Most of us hire people to fill a slot — a given role. That happens all too often because we hire in a reactionary mode, to someone leaving or to sales growth. We talk about cross training, but often don’t provide it for a number of reasons: no time, will have to pay person more, or not sure what we will need are just a few. If your company talks ab…

When I worked for TRW in the 1980’s, the company required everyone with purchasing responsibilities to take the Chester Karrass negotiating course. At that time it was 100% focused on the assumption of a zero sum game, where whatever the other “side” got came directly from you. Win-lose. Since then companies have come to understand that successful …

Phil Spector was a very successful music producer and songwriter, who was also convicted of murder and serving a long sentence when he died in prison. Talented people can be bad people. Talented bad people can also do good things. Phil Spector produced the famous Ike and Tina Turner song “River Deep – Mountain High.” He knew how controlling Ike was…

Why would a senior employee keep tricks of the trade secret from others? For one reason only: a lack of confidence. Someone who acknowledges his own talent and thinking skills would not be intimidated by others having the same abilities. Someone committed to team success would ensure knowledge is public — that is, known and available to many — and …

A few years ago I volunteered to support the Continental Cup activities in Cleveland. This is an international sporting event that included 2500 youngsters from ages 8 to 18 from 12 countries competing in a variety of sports. My first day, I was an electronic scorekeeper / clock operator for basketball games, seated next to a young man who was to k…

A majority of adult Americans do not vote in our elections. Why is that? Simply because they don’t believe their vote matters. They believe nothing will change anyway. Voting within your company happens. Any idea what the participation rates are? They are 100%, regardless. Some votes are simply more visible than others. Why do some not vote in othe…

An effective operation may have bad days, but they are a rarity. When you walk through operations, is the angst palpable? Clearly that swamp monster environment should be prevented, but it may happen anyway. How many times and for how long do you find that operational stress acceptable? How many times and for how long do your employees tolerate it?…

Even the best of us can benefit from cold water to the face occasionally. In mid-2022 I finally quit making excuses and enjoyed a 3-week trip to Greece, Türkiye, Montenegro, Croatia, Italy and Slovenia. What shook me out of my “I don’t want to contract Covid” inaction was a friend’s story that he had recently returned from the Polish-Ukranian borde…

Excerpted From: © 2021 Manufacturing Mastery: The Path to Building Successful and Enduring Manufacturing Businesses; Taylor & Francis, Author: Rebecca Morgan “I have long advised clients that together we will identify and implement new strategic capabilities as quickly as they can handle. One of those strategic capabilities is always the ability to…

Your people are no doubt working hard to do a good job. The question is: Have you given enough structure for them to know what a good job really means? Usually the weakness in that is a lack of sequenced priorities from leadership. How do they even know if they’re working on something that matters? Employees cannot make good decisions if management…

While the worst of the supply chain fiasco of 2020-2022 is behind us, elements certainly continue to challenge us daily. What we should have done then and what we can do now is communicate the truth among our supply matrix. We call it a supply chain, but the reality is all players in it service other customers and many of them serve other markets. …

Wouldn’t you love to see an organization that was fully aligned across all functional arenas? We talk about specific excellence, like Nordstrom and service or Amazon and speed, but do you know of any organizations in which every single person in every corner of the company is aligned on organizational priorities and strategies? Do you think Nordstr…

In the late 1970s, Ken Olson, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), and Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, had very different predictions for the future of computers. Mr. Gates gave his new company the mission of “every desk, every home” while Mr. Olson said there was no reason for a home to ever have a computer. How could two leaders o…

In my lifetime the US economy has experienced bank and savings and loan failures, inflation and full employment, a 20% prime rate and a Fed Funds rate of 0.0%, multiple recessions, and wild political swings in tariffs, tax rates, and regulations. In my lifetime, my country has participated in many wars, eradicated some diseases, had a pandemic, and…

As fast as the world turns these days, it is not easy to stay abreast of the latest concepts and management trends. While it is important that you not let the world pass you by, it is also valuable to leverage some tried-and-true tools. TWI (Training Within Industry) and the Coaching and Improvement Katas are behavioral tools that can increase the …

You’ve all heard that great strategy with poor execution is no better than poor strategy with great execution. Operational effectiveness requires excellence at both levels. My writings and podcasts have long focused on the strategic aspects of operations, specifically how to build a manufacturing business that endures. This episode reminds the list…

