All Features
Heinz Schandl
The world is using its natural resources at an ever-increasing rate. Worldwide, annual extraction of primary materials—biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores, and minerals—tripled between 1970 and 2010. People in the richest countries now consume up to 10 times more resources than those in the poorest…
Micki Vandeloo
It’s so important for manufacturers to find and cultivate valuable partnerships. They can help manufacturers expand their service or product offerings, make their processes more efficient, and help specify and procure just the right equipment.
When manufacturers launch a new product or are making…
Ryan E. Day
Sponsored Content
In today's hyper-competitive, fast-paced manufacturing world, there is rarely anything like a "routine" day at the office—especially when you're a tier-one supplier for some of the largest aerospace companies in the world. To make the grade and satisfy this kind of demanding…
Michael Huda
Speaking the language of color isn’t like telling someone your name and expecting him to remember it. Our minds just don’t process color like that.
While vague color descriptions are sufficient for many people—“Turn left at the blue house” or “Choose the reddest strawberries”—if you work in an…
Chad Kymal
In 2014, the International Automotive Task Force (IATF) reported that the automotive industry wouldn’t upgrade the ISO/TS 16949 standard to ISO 9001:2015, much to the dismay of Tier One suppliers. In a survey that same year, Tier One suppliers related their desire to update their management…
Mark Whitworth
Quality is, for every organization and across all industries, a key competitive differentiator. This is especially true in the highly competitive automotive industry, where cost pressures have pushed automakers and their suppliers toward global sourcing and distributed supply-chain operations.…
ISO
The global food industry has never faced more challenges. From tainted dairy products to contaminated beef, high-profile cases crop up regularly to dent consumer confidence, while leading companies work hard to reclaim lost faith. So how trustworthy is your food?
Food safety is something we tend…
Frank Townsend
World shipping changed forever when the Panama Canal opened on Aug. 15, 1914. It was an engineering marvel of its day, cutting the distance required to get from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic by as much as 8,000 nautical miles.
The shipping industry is changing once again as 70 heads of state…
Stephan Manning, Marcus M. Larsen
One of the big themes in the current presidential race is how decades of free trade have dealt a heavy blow to the U.S. worker as millions of jobs were shipped overseas to take advantage of cheap labor.
That’s even turned some pro free-trade Republicans into protectionists. As a result, the…
Paul Voss
Not long ago, most Americans could safely ignore congressional deliberations about Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authority, leaving the details to industry experts and lobbyists. But this time, we may need to fasten our seatbelts and actually read the card in the seat pocket.
A bill under…
Joby George
Driven by market expansion, financial pressures, and the need to accelerate innovation, today’s manufacturers have expanded their global operations and supply partners. This evolution has only amplified the manufacturer and supply-chain relationship, which is often characterized by a delicate…
Giles Hutchins
Globalization, disruptive technologies, pressure on finite resources, increasing social disparity, and demand for business transparency: Enter the age of uncertainty. These transformative times are reshaping the workplace in profound ways, demanding the crossing of thresholds at myriad levels. …
MIT News
In March 2011, Leonardo Bonanni was preparing to defend his Ph.D. thesis about Sourcemap, software that lets consumers map every connection of a product supply chain on a digital map, when tragedy struck in Japan. Although the deadly earthquake and tsunami occurred half a world away, the events…
In the race to design smaller handheld devices and smartphones, a key factor is decreasing the sizes of components. As the demand for thinner and lighter microelectronic devices increases, manufacturers often are limited by how oddly shaped the energy sources must become to make them conform to…
Thomas R. Cutler
It’s no surprise that multinational companies have complex global supply chains. What’s less obvious is how to simplify supply-chain processes and arrive at a lean, consistent, reliable, and cost-effective solution. One global leader, ITT Corp., has taken on this challenge with the help of Ultriva…
Manufacturing Extension Partnership MEP
Whether it’s for performance management or for risk, it’s important to know who your suppliers are and have a close business relationship with them.
It’s a given you should already have a strong relationship with your key suppliers, but how often does your supplier request the following items? •…
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is working with drugmakers in a new way to help the industry adopt scientifically sound, novel technologies to produce quality medicines that are consistently safe and effective—with an eye toward avoiding drug shortages.
When manufacturing problems…
Ryan E. Day
The words “plastic,” “polymers,” and “environmental responsibility” rarely bump consonants in the same sentence, but public sentiment and keen competition can nudge a company into exploring all kinds of plastic substitutes. Of course, a $160 price tag on a barrel of oil is also rather compelling.…
Dawn Bailey
I heard the example that best helped me understand work systems and supply chains at a Baldrige training event right after the very sad 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. A colleague was talking about automakers in the United States and elsewhere whose suppliers were located in the devastated…
Sonal Sinha
In a recent poll, employees (22.9%) were identified as the top source of supply chain fraud risk, followed by vendors (17.4%) and other third parties (20.1%), including subcontractors and their vendors. In calling new attention to the old cliché of “an inside job,” the statistics may prove to be…
Lou Washington
I came across a couple of interesting articles related to the Airbus plant that recently opened in Mobile, Alabama. The first, by Justin Fox, is found in BloombergView, and the second was written by Jon Talton from The Seattle Times. Both pieces sought to explain why Airbus would build an assembly…
Brian Lagas
Embracing sustainable and green principles is not just a trend. Cultivating such practices helps organizations become more efficient, competitive, and profitable. It’s more than simply a good thing to do. Manufacturers are realizing the many short- and long-term financial benefits from…
John Niggl
On the morning of Thursday, Aug. 13, 2015, I woke to find dozens of posts from netizens clamoring about events that had occurred late the night before. There had been two massive explosions reported from a warehouse in Tianjin, a prominent port city in northern China.
Shockwaves were felt several…
Sonal Sinha
Competitive pressures affecting bottom-line profit margins have risen dramatically in today’s global economy. As a result, an increasing number of U.S. companies have turned to outsourcing of goods and services to reduce manufacturing and operational costs.
Although international supply chain…
Ryan E. Day
True, “Marco Polo” is a great tag game played in a swimming pool, but Marco Polo the man is probably better known in connection with the trans-Asiatic trade route known as the Silk Road. That, however, was the old Silk Road. Yes, there is a new Silk Road, and no, it shouldn’t be confused with the…