The Covid-19 coronavirus has developed into a widespread pandemic.

With Covid-19 continuing to impact many businesses, lead time as well as sourcing new suppliers is increasingly difficult. If you currently outsource manufacturing overseas, it is likely you have encountered some turbulence to your supply chain.

This is supposed to be trade-show season. The time when companies send their employees to industry tech shows and user-group meetings to see and experience the latest offerings in their field.

‘That escalated quickly!” is a common trope used in popular culture to describe when a situation gets out of hand before you’ve even had a chance to think about it.

Companies and societies are at the precipice of rebuilding their foundations to compete in an age of advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML).

As the skills gap widens and more employees retire, decades of experience and company investment is predicted to walk out the door.

The outbreak of the Covid-19 virus in China and the railway disruptions acr

The Manufacturing Institute estimated that 2.4 million job openings in manufacturing—accounting for half of all open positions—will go unfilled between 2018 and 2028 as a direct consequence of the skills gap. This isn’t a future problem.

Shop floor scheduling is a huge headache for many manufacturers. You can’t operate without it, but operating with it presents a host of challenges.

In a recent article I discussed the traditional 5S audit, shared a set of reservations, and offered some remedies—“The Five Tweaks,” as I called them.