Finish Strong® by Becky Morgan

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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 about sales mix impacting productivity or other measures like on-time delivery, it often reflects a lack of flexibility or agility with our work force.

Cross training employees can be expensive, but can pay for itself every day. Random or time-filling cross training will likely be expensive and not pay for itself, ever.

Operations leadership are well served by creation and maintenance of a widely visible cross training matrix. The matrix starts with a picture of each employee on the Y axis, and the names of the various relevant skills on the X matrix. Where the picture and the skill intersect is the information about that person's level of mastery of that skill.

Now review what that list of relevant skills should include. Some simply name machines, but often there are subsets of skills for a given machine that are important and not equally mastered by all. Rather than worry about perfect, create the list of skills that seem to make sense at the start.

Now, it's time to indicate who (the pictures on the Y axis) has which skills (the X axis entries). Most find it helpful to define categories, like "run with supervision," run without supervision," "perform setups," and "train others to operate." These classifications will vary depending upon your business and staffing models.

It is time to fill out the matrix. You can look across and see who is capable of what, and look vertically to see who all is skilled in a specific machine or task.

You've created the "current state" matrix. That tells you what you currently have. What's next?

How will you keep this accurate? The fact that John Doe ran a machine a year ago doesn't mean he is still qualified at the same level to do so again. How does your re-verification effort work?

Similarly, you don't need everyone cross trained in every machine or skill. How many do you need for flexibility and to support growth?

Each column should indicate a number for the goal skilled personnel. You may need 3 trained on Machine 1 and 6 trained on Machine 2. These numbers are based on product demand, engineering intentions, the number of shifts, and other factors.

Your current state matrix, combined with the target number for each skill, makes visible the needs of the organization for appropriate cross training. This is a live document, as new skills are added, people lose skills over time, and our expected needs change.

Operations is responsible for capacity planning and management of people, equipment, and processes. The cross training matrix I have just described to you is a simply and important tool in that effort.

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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 suppliers are required by successful customers, and vice versa. Win-win became the order of the day.

Unfortunately, that understanding itself often ebbs and flows with near-term earnings, and for too many companies it has yet to extend beyond the commercial supply chain.

Every business has five constituencies: customers, suppliers, employees, investors, and the community at large. The concept of community extends into the future. Every responsible company considers all five when making major decisions. Too many leaders focus first on investors, and then on customers, and then perhaps on suppliers. If there's money "left over" the employees may get a raise or a bonus. The community? Well, if there's still money left over, maybe we'll donate to something or fix that fence.

Managing costs is integral to long term success. Managing costs is not the same as stretching payments to vendors, taking discounts not earned, or laying off highly skilled employees when times are tough. Poor processes, guestimate specifications, slow time to market and unverified products, ineffective onboarding and training, accepting bad orders or customers, staying with suppliers uninterested in improving your success, firing suppliers without investing in their success, ignoring local schools — these, and more, are all significant contributors to poor financial performance.

Consider what it takes to be a company that the best want to work for, suppliers energetically support, customers seek out, long term investors chase, and that the community is thrilled to have. You can't get there without being profitable. But being profitable doesn't put you there either. Profits are important. They can and should be derived from well considered decisions, not short term ones to maximize today's numbers.

As you consider significant decisions, I encourage you to ask yourself: 'what is the impact likely to be on all five of our constituencies?" If all five benefit, now and in the future, it's an easy decision to make. If not, consider both the short and long term impact on each of them. Then make the right decision, which might well not be the one that maximizes profits.

To focus solely on maximizing profits is a strategic mistake that few of you can afford to make.

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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, so he created a unique contract for this work, paying Ike Turner $20,000 to stay away while giving credit to both Ike and Tina Turner. That seems like a talented bad person doing a good thing.

We all know the story of Ike repeatedly beating Tina, until she escaped one night with no money and no where to go. Working long and hard at low-end jobs to keep herself and her children fed, she knew that she was a really good singer. Still under contract with United Artists she released solo albums, none of which succeeded.

The UAR contract ended; she signed with EMI in the early 1980's, and as they say, the rest is history.

It is easy to be impressed by talent, even when that talent is covering significant character flaws, ergo Ike Turner and Phil Spector.

It is easy to overlook world-changing talent when it pushes a mop bucket, like Tina Turner.

How much talent do you reject because it doesn't look like the talent you normally hire? How much talent do you keep, despite toxicity, because it can hit the high notes?

We all know, whether we like it or not, that culture eats strategy for breakfast.

So why do we live with toxic workers? Not one of them anywhere in any role for any organization is worth it. Many of us choose to be optimistic, hoping that the person will improve.

How long is enough? One day? One month? One year?

Every minute you accept toxicity as acceptable behavior you are driving away everything that is good about your organization. No level of skill can outweigh that.

Your organization may be filled with Tina Turners looking to escape because of the Ike Turner or Phil Spector you choose to retain.

What's love got to do with it?

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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 not private -- that is, known only by himself.

In this podcast I provide examples of how and why to ensure the knowledge of your organization is not lost when someone walks out the door for the last time.

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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 keep track of individual statistics, team fouls, and team time-outs on paper. I received 2 minutes of training on the equipment; not sure he received any on his role. We did have experienced refs.

Unfortunately, the court we were assigned was in the middle, with fans at one end and the scoring table (us) and the players at the other. With whistles blowing on courts on both sides and required to look at the far end of the court for half the activity, ours was not an easy assignment.

I had to rely on the scorekeeper to know when to light the bonus and double-bonus indicators for the refs. He needed nothing from me. We were individuals, not a team, in tracking the score. As is not surprising, during one game our scores were different. Additionally, he was confused on individual fouls and team fouls, which understandably frustrated coaches. He wanted silence, except when he asked me a question, so he could concentrate. I wanted to verbally verify which team scored so we could stay aligned.