Partner. Relationship business. It all sounds so good. But then reality slaps you up the side of the head. In a true partnership, can one company unilaterally change the terms of the contract? Well, no. But then few espoused partnerships are true partnerships. The larger company always has more money for lawyers, if it comes to that. The money they…

I’ve invested the vast majority of my long career in operations. I find it fascinating. Regardless of industry, operations includes the technologies, processes, materials, and procedures that delivering value on each order involves. Many would look at those words and see no similarities between making mac and cheese for millions of consumers and ma…

We manufacturers know that we are responsible for the outputs of cost, quality, product performance and delivery; we also know that many others in our organization impact those as much as we do. Being outstanding in those four outputs is necessary but not sufficient for our futures. In recent years we’ve come to realize that the definition of outst…

Why are some manufacturing businesses a hot mess, while others are a great place to work as you provide exciting value to the market? A business is a living organism, and as such, understanding what makes them healthy and what makes them sick is instrumental to success. Here are seven levers that apply within all manufacturers; each is addressed as…

Manufacturing has played a major role over time in advancing automation, computerization, digitization, and more. Our industries are amazingly different now than they were 15 years ago, much less 30. In December of 2022 the company OpenAI released an online product called ChatGPT. Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve at least heard of it. You …

There are business buzzwords, and then there are important business concepts you cannot afford to ignore. Resilience is one of the latter. Resilience emanates from effective risk management. If you don’t have a viable and ongoing risk management process, start there. In risk management, the first steps are always to identify the majority of risks, …

It was not that long ago that most manufacturers and distributors carried entirely too much inventory. The drag on cash flow was never offset by lower costs or higher performance. When we figured that out, we began to lower inventories. By adding some technology, whether RFID or barcodes or enhanced ERP software, we made it easier to reduce invento…

Strategy is one of those important business concepts that many cannot recognize, develop or implement, yet businesses that endure have mastered. “Growth” is not a strategy, nor is “increase profits.” Those are goals or objectives. Strategy describes the boundaries, priorities and activities within which those will be achieved. For example, a growth…

The business model in manufacturing and distribution has long been own it, sell it, get paid for it. For most of those companies, it still is. But our world is changing. The concept of ownership has a very different place in our thinking, as does the concept of value. The potential enabled by rapidly advancing technology is integral in changing thi…

Are you a pneumatic tube operator? A COO is not a COO is not a COO. While the title Chief Operating Officer should indicate range of responsibilities, it does little to describe them. Same for a Buyer, a Plant Manager, or an New Product Development Manager. These titles have very different meanings in a $5M, a $100MM, and a $1B company. They also h…

When a recorded message for customers is considered a snide comment you’ve failed. Yet the way to fix that is not to prevent customers from calling you. Each day another company quietly moves from a call center to a contact center. That is the official method of precluding customers from actually talking with someone who could help them. While AI a…

The Cleveland Clinic is widely recognized as one of the best medical systems in the world. And its delivery of medical services deserves that recognition. But its costs are unnecessarily high, its critical medical resources wasted, and its doctors and patients needlessly irritated by its short-sighted approach to scheduling. Scheduling, an organiza…

A number of manufacturers have announced plans to leave China, primarily due to the upheaval in Hong Kong and impacts of the government’s “zero covid” policy. But what’s the destination? If a leader does not completely understand why his operations strategy involves leaving one location for another, how will success be measured? Vietnam, the Philip…

As we advanced from craftsmen through the industrial revolution, Henry Ford decided the best way to make automobiles was a 100% vertically integrated business model. In 1917 his River Rouge plant brought in iron ore at one end, and shipped out finished cars at the other. That’s one type of supply chain, one he found very difficult to execute. Most …

These are strange times for the workforce. Disney, the picture of stability, recently fired the CEO they had groomed for the job, and brought back prior CEO Bob Igor to set the ship straight again. At the same time, Elon Musk used the power of email to summarily fire 1,000s of employees as he told those who remained that hard work and long hours wo…

In 2019 manufacturers were struggling to onboard and retain important workers, to obtain supplies when needed, and to meet the level of performance that customers demand. And then Covid hit. “It’s the supply chain” became the phrase to indicate the problems are out of our control. It meant “don’t expect a good answer from us” and “don’t expect on-t…

My computer is running slow today. They keep moving things around here. Someone called off so I’m doing it all myself. And now, it’s the supply chain. The computer excuse shouldn’t have been accepted since about 2010, the moving things around excuse since hand-held devices, and the someone called off — well, that one will likely be with us for deca…

