All Features
Kate Zabriskie
Do any of these sound familiar?
“The lawn service had to go. I used them for more than 15 years, and by the last season, my lawn looked terrible. The spring seeding didn’t take, nutsedge and wiregrass consumed half the yard, and they just kept spraying chemicals. I wish somebody had just told me…
Corey Brown
The ongoing global Covid-19 pandemic has forced companies of all types to rapidly update policies and procedures governing how they share information in response to a world that is constantly changing around them. For the manufacturing sector in particular, their workforce is more spread out than…
Sky Cassidy
Whether you subscribe to the scientific definition of data (information on which operations are performed by a computer and transmitted in the form of electrical signals) or the philosophical definition (that which is known and used as the basis of reasoning or calculation), I think most people use…
Annette Franz
Over the years, I’ve written a lot of posts about change and change management. In an article I wrote earlier this year about change and some of the learnings and takeaways from the pandemic and the business crisis that it created, I noted that we had (and still have) a lot to learn. Here’s one of…
Jane Bianchi
Let’s pretend, for a moment, that you’re a primary care physician and you refer one of your patients to another doctor for a colonoscopy. Will the patient follow through? If not, how will your team know to remind him or her? If the patient does receive a colonoscopy, will your team be alerted so…
Merilee Kern
The benefits of simulation-based training are indisputable and innumerable. Given its power and efficacy, this methodology is used in sectors beyond aerospace and military, where it gained its initial foothold. These include everything from manufacturing and retail to healthcare, fitness, fashion,…
Bruce Hamilton
Norman Bodek, who sadly left us on Dec. 10, 2020, at the age of 88, will no doubt best be remembered for the amazing library he brought us more than 30 years ago from Japan: primary sources like Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo, as well as brilliant consultants like Yashuhiro Monden and Shigihero…
Dr T Burns
Augmented reality (AR) means adding objects, animations, or information, that don’t really exist, to the real world. The idea is that the real world is augmented (or overlaid) with computer-generated material—ideally for some useful purpose.
Augmented reality has been around for about 30 years.…
Julie Winkle Giulioni
T his year is clearly one that no one planned for. The ink was barely dry on annual goals, objectives, and expectations for 2020 when many organizations were upended by Covid-19.
Many leaders already don’t relish the year-end tradition of evaluating performance and development, and they are…
Thomas Malnight, Ivy Buche
The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted different responses from company CEOs seeking to ensure their businesses survive. Keeping their employees safe has been the first priority, but beyond that, their task has involved understanding the situation, launching countermeasures, and trying to evolve ways…
Gleb Tsipursky
Have you changed your views about Covid-19 months into this pandemic? Or are you anchoring to the same views you held last spring?
For example, many people still believe the false claim spread by many prominent leaders in March 2020 that Covid is no worse than the common flu. They protest against…
Tim Waldo
If you are like many small and medium-sized manufacturers, finding good help has been a pain point for many years, and it has become even more difficult during the Covid-19 pandemic. The market forces driving that dynamic are not likely to change soon.
Your shop has had to become more adaptive and…
Phanish Puranam, Julien Clément
Covid-19 has dealt most businesses a heavy blow, but the pandemic has at least one under-acknowledged upside. By moving organizations from the office into the virtual space, the pandemic has cracked open a treasure trove of data that can be used to streamline and optimize how organizations operate…
Peter Dizikes
The American workforce is at a crossroads. Digitization and automation have replaced millions of middle-class jobs, while wages have stagnated for many who remain employed. A lot of labor has become insecure, low-income freelance work.
Yet there is reason for optimism on behalf of workers, as…
Mark Schmit
As a kid I used to be confused by the so-called curse, “May you live in interesting times.” Wouldn’t interesting times be... good? Why would I not want to be interested? Then I got a little older, experienced a little more life, and I started to understand why “interesting times” could be a…
Natalie Weber
Unlike Covid-19, remote audits aren’t unprecedented. Remote audits didn’t start with the pandemic, although it has forced more companies to use them than previously. At MasterControl, we’ve been doing remote audits for years for our international customers. It saves time and expense, and it’s every…
Joerg Niessing, Fred Geyer
A new digital era of business-to-business (B2B) sales and marketing is upon us. It’s driven by corporate customer demand for online access to their suppliers’ offerings and expertise. Taking advantage of this shift is challenging because it requires moving from deeply embedded B2B sales and…
Matt Martin
Morale has dipped during Covid-19. We’re separated from our friends, families, and colleagues but busier than ever. The majority of workers are reporting higher stress, greater anxiety, and emotional exhaustion. Employers have a responsibility to help workers get through this. Here are five ways to…
Knowledge at Wharton
Real-world, face-to-face communication—complete with eye contact, body language, and other important sources of information—is a rarity in business today, and the potential for failing to convey an intended message or giving the wrong impression has grown. Neuroscience research has uncovered…
Craig Tomita
Are the days of standard industrial robots numbered? Absolutely not. In part one of this series, we looked at the unique attribute of cobots. In this article, we’ll see how industrial robots do what they’re designed to do extremely well—high speed, high repeatability, heavy payloads, and more.…
Liz Uram
If you work remotely either part-time or full-time, temporarily or permanently, you have probably discovered that you are a lot more productive when you are not in the office. The main reason for the increase in productivity is that people aren’t inviting you to “got a minute” meetings. These…
Bryan Christiansen
Safety managers have a multitude of safety strategies to protect the health and safety of their workforce. Guidelines for personal protective equipment (PPE), lockout/tagout (LOTO) programs, fire exit signage—the list is endless. However, to get the most out of your employees and resources,…
Klaus Wertenbroch
From a customer perspective, the only thing more frustrating than being denied a product or service is when that denial comes without a satisfactory explanation. As humans, our ability to deal with disappointment depends on understanding why it happened. Without an acceptable rationale, we’re apt…
Sébastien Breteau
As commercialization strategies evolve amid Covid-19, and supply chains continue to trend toward diversification, the only way for businesses to control their destiny is to double down on quality standards. If cash is king, then quality is the king’s closest confidant since high quality protects…
Jessica Ellspermann
How you communicate a message is as important as the message itself. When it comes to internal communications, this certainly holds true. Company culture can give your organization a major strategic advantage in these changing times. But what your culture consists of—goals, values, and practices—…