That volunteer and I never became a team. We went through the forming and storming stages, but never reached norming or performing. The refs had the same challenge. They were to perform as a team, but were thrown into the game together just as my fellow volunteer and I were.

All 4 of us should have been a single team, but instead we behaved as 4 individuals each trying to do a good job. No one with bad intentions.

My second day I had the paper detailed scorekeeper job. My "table-mate" for that day and I had about 5 minutes before our games started. We talked about how to work together, she trained me on my new job, explaining "little tricks" that make it easier. Our team of refs had worked together before. We talked with the refs about how they could help make our jobs easier, and vice-versa.

While far from perfect, the four of us were a fairly effective team. When creating a small team to accomplish a task, plan time for them to get to know one another, discuss roles and responsibilities, and agree on operating guidelines.

No matter how smart, how experienced, or how caring they are as individuals, they will not suddenly become a team just because the game has started.

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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 other countries? One recent Russian immigrant told me he never voted in Russia because he didn't want to vote to support the existing government and he didn't want to be caught voting for anyone else.

Voting in your company can be accomplished by leaving, or by staying.

The vote of staying may well be that of the Russian man or our unregistered and nonparticipative voters. If staying is a real vote it includes speaking up and the belief that input and ideas will be considered.

In elections we want to believe that our side may not win, but our vote counts. In companies, it's the same thing.

How long is the line to vote within your organization? If turnout appears low, you know why.

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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?

Is meaningful progress being made and are employees involved in that? Manhandling a mess may shape-change the mess, but it won't replace it with effective operations. Throwing resources at a problem may feel good but won't get to root cause.

With an intention to "do something" executives can be tempted to dig in with their pre-leadership topic expertise. But seriously, does that make anything better for tomorrow? Leaders must successfully transition their thinking from tactical to strategic. Brainstorming is one thing; relying on leaders to provide tactical solutions in another entirely.

You can't be sucked into the swamp monster without your permission. If you are expediting, something is dreadfully wrong. If you're doing nothing long term of substance to kill the monster and prevent his return, something is dreadfully wrong.

Your job is not to expedite, not to do the jobs of others, nor to hope things will get better. Your job is to anticipate, invest, and ensure others have what they need for success.

It is routine for every employee to be aware of both problematic patterns and desirable patterns in effective operations. It is routine for those same employees to develop and implement fixes, prevent re-occurrence, or reinforce positive patterns through root cause problem solving.

When, for whatever reason, that is not happening, leadership has failed.

Or has not yet succeeded.

With that description as the objective, leadership must prioritize observing patterns and the processes to succeed within them: processes that exist, those that are not functioning well, those that should exist but don't, and those that exist but shouldn't.

If you can't bring greater value to your organization by thinking, guiding, providing course correction, and giving the team what it needs than you can by taping boxes or carrying paperwork, your business needs a new leader.

Thinking may not look or feel like work, but it is usually the most important work a leader can do.

Arm wrestling the swamp monster is not work, but it is exhausting.

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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 border assisting refugees.

Fully vaccinated and masked, why was I sitting on my hands? If I drive a car, walk across the street, and eat indoors at restaurants, what was my excuse for not “risking” travel? My colleague’s matter-of-fact response to my “done anything interesting lately?” query was cold water in my face.

I have since taken several trips and enjoyed each. Thank goodness for that cold water in my face.

It is easy to become complacent, over-estimate our current mastery, or let the potential downside of an action corner us into inaction. Those are rarely the mark of leadership we want to follow.

Your supply chain was never a fully visualized well-oiled machine.

Pre-Covid, you struggled to attract the workforce you want and need.

Customer expectations were never stagnant.

Investing in building muscle is an ages old demand. Details may be different now but taking decisive action to make giant leaps forward is an ongoing requirement of any business.

Consider these questions:

Supply Chain – What specific steps have you taken:

to simplify?
to increase responsiveness and resilience?
to rationalize products, parts, and suppliers?
to enhance multi-level visibility?

People – What specific steps have you taken

to remove toxic employees, regardless of their skillsets?
to capture and teach knowledge of departing workers?
to respect employees as individuals with individual needs and goals?
to emphasize characteristics rather than years of experience in new hires?
to speed the effective onboarding to the company and to new roles?
to develop training skills in knowledgeable employees?
to gather and leverage diverse backgrounds?

Strategy – How have you redefined yours to reflect current realities in

supply chain
people
global socioeconomics
technical advances
constituent expectations regarding ESG?

I could ask each of you hundreds of questions specific to your industry, size, and market position. I could help you develop and implement decisions.

But it is most important that you know it’s time. Time to quit making excuses, quit reacting like a pinball, and quit waiting for “normal.”

It’s here.

Your future is yours to create. It’s time.

Now dry that cold water off your face and start moving.

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"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 effectively create and integrate value-adding change more and more rapidly. Why would any business choose to improve its competitive position more slowly than it could? Changing faster than it can risks breaking the company. As leaders we must master walking that fine line as we advance it.

"What does breaking look like?

"In the 1990s, Toyota decided to significantly expand its geographic footprint and number of operations. Unfortunately, it did so faster than it could effectively embed its business operating system, extraordinary design thinking, and expectations of working towards perfection in the new operations. That growth-oriented decision diluted those critical aspects of the company’s success worldwide. Its internal process performance standards effectively fell. Quality problems arose and other challenges, though less obvious to the customer, continue. Breaking doesn’t have to mean close up shop, but it certainly means a turn for the worse...

"Reacting with an on/off mindset–changing everything or changing nothing–fails without exception. Go fast, but not too fast. It is the leader’s responsibility to ensure that the organization responds smoothly to the requirements of change. At any point, an organization has a maximum rate of healthy velocity and then acceleration. To prevent breaking, leaders must establish a governor to ensure it is not exceeded. As the organization gains agility, the cap increases, and the business changes to reach the new capability. Finding that sweet spot is a requisite skill for leaders to constantly build and adapt."

https://www.mfgmastery.com

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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 cannot sequence the list of multiple priorities. Giving employees a list of more than one priority, without sequencing, abdicates responsibility.