In manufacturing we constantly talk about continuous improvement to move ever closer to excellence. But if we increase productivity by 5% per year, are we excellent? That, by itself, cannot answer the question. It says we’re pretty good at reducing labor-related costs, but it tells us nothing about how well we meet the needs of the market. Most lea…

The coal industry did not change for decade after decade. Being forced to improve safety demanded exhaust systems, better lighting, and a bit more, but nothing too dramatic. That industry long believed that arguments for cleaner energy were a fad. After a while it became clear that was a trend. But was that enough to require any real change? Would …

Maximizing current profits by definition sacrifices the long term investments that attaining your mission requires. My concept of “strategic profits” addresses how to think about profitability in a way that ensures you can always invest in the muscle instrumental toyour organization’s long term success. First, can you identify those company muscles…

Do you ever say “what was she thinking!” in exasperation? Most of us do. And if we’re honest, we also ask “what was I thinking?” No one bats 1000 in making great decisions, but all of us can improve the quality of the decisions we make. And we can help others do the same. As leaders, we need to do both. A few easy-to-implement steps include asking …

Following the inflation, high interest rates, and economic downturn of the late 1970s and early 1980s, American manufactures felt significant price pressures. They, wrongly, believed that offshoring production and sourcing to low wage rate countries was the only way to remain competitive. As they complicated the supply chain and extended lead times…

Could your manufacturing company utilize a retiring Brigadier General who has led small and large international groups in theaters of war and in standing up government infrastructure in countries in turmoil? The typical immediate response is “wow! what a background. But what could he do for us with no experience in manufacturing?” Hiring someone be…

We all know we have to be innovative. Many of us demonstrate that by introducing new products regularly. Do they all make sense? Should we simply add to the number of offerings without subtracting? The process of ensuring that the products and services offered by a manufacturer are optimal for the company and its customers is call product rationali…

Not all markets are good markets for you. Not all customers are good customers for you. And not all orders are good orders for you. How do you recognize the distinctions beforehand? And how do you fire a customer once you’ve already accepted them? A good customer for you is not the same as for others, and cannot be based solely on top line potentia…

Every one of your employees must clearly see how his actions and decisions impact execution of the business strategy. This is accomplished through a line-of-sight deployment process. It is not enough to describe the strategy at an all-hands meeting, or even add to that the down-one-level strategy. Stopping the formal deployment process at that poin…

No manufacturer can afford to ignore the concept of Digital Transformation. Yes, there continues some small need for manual lathes, but don’t plan your future on that. In the past several editions of this podcast I discussed several business-side categories of digital transformation, from machine health to connected employees to using blockchain to…

It is always smart to start with a business case before deciding to move forward with a specific technology in your digital transformation. The same is true with blockchain. In prior podcasts I’ve described several categories of business benefit to consider in creating your digital transformation roadmap. We’ve considered machine health, connected …

Prior podcasts have introduced the digital transformation business categories of “machine health” and “connected employees.” In this episode we discuss “smart products.” Some manufacturing products are easy to visualize as electronic sources of volumes of data; others, not so much. Yet a significant portion of the products developed, manufactured, …

Connected employees is a phrase that can intimate workers and confuse leadership. When clarified, it becomes an integral part of your digital transformation. Connected employees simply means that as employees move around doing their jobs, they have the information they need where they are at that moment. It requires mobile devices because employees…

In manufacturing, reliable healthy equipment is a fundamental requirement. Yet so many of us struggle with unplanned downtime due to equipment failures. Digital transformation often has as its first arena in manufacturing machine health. Initial efforts at machine health have revolved around preventive maintenance executed on the schedule recommend…

If you can’t lead change, your company cannot succeed. The rate and types of change that success requires continue to expand. Digital Transformation is a buzzword, but more importantly it is a genuine requirement of any manufacturing business that will succeed over the next several years. Imagine the manufacturer that considered electricity an irre…

Why are our supply chains in such a mess? While Covid made it much worse, it merely reflected the weakness in how most companies view their supply chains. There are two primary causes of our current woes, and Covid is not one of them. The first is that leadership failed to comprehend the importance of supply chain expertise and thinking in ensuring…

“Round up the usual suspects” — a line from Casablanca — unfortunately describes the hiring strategy of many manufacturers. Don’t be one of them! If you’re looking for the same people you’ve always hired, and through the same sources you’ve always used, why on earth would you expect better results? How many felons have you interviewed in the last y…