalability, and data, spawning what has been called the fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0. This fourth industrial revolution has digitalized operations and resulted in transformations in manufacturing…

‘How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree? How ya gonna keep ’em away from Broadway, jazzin’ around and paintin’ the town?” This 1914 song by Andrew Bird was a hit as soldiers returned home from World War I. The song captured the concern of farmers whose sons left their…

The other day I was driving down Point Brown Road in Ocean Shores, Washington. Ocean Shores is a small town with almost no economic base. If you live there, you are likely a retiree or work in one of the restaurants or hotels that serve the tourists. The internet in Ocean Shores is anemic, but it…

Labor costs are likely the largest line item on your company balance sheet. Therefore, a successful cost-reduction strategy must adequately balance resourcing and cost controls. Although laying off part of the workforce may seem like the quickest and easiest solution to reducing labor costs in…

On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first U.S. astronaut to journey to the “final frontier.” Atop a Mercury rocket, Shepard launched into a 15-minute suborbital journey reaching an altitude of about 100 miles before returning to Earth. His space capsule, Freedom 7, was a wonder of science,…

On Jan. 1, 2017, Philadelphia became one of the first U.S. cities to pass a tax ($0.15 per oz) on sugary drinks, including artificially sweetened beverages, such as diet soda. In California, San Francisco, Albany, Berkeley, and Oakland have joined Philadelphia in this initiative, as well as…

In times of organizational crisis, some companies are able to right the ship, while others sink under the pressure. Recently, Uber has been under fire for a bad corporate culture, which promoted, among other things, sexism and other forms of toxic behavior. This led to a four-month investigation…

Operations and safety don’t always speak the same language, not because operations isn’t committed to keeping people safe at work or safety isn’t concerned with meeting operational goals, but rather because each area has its own methods, processes, and measures. This communication gap can increase…

Recently a segment on my favorite morning news program stopped me in my tracks. The young and attractive hosts (why are they always so young and attractive?) were demonstrating new appliances, among them a smart refrigerator. The fridge was equipped with all kinds of high-tech features including…

Sponsored Content Companies strategically adopt cutting-edge solutions to help solidify their position within a competitive marketplace. Years ago, blue-light 3D scanning technology was implemented to help product development and alleviate coordinate measuring machine (CMM) bottlenecks. Today,…

As marketing advances, most professionals are well aware by now of the importance of retention and reactivation in optimizing the value of the customer base. The facts are clear: We know that it costs far less to reactivate a dormant customer than to acquire an entirely new one; we know that…

Sponsored Content Opportunities are becoming more frequent to apply metrology to adaptive robot control for many applications. There are many different techniques to accomplish this, from regular calibration to real-time feedback, using anything from laser trackers to optical devices in order to…

There are few executives today who don’t wish they could be more productive. Even the most successful individuals are looking for new and better ways to get more accomplished while maintaining or increasing their quality of life. “Regardless of location, industry, or occupation, productivity is a…

The dynamic of risk management and compliance seems to be experiencing a shift toward risk management in operations, and learning to pay attention to detail in order to leverage it. The biggest question often asked is, “I’m aware my company needs to pay great attention to the detail of risk, but…

The one complaint—the one problem—that nearly every company puts at (or very near) the top of its list of challenges is communication. George Bernard Shaw, the famous Irish playwright, sets us straight on this when he said: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has…

If there was one key takeaway from Hexagon’s impressive and impressively large user conference, styled “HxGN Live,” which took place earlier this month, it’s that finding actionable information, not merely acquiring mountains of data, is the key to developing a truly smart factory. “It’s always…