If you can't decide what's important, how can they?

It is typically the unreasonable fear of leaders that nothing other than Priority #1 will be worked on if we let them know it's most important.

Let me ask you: Would that be so bad? If every single employee can make #1 move closer to the finish line right now, why would you want them to work on something else right now?

I've yet to see an organization in which every single employee could positively impact the top single priority at all times. Have you?

By providing all employees with a sequenced list of a handful of priorities, each is positioned to make better decisions every single day.

If I can't move #1 along, I should work on #2; if I can't move #2 forward, I should work on #3; etc.

The fear that employees will do absolutely nothing if they can't work on Priority #1 is silly. Think how powerful it is for your leadership team to help each employee see how their work supports priorities.

The goal is not for all of your employees to stay busy. The goal is for each employee to contribute to organizational and personal success by working on what matters most.

Isn't that the purpose of strategy?

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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. The increasing number of variables due to that fact makes coordination even more critical to effective capacity management.

Supply chain personnel have been expediting since before it was called Materials Management. In early 2020 most of us fell into one of two camps: the first faced a precipitous decline in demand which mean de-expedite everything; the second saw skyrocketing demand, which we chose to address by expediting everything.

Strong supply chain competency is like beautiful choreography. It leverages what each participant does best, blending together variables to create something beautiful. Every choreographer knows it only detracts to have dancers enter the stage before they are needed.

Yet in most supply chain efforts, we continue to fall back on expediting -- getting parts and materials before we need them -- when the going gets tough. It is a perfect example of confusing motion with results.

Dancers must trust one another and the choreographer; the same is true of the best supply matrices. Honesty enables better decision-making by all of us.

Coordinated conversations with suppliers that are struggling to provide materials when you want them can determine what the group can actually do.

Which part/supplier is the key to getting this all moving? Knowing that is crucial to wisely leveraging capacity. Understanding what other parts can then be delayed -- even though we wish we had everything right now -- until that key part can be received from that supplier helps prioritization throughout. Demanding more or earlier hurts supplier prioritization with no offsetting benefit.

The hesitation in doing this is a lack of trust. We're not sure we actually know what we need when and that our own production planning is that precise. We don't trust all our suppliers to actually ship "our" material to someone else right now and replace it to us at the agreed-upon date.

When everyone is lying we're all hurt. When everyone is telling the truth but we don't trust them, we're all hurt.

Supplier selection and development is an integral part of operations management. Done well, coordination and communication the last few years has been strong, even if not what any of us wanted to hear. We could jointly plan, and execute.

Not done well, expediting is your strategy. Your dance floor is cluttered with excess dancers who have no current role.

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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 Nordstrom and Amazon are fully aligned internally?

The "town hall" meeting in which you communicate the current strategy via PowerPoint slides is ineffective in describing the strategy, as well as ineffective in generating alignment. After you leave that room employees will still be operating at cross purposes. Not because they are bad people, but because the work and decisions that their jobs require are not integrated.

Ask each member of your leadership team to separately use one side of one piece of 8-1/2" X 11" paper to specify the following headings:

Summary of your business
Mission/Vision
Core Values
Key Elements of Current Strategy
Top Current Functional Challenges/Decisions
How This Year Will Be Different From Last

Until they can do that and agree on the responses, alignment is impossible for the rest of your organization.

Next, verify that the responses to #4 are consistent with #1, #2, and #3. If they are not, silos are the least of your problems.

Now, agree on how #5 integrates with #4.

Lastly, to make this actionable and aligned, agree on the bullet points under #6 that are the expected result of executing #4 and #5. If you and your team cannot do that, it's time to change the strategy.

You and each individual on your leadership team should be able to complete the above assignment before your first coffee break.

With each leader referring to this "charter for the year" daily as discussing priorities, actions, and decisions with their staff, alignment is possible. Using it without exception will create alignment.

Silos are not the problem.

Unaligned leaders are.

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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 of the early computer hardware and software industries see the future so differently?

The art of the possible is indeed an art, not a science. While science may well be the enabling factor, it is a different thinking process to envision possibility.

Drones are not brand new. The underlying technologies of drones have rapidly advanced as enclosed and tight spaces coupled with long distance and larger payloads have made the possibilities economically significant.

We hear about drones being a lower cost option for the last mile as we see them mapping power company right-of-ways and blowing up buildings in real war. IKEA uses 100s of drones in its European operations, many to record inventory during off-hours.

Your manufacturing or distribution company can no doubt leverage drone technologies; the question is "should it?" Is your view of the potential of drones more Bill Gates or more Ken Olson?

Unless you are in the drone business, it's not your job to envision all the possibilities drones offer. It is your job to assess internal and supply chain work and understand where automation could improve safety, speed, quality or cost. Drones are simply one technology.

To prod your imagination, it is time well spent to read business articles on how various organizations are using technology. Drones are no longer toys, nor is virtual or augmented reality. They can reduce or eliminate key challenges for you.

The possibilities are endless. Current drone technologies may offer amazing improvement to your business operations. Or not.

Always lead with the business question, not with the technology answer.

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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 experienced thousands of large protests for various causes.

In my lifetime, travel became common, gadgetry a life requirement, and our lives have assumed those of the Jetsons. Most industry business models have changed significantly.

Those examples include evolution, the exceptional, and revolution.

And I'm not all that old!

Creating the culture and context for successfully navigating all types of external jolts is a requirement of building an enduring business.

Clear mission, vision, and core values are integral to the process. So too is alignment. Clear roles and responsibilities for anticipating and addressing or creating these various types of change is required.

