If there’s one thing that separates those who do things in an average way and those who do those same things in an extraordinary way, it’s passion. This sense of intense interest, excitement, and focus drives the authentic pursuit of excellence, even (or perhaps, especially) in the rather mundane realm of customer service.

This article is adapted from Me We Do Be: The Four Cornerstones of Success (Leadership Institute Press, 2017).

Providing wireless communications in a factory, plant, or other industrial environment these days means more than just helping employees talk with each other while they work. By eliminating physical connections such as wires and cables from a facility’s communication network, wireless technology offers many manufacturing, chemical processing, and municipal (such as water treatment) organizations a means to run their entire operation more efficiently, more productively, and at less cost.

When successful entrepreneurs speak, it is wise to listen. Here are 11 responses from 11 successful entrepreneurs who were asked, “What one piece of management advice do you rely on most, and why?”

The U.S. national debt currently stands at approximately $20 trillion. In the time it will take you to read this article, the debt will increase by a couple of million dollars more. Regardless of where one stands on the political spectrum, these facts are stark and shocking.

Politicians have traditionally paid lip service to the plight of the worker, but with working class struggles at the top of the new administration’s fix-it list, we will likely hear them talking more than usual about the steps they will take to reduce income inequality or end three decades of wage stagnation.

Some of them will go one step further and voice support for unions and collective bargaining, both of which have declined at the same time wages have stagnated.

Before my bosses get wind of the artificial intelligence (AI) platform Quill (“perfectly written, meaningful narratives indistinguishable from a human-written one”) and decide its 18-month ROI would be a great exchange for my pay and complaining, I’d like to present this human-centric survey of where things stand with AI and manufacturing. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t consider it a “narrative.”

More than a million organizations around the world embrace the ISO 9001 quality management system (QMS) standard to guide their businesses and operate in the most efficient manner possible. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has recently updated ISO 9001 from its 2008 version; the 2015 date assigned to the latest revision reflects the completion of work by the various technical committees that contribute to major updates of ISO standards.

For several decades, manufacturers have been pursuing lean on their shop floors to reduce costs and improve lead times through waste elimination and process improvement. They have been less successful, however, in reaping lean’s potential benefits in their purchasing, planning, and supply chain operations, areas that promise significant potential improvement.