During the Sept. 18, 2020, session of the “National Conversation with Manufacturers,” our three West Coast manufacturing leaders on the panel kept coming back to their critical need for skilled workers.

One of the big contributors to climate change is right beneath your feet, and transforming it could be a powerful solution for keeping greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.

When is a product “good enough” to accept? This is the classic challenge of quality. High customer expectations demand that suspect products be thoroughly scrutinized and a high standard set for their release.

Like business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce, business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce allows customers to purchase parts and supplies via an online portal.

Alexander Hamilton, one of the United States’ founding fathers, famously called energy the most important characteristic of the executive branch of government.

Negotiators, even professional ones, make surprisingly many wrong decisions that doom negotiations that should have succeeded.

Globalization of trade and decades-long innovation in supply chain networks have resulted in significant benefits for all stakeholders—greater efficiencies, lower costs, and greater access to markets, to name just a few.

Lean supply chains are designed based on several key principles. First, the general philosophy of lean is to reduce or eliminate nonvalue-added waste. The concept of reducing waste is always beneficial to organizations.

If you’ve ever stayed in a relationship too long or stuck with a project that was going nowhere, you’re not alone. Humans are generally reluctant to give up on something they’ve already committed time and effort to.

New employees at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are often surprised to learn that our agency is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. How could this be?