What types of risk assessment are the responsibility of your top management? Your mid-level management? Your individual contributors?

Each of your employees has a different perspective, a different view, and a different ability to foresee, address, or create change.

We don't expect the CNC operator to advise leadership of potential supplier failures or interest rate hikes; we don't expect the CEO to anticipate power or water outages.

Does your risk management process reflect those realities?

Reactionary is better than uniformed. Prepared with thinking and context for reactions is significantly better still.

Regardless of what you do, the hits will just keep on coming. You might as well learn how to duck.

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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 effectiveness of your entire team quickly and safely.

If you've ever taken a martial arts class, you've been introduced to the concept of kata. The term itself refers to a process repeated reliably to enhance mastery. The same is true for the coaching and improvement katas.

While deceptively simple, as with any of the martial arts, detailed regular practice under the watchful eye of an expert is integral to proficiency. Both of these katas share the same thinking, but the detailed steps are different. That's the same as the katas for two varieties of the martial arts.

TWI is a tool developed by the US federal government at the early stages of WW2 to get the new female workforce productive quickly and safely. The men experienced in manufacturing had gone to war, and women had to step into those roles. Rosie the Riveter was born.

There are multiple aspects of TWI, each consistent with the other and each designed for specific purpose. Again, conceptually, this is similar to kata. It is worth investing some time watching a few YouTube videos and reading summaries of the distinct purpose of each form of TWI.

While TWI is fully in the public domain, reading the original government documentation is not fun nor particularly helpful. That's why I recommend searching for more modern overviews.

Other than training, neither TWI nor Kata requires a financial investment. Both can rapidly enhance the safety and quality of your workforce as they work to master and improve your business operations.

Yes, innovation is crucial to success. But, no, that does not mean jettisoning the already-existing and proven tools.

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You've all heard that great strategy with poor execution is no better than poor strategy with great execution. Operational effectiveness requires excellence in 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 listener of the laws of math and physics that impact near term execution.

The book Factory Physics was written about 30 years ago, and updated several times since. Its primary intent continues to be for undergraduate and graduate students in Operations Management.

To overlook its value for production leaders, plant managers, and financial leaders in manufacturing operations is a mistake.

Most of you are likely familiar with multiple order quantity formulas, from EOQ to Kanban, even if you've only seen them as options in your ERP system. Any order quantity formula impacts operational effectiveness, as it is designed to determine inventory levels and scheduling.

It can be overwhelming, and seem to require great judgement, to determine what to do next on what machine or with which supplier. The more inventory you see the uglier it gets.

There are laws of math and physics that are true whether or not recognized. Those fundamentals can help you make better decisions, lowering costs and increasing throughput and on-time delivery.

Batch size, equipment utilization, and work-in-progress inventory are all integrated. When the boss insists on high utilization because he wants to absorb overhead, he may not understand the secondary impacts on inventory, throughput and lead-time.

You should. And a good boss does as well.

As someone who worked her way up through shop floor operations to plant and divisional operations, I've found understanding the details required by operational execution to be of great value in setting strategy. No, I can't write out most of the equations without help anymore, but I know the concepts and what drives them.

If you want to enhance the quality of your operations strategy thinking, don't turn your back on Factory Physics.

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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 use to pay those lawyers may well be yours, which only makes it worse. The smaller company can also have a finger on the trigger. While meeting at high noon in front of the saloon is never the intention, it can happen. That's why fact-finding and intention-testing up front is a fundamental first step to enabling a trusting relationship to develop.

Automotive has a bad reputation for harming small suppliers because the OEMs feel free to make unilateral demands and contract changes with abandon. Toyota and Honda are well-known exceptions to that and Hyundai has a history of being pretty honorable also. But the "big 3?" Keep your hand on your wallet.

Those are hardly the only companies and automotive is hardly the only industry where the voiced commitment to a partnership that reflects a commitment to relationship is Vanilla Ice.

But small suppliers or customers do not need to be as vulnerable as they often choose to believe and act.

Don't get sucked in by the allure of business-altering volumes, because they may well alter your business in ways you don't intend.

Before signing a contract, discuss with the potential supply chain partner scenarios that range from somewhat likely to probable. Ask how they have behaved in the past when those situations have arisen, and then talk with their other partners to see how well the two descriptions match.

You, too, must open the kimono, and share what scenarios have challenged you to comply with your commitments and how you've handled those scenarios.

If your large company potential partner has a track record of using its "relationships" to finance its cash flow, or to reduce its cost of goods sold by whatever number its CFO demands by pushing that responsibility down to you, there's trouble in River City. And that's trouble with a capital T. Teamwork starts with a very different T.

Every business runs into challenges, sometimes severe. Pretending it won't happen is silly. Developing a common understanding of how you will treat one another, what kind of actions you'll each be willing to take if needed to help the other, being transparent about how you each define integrity and ethics -- those conversations are fundamental to any opportunity to build a true partnership.

The fear of laying cards on the table indicates a problem from the beginning. Maybe you'll both be served well by a few short term purchase orders -- and yes that can impact costs for both of you -- before making the long term agreement.

As Ronald Reagan said about Russia, "trust, but verify."

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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 making aerospace parts for a limited number of engines.

Yet my transition from operations of the first to the second was fast and easier than you might imagine.

I am NOT a technologist. Making frozen prepared foods I worked with food scientists. Making aerospace parts I worked with metallurgists and ceramicists.

I AM a business and operations expert. Both food and aerospace industries, and I could give many more examples, must obtain and keep customers, must know what materials are needed when, what critical steps are involved in converting those materials to the end product sold to the customer, and must comply with regulations while delivering cost effective quality reliably.

The choreography of information, materials, equipment and decisions is one giant puzzle to be solved. The production system is what solves that puzzle.

Many manufacturing businesses see the complications and distinctions that can make their operations difficult. The better ones focus on the similarities, simplifications, and apply lessons from everyone in their improvement processes.

