It’s 1 p.m. on a sunny afternoon in July—smack dab in the middle of summer break—and a perfect 75° outside, but Jonathan Park is laser-focused.

It’s a Catch-22 for a manufacturing supervisor: You need to train new hires properly to master the skills for the job, but your own daily job duties can’t wait.

Someone we know recently told us about a team-building event that proved anything but.

It happens easily enough and usually innocently enough. You start a business or organization then endure what is often a long and expensive learning curve. Along the way you learn. You learn a lot.

It’s no news that U.S. manufacturing has a workforce problem. However, a new survey conducted by Leading2Lean (L2L) offers some unexpected hope.

Given the recent, renewed intensification of the shareholder vs.

Recently, I got the chance to travel to Youngstown, Ohio. As I came into town, it struck me that Youngstown was like many other cities across America, including my hometown of Buffalo, New York.

There is a lot of buzz these days in the manufacturing sector about robots—and how they can help manufacturers address some of the challenges they face in today’s market, such as increased productivity and the scarcity of skilled workers.

Those of us old enough to remember the “good old days” recall that grade school focused on learning the three R’s: readin’, ’ritin’, and ’rithmetic. In the world of sensors, there are also three Rs: repeatability, resolution, and response.

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) Manufacturers’ Outlook Survey: First Quarter 2019, found that 71.3 percent of the U.S.