Both leaders and shop floor employees of the majority of, for example, tool and die companies believe that they are job shops, that every order is unique, and that because of those two facts there is no production system that makes delivery times reliable. Internal scheduling for them is one reaction to the last customer call after another.

That thinking is simply wrong, and contributed heavily to outsourcing tool and die production to cheap labor markets.

While the intricate details of the metal removed from the block of steel to create the specific shape required by the customer do differ, that is a very small part of the program that controls cutting.

The production systems of tool and die shops are basically buy metal, write program(s) for the specific equipment that will cut the metal to shape, set up the machine, run the program, perhaps do a few secondary operations, and get it to the customer.

I have helped many job shops, including tool and die, incorporate visual factory concepts and simple scheduling easy to follow, resulting in 50% reductions in lead-times and doubling of on-time delivery to customers. And of course profits skyrocketed.

How? By seeing the similarities and not being controlled by the distinctions.

Restaurants, hair salons, and tool and die shops are all job shops. All of them do the same things over and over, with the intricate details changing but not the overall production systems.

As someone in operations, it is crucial that you understand the questions the system must answer, the challenges it must overcome, and the repetitive nature of the vast majority of both. The 80/20 rule is powerful, especially when we learn widely from the 80% that you share with the rest of the world.

If you like putting together a puzzle, designing beautiful choreography that is easy for all the dancers to follow, or generally making it easy for others to do their jobs well, operations is for you. Don't let the varieties of production systems in existence become confusing. Take the best from each and create operations in your business that are the best you can make them, as of now.

Tomorrow is a new and better today if we respect important differences, while we focus on similarities and learning.

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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 outstanding for each of those outputs is more demanding than previously. And yet, they are still not enough.

The three additional outputs of your operations to consider today are flexibility, innovativeness, and resilience.

Flexibility does not mean jump through hoops to respond to the latest customer call. It no longer is limited to volume and mix changes in order patterns. It means your production and operational systems are designed to be flexible in meeting market needs and expectations.

Consider the flexibility those who shifted from making airplane parts to ventilator parts in a matter of days.

Innovativeness does not mean bringing more products to market each year than your competitor does. It means a culture that exudes problem solving mastery in every aspect of the business. After all, innovation is, at its core, problem solving for the future.

Resilience does not mean reactionary. It means identifying and preparing for the risks that matter most and being positioned throughout the organization to rebound from whatever happens.

Each of these three outputs requires systemic thinking, processes designed to deliver them, and a culture that does not question their importance or the changes they require.

We've all heard "raise the bar." That isn't limited to raising required scores on what you've always measured.

Sometimes it means changing the bar entirely.

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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 part of the operations strategy, which is in place to execute the business strategy. The business is impacted by each, both individually and collectively.

The first is Human Resources. What is the strategy for how many, what backgrounds, what key characteristics? An effective HR strategy is not reactive, but rather reflects the quality of the organization you are building.

A second lever is organizational structure and role clarity. While we're all familiar with the one box at the top, with a few under it and a handful under each of those, going on down, that is hardly the only potential structure. Even if that is the best one for you right now, that structure unsupported by clarity for each role will fail you. Titles mean different things to different people; providing common understanding of expectations of specific roles and among roles cannot be overlooked.

A third lever is production planning and control; this is the near-term management of inventories and resource utilization, and drives costs, time, and performance.

Sourcing is another impactful lever in your manufacturing business. The decisions to outsource or insource, off-shore or near-shore, leverage supplier expertise or not require strategic guidance.

Both process technology and facilities are structural levers that are often difficult to change, impact cash availability, and can add costs and time that are difficult to assess.

Product design is the 7th lever addressed today. Product design was once a matter of meeting customer specs. The long term impact of that design has been recognized, resulting in design for manufacturing, design for service, design for re-use, and additional DFX.

Those manufacturers that are a hot mess don't manage or strategize these levers well; they may not even recognized their existence beyond daily headaches.

Outstanding high quality manufacturers think strategically about each of these levers, never considers the position of any of them optimal forever, understands that each has an individual impact, and recognizes that the collective impact of mastering each of these creates the foundation of a high quality business.

No manufacturing business can afford to overlook the consequences of the position of these seven decisive levers.

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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 may not understand what it does, and very few understand how it works. It is, however taking the world by storm.

The question for you is, does ChatGPT offer value to manufacturers?

The short answer is: No, at least not yet.

But the longer answer is: The literally awesome advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) reflected in the technical underpinnings of the product lay the groundwork for a very different future for all of us.

Importantly it should reassure us that parallel efforts building AI capabilities to solve other larger problems are advancing quickly also.

So why do I believe ChatGPT does not help us manufacturers now? Because it suffers from a problem that all AI will need to overcome: What is the truth used as the basis of its advancing logic and reasoning?

A recent LinkedIn post bragged about the great answer received from ChatGPT when asked to distinguish lean from six-sigma. The problem is, the answer was significantly inaccurate.

How can that happen? Alleged experts have to guide the AI tool's initial learning in understanding what is true and what is not true. As it trains itself on logic/reasoning from that information, it receives continued guidance, though less and less as its training is judged to be high quality.

This product is not just a fancy Google search engine. In fact it relies heavily on the quality of the information it considers, while Google merely spits back links to what it sees as relevant web content.

How does a manufacturing leader, who obviously has a plate full already, consider the ever evolving technologies arising daily?

In larger organizations with better trained technical experts, she can build in regular updates from those people regarding what is happening and why she should care. Reading, asking trusted peers, following respected sources on YouTube or other social media, and attending technical conferences for leaders are a few methods to consider. Smaller company leaders may choose not to invest resources in this research, strategically behaving as "late adopters."

Any advance others are leveraging to increase competencies should not be a surprise to you, as the leader of your organization. Know terms and a one paragraph summary of definition, and what makes it special, including strengths and limitations.

You can insource or outsource development of that information, but having it is not optional. Well, it is optional, but not for those building companies to endure.

Invest 5 minutes setting up your ChatGPT account, realize that it handles statements or directives better than it does questions, and try it out for a few topics of importance to you.

If you see capabilities that can help you now, invest more resources; if not, move off of this advance for now.

You can't implement every technology advance, nor should you. Some of the non-tech advances may be of greater value. You may already have all the change you can swallow.

Please don't be an ostrich, though the temptation may be great.

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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, assign each probability and severity, and through that scoring list them in order from highest to lowest. That guides the priorities of risk management.

Resilience is not about being reactive, but rather about executing plans already in place to mitigate damage and get back on your feet quickly and effectively.

For example, succession planning will make an organization more resilient; replacement planning does not. The distinction? Succession planning is a process to reduce or eliminate significant downside of a key person leaving. Replacement planning means once an employee leaves you tell HR to find someone to take their place.

The former involves effective planning to minimize negative impact in advance of a risk occurring; the latter is a reaction to something that has occurred. The former is evidence of a more resilient organization, the latter of a reactive organization.

Resilience is not a magic elixir. It is easy to observe before it is needed. It is part of running a healthy and enduring business.

For you former Boy or Girl Scouts, it is simply: Be Prepared.

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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 inventories and increase performance. By beginning to pay attention to some of the concepts of the Toyota Production System we put in visual pull systems that enabled us to continue to reduce costs and increase performance.

But by never truly understanding what we were doing, when significant supply chain disruptions hit world-wide, we blamed our tool (allegedly JIT). We overreacted by issuing mass orders at whatever price the market would charge. There we were. Back more than a decade ago with the same miserable results.

Please stop building inventory!

All of the problems and downsides of large inventories remain. Missing a single part still prevents outstanding performance with your customers. Canceling all the blanket orders you placed for "as many as you can get us" in no way represents operational excellence.

A significant number of industries have replicated the wild pendulum swings of electronics, and now the electronics industry has joined that insanity again. Coupled with tax incentives and a tilt toward nationalism, chip plants are under construction everywhere. It's not hard to foresee trouble approaching.

Those who truly understand "lean thinking" didn't react to the supply chain disruptions by jacking up orders for everything and issuing customer delivery promises of "god only knows."

True supply chain partnerships would have had multi-party conversations about who needed what first to actually ship products, not to just have more inventory of something sitting waiting for something else.

Coopetition based on reasonably accurate inventory data and shared supplier production capacities can get everyone up and running much more quickly than threats will. It is a very rare sub-industry that was willing to execute that.

Trust and transparency facilitate playing nice; without those, it's every man for himself, which means we all fail.

Please stop building inventory. Invest those resources in actually learning what true operational excellence requires, and making the necessary changes.

It is easy to recognize those who had firmly embedded Delusional Excellence®️ instead of the real thing.

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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 goal may have a supporting strategy of selling more to current customers, expanding geographically or into adjacent markets, or reliable introduction of new products that deliver more value to the the current market. Or, obviously, many other intentions.

It is common to share goals and objectives throughout the organization, if only in general terms. It is much less common to share strategies. That, my friend, is a trait of failure.

Any viable strategy includes insights from up, down, and across the organization, as well as from all five of the company's constituencies. Execution of any strategy requires comprehension of its intent and constraints up, down, and across the organization -- plus the resources required.

Any employee or business constituent who does not understand the strategy at some level and recognize his role in implementing it successfully cannot be expected to act consistently with it.

If you're asking "what was he thinking?" chances are he was thinking about how best to do his job with the information at hand. Strategy awareness and comprehension of how his actions and decisions impact its execution is as fundamental to success as is how to enter an order or label a package.

How do you build that strategic mindset throughout your organization?

First, build your own strategic thinking muscles. Titles don't convey skills. A CEO cannot, by mere acceptance of the title, think strategically. A shipping clerk, by mere acceptance of the title, is not limited in thinking strategically. A strategic mindset takes awareness, practice, development, discipline, and challenge.

Next, as you talk with employees, regularly ask "how does this support the strategy?" Or "how does the strategy impact how you think about that?"

Every act and decision by every employee is implementing the strategy, or not. Strategy is not an enacted by a group of leaders in a conference room. They will certainly discuss it, and challenges and opportunities to it that have arisen, but they cannot implement it alone.

Connecting actions and decisions with the strategy is an ongoing responsibility of leadership. As the strategic mindset muscle is built throughout the organization, that responsibility permeates the entire business.

Do not assume everyone knows or understands the strategy, or how it impacts their work. Do not present a PowerPoint of the strategy at a town hall meeting, and believe everyone knows and understands it and how it impacts their work.

Constant communication up, down, and across is integral to developing your strategic mindset. Communication means both listen and talk, augmented by thinking.

A company that can endure over time will build this muscle and keep it healthy.

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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 thinking about optimal business models.

When I worked for Perdue Farms in the late 1970s, my first major assignment was to build and implement a feed formulation system that would meet nutrient requirements for the chickens at the lowest cost given potential ingredient inventories and market prices.

Computers then weren't what they are now, but those calculations were easy to perform once the program was written and the inventory, nutrient, and market data for all potential ingredients were available to the model. Updating that information took time, time that is virtually zero now. Advanced technology didn't eliminate the need for the analysis, but made it much faster.

That use of data was focused internally toward cost reduction. But the thinking can easily be turned externally to identify information incredibly valuable to the market.

You've likely heard that airlines are not committed to owning jet engines; what they really want is reliable, fuel-efficient thrust on each of their planes. That means predictive maintenance, well-designed engines and valuable real-time analytics of data converted to information used in flight. And in the design of better engines in the future.

Data from a single engine on a specific plane, from a type of engine on a number of planes, from a type of engine on a variety of types of planes, and more, is changing both current and future operations of the air travel industry. Do you care who owns the engines on the plane you're flying on today?

We see personal and shared ownership of cars, no ownership of cars (Uber, taxis,), mass transportation, bicycles, walking, and more. The "best" business model depends on value as perceived by the target market, and on the providers ability to actually deliver that value.

If instead of selling your products to customers, you will focus on the amazing value those products can provide, comprehension of real value is the crucial first step. Most of us are not close enough to our markets and do not listen well enough to truly understand that. And most of us struggle to eliminate the assumptions inherent in our thinking -- like "it's all about the product."

To consider shifting to a subscription business model, your organization must have the awareness and thinking to understand value at every level. That model will not work for you or your customers unless it improves the value proposition for both. That value proposition must not be just a cute quote but a better business result for both for the long term.

What promise could you make to your market that would entice it to shift to you? And equally important, what promise could you think and evolve quickly enough to keep all the time and forever?

It's much easier to just make something and sell it, but only today. Tomorrow requires much more.

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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 have very different responsibilities in a contract machine shop, a pharmaceutical business, and an international defense Tier 2 contractor.

And they have different responsibilities and expectations as a single manufacturer or distributor changes volumes, markets, or ownership.

The plant manager of a $50MM contract metal working company was in over his head as it grew to $75MM. He left to become the COO of a less than $10MM machine shop.

So who is responsible for ensuring that an employee or team grows its competencies as the needs of the business change?

Those needs change frequently and never decline. Even plummeting sales do not lessen compliance, performance, and competency expectations of the market.

Lifelong learning is a great phrase, and a requirement of the culture embedded in any manufacturer who intends to endure. Daily constant learning is an even more important phrase and element of culture, as it implies lifelong.

Each employee of every business owns responsibility for willingly learning and expanding skillsets and knowledge base. Each leader at any level owns that responsibility not only for herself, but for every member of her team.

Keeping pace with today's needs is basic need. Anticipating and meeting tomorrow's requirements is an equally basic need.

How do you know if the requirements of your job are changing faster than you are? Of your team? Of your entire business? Of your entire supply chain? Of all of your constituencies?

Jobs do not stay the same. Careers do not either.

If you go to work today to do the same things you did yesterday, come home, and go in again tomorrow to do the same things again, your company is in trouble, as is your job.

Sadly, the Social Security Administration continues to use a list of active unskilled jobs that includes "pneumatic tube operator" in considering disability claims. Dowel inspector and shelling nuts are two other jobs it deems in significant numbers to decline benefits to people it believes could do those. Good luck finding one of those openings at a facility near you.

How long until the job you currently perform is just another embarrassing kernel of the SSA list of plentiful unskilled opportunities?

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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 and bots are better than they were a year or two ago, they are still a long way from actually answering the majority of questions your customers have when they call.

Data abounds to tell us the cost of customer churn, yet based on some accounting analysis we make decisions to reduce costs and increase churn. Yes, the last half of that sentence is an oxymoron.

Looking at a P&L statement, it is much easier to see the costs of personnel who actually help customers than the cost of AI bots that chase them away.

To retain customers, operations must deliver on promises made and additional expectations of the market. Attempted incoming communication by the market is a world of valuable information, if only we actually care. We can collect data on the reasons for calls, using analytics see trends and interrelations that aren't obvious, and get to root cause.

If contact is repeatedly about status of an order, you can eliminate the majority of those calls through simple technology -- which many companies currently use. But problem orders -- for example those with a bad tracking number - must be identified and addressed. With no fast reliable means of getting the status from your company, the customer is likely to go elsewhere next time.

The concepts of contact centers instead of call centers, and bots instead of humans, are some of the most expensive ideas we've implemented of late. Not only irritating to customers, they fail to capture valuable information that points to root cause. By ignoring root cause, you fail to actually fix the problems that initiate the calls.

If any attempt by a customer to get information from you is important to you, use humans trained to answer questions. Make them quickly available through a multitude of means, including actual human-to-human conversation.

And get to root cause and fix it.

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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 organizational weakness since the mid-1970s based on my own experience, appears to be viewed as a cost center rather than the path to effectiveness.

The Clinic has long used schedulers with no knowledge whatsoever of medical professions. Rather than train and educate, the powers that be prefer schedulers who waste the time of doctors and patients and physical resources by scheduling with the wrong professionals.

There is a significant difference between a cardiologist and a electro-physiologist cardiologist. There is a significant difference between a retina specialist and an ophthalmologist. But the schedulers don't understand those terms and schedule patients accordingly. And on it goes.

Now the Clinic is reducing costs by not printing after-visit summaries when the patient leaves.

Those should have never been printed in the first place for any patients comfortable with MyChart, the online capability and app that includes all that information. HIPPA laws focus on confidentiality, but needlessly printing confidential paperwork for patients who then accidentally leave it in the bathroom or at Starbucks is below mediocre.

Your manufacturing business must make high quality products and deliver them to your customers in the quantity and elapsed time that the market demands. That's a given. That's the equivalent of the Clinic delivering excellent care.

But, like the Clinic, your business has supporting processes that are required. Those are often the source of high costs, time-burning organizational friction, and the waste of critical resources.

Mediocrity in those support processes can cost your business its future.

I've served leaders of manufacturing companies with my strategic insights and experience for over 30 years. I am not an engineer and have never been able to explain how to make a machine run faster.

But that is never the primary problem preventing excellence in a manufacturing business. If you believe it is your major obstacle, hire an engineer to work on that.

Be warned, your business will not thrive because you took that action. Nor will the Clinic thrive by ordering physicians to see more patients in an hour.

Mediocrity in support processes will betray any excellence products and services offer.

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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 Philippines, Indonesia, and other popular southeast Asian manufacturing locations may be little better than China. Government uncertainly? Port challenges? Distance from major markets?

Before moving operations from or to anywhere, begin with a clear understanding of "why?" What problems are you trying to overcome, or what benefits do you intend to gain? What risks become higher, and which become lower?

Manufacturers left the United States in search of cheap labor because they didn't know how else to be cost competitive with new foreign competition. Standard accounting reports made direct labor an obvious target, and gave operations leadership an easy out. Why not hold them accountable for reducing costs without moving operations?

Most leadership thinks in terms of 5% improvements, not 50% improvement. That's a leadership problem facilitated by accounting and by business schools.

As you consider leaving China, or Russia, or any other location, define the objectives of success.

When first moving to China, did you consider the obvious risk of the extended supply chain? Apparently not, or it was one you accepted.

Some decisions result in negative impacts that were acceptable risk. Decisions that result in negative impacts because obvious risks were ignored reflect poor leadership. Decisions that are defined by actions (e.g., "leave China") without examining alternatives thoroughly are, except in case of true emergency, poor leadership.

If you plan to move your operations out of China, where will you move them to?

Why?

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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 of us used the term "purchasing" to describe locating, buying, and bringing in the materials and components required to make our products. Buyer, Senior Buyers, Buyer-Planners, and Purchasing Director jobs became plentiful. And, for the most part, clerical.

In the late 1900s we decide to "upskill" -- at least the term -- and refer to those people as Supply Chain. The work remained largely unchanged, but the term sounded good.

We described the suppliers involved down one level to infinity as our supply chain. We knew from professional education that "supply chain" spanned from our suppliers' suppliers to our customer's customers, but our thinking and behavior changed little.

But with that definition the visual of an actual supply chain, with each company represented by a link, evolved. Surely there was a "weakest link" that we could focus on. But it was never that linear in either direction, unless you were Henry Ford in 1917.

As economies developed and manufacturers grew, business became more complex. Buyers, regardless of current department titles, found suppliers with more regard for price and delivery than for simplicity or mutual advantage. We multi-sourced most items, and our suppliers did as well.

That pretty visual of a supply chain in no way represented the supply mush that evolved.

And now we want our supply chain, make that mush, to accept and design in responsibility for the environment, begetting the conceptual circular supply chain.

The prior reality of each company handing of responsibility for the environment to its customer was simple. Unfortunately, it has left us with a big mess.

So our supply mush has created an environmental mess, and we've discovered that we don't even have a clue about this "supply chain" concept we thought we were managing.

Design for reuse is one concept that a company can use to individually reduce the impact of its product on our world. Accepting responsibility through the entire product life cylce -- and I don't mean cash cow cycle, but rather birth to death -- is an important concept, but one publicly held manufacturers are lax to pursue.

Your job is not to create world peace.

As a leader in a manufacturing organization, it is your responsibility to understand your current sourcing and value-delivery structures. Not only in theory, but in practice. Concepts like Total Cost of Ownership have been around for decades, but few actually use them in execution. If that TCO includes environmental impact, reluctance will only grow.

The planet will be just fine. It is the human race that suffers from the short-sighted behaviors of humans and decisions they make as company leaders.

It is time to become responsible adults.

Understand your current material supply infrastructure. Define its success in terms of meeting the mission of your organization compatibly with core values. Determine the strategic supply infrastructure that best accomplishes that, and begin the transition.

If your company is to endure, it cannot leave the world in worse shape than it found it.

Standing as the last man on earth reporting quarterly earnings is not winning.

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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 would be the only way they retain employment. More quit after receiving that threat.

And of course however many employees FTX had found themselves amidst a huge scam and scramble to find new employment.

Yet 100s of thousands of openings remain unfilled, as industries ranging from health care to manufacturing hospitality are unable to hire and retain good workers.

What does that mean for you?

It means, only as a highly visible reminder, that your career is a terrible thing to waste. You spend 1/3 of your life working from the ages of about 20 to about 70. Why waste your talent and why be miserable?

If your replacement walked in the door tomorrow, what would you do?

Why wait for that?

First, if you enjoy your company and industry, you already know many of the improvements you would make to increase the contribution of your role to the organization. Make them. Don't sit back afraid. Do what you would do if you were your replacement.

If you do not enjoy your company and industry, pursue alternatives. Is your resume current?

Are you always considering other options, choosing to remain where you are?

Your current role and company should be an intentional choice, not a result of laziness. Constantly being aware of your potential and where it can best be reached is a personal responsibility. You can say "no" to anything. Better to do so now than later.

If you're happy, why not replace yourself?

If you're not, why not replace someone else with someone better -- you!

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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-time in-full deliveries."

Packaging, whether plastic or metal or even treated cloth, was in short supply. At least in the size and configuration some needed.

We all remember the toilet paper shortage, but how many understand that it due to a shift in demand from industrial to residential? The materials, production processes, packaging and shipping are very different for the two sources of demand.

Chips continue to reflect inadequate supply; at least a few do. But others are in such surplus that major producers like Intel are laying off and putting the brakes on production as customers admit to hording and cancel the huge orders they had on the books.

That industry -- the electronic parts industry in general -- has long been known for these huge swings. Those historical swings have been for very similar reasons. Rapidly increasing demand that can't be met; skyrocketing orders; skyrocketing production; and then cancelled over-ordering, and plummeting production. Because capacity cannot be quickly and smoothly adjusted in those industries, wild swings are simply "the way it is."

While leadership concentrates on the strategic level, execution requires attention to detail.

In conditions of multiple challenges confronting us simultaneously, we tend to simplify by relying on stereotypes, or generalities, that have no real meaning in execution.

"Chips are in short supply" or "plastics are in short supply" has little meaning at the detail level. There, the detail matters greatly. The strategic decisions of suppliers matter greatly.

Leaders can help those involved in execution understand supplier strategies, talk with suppliers to better understand and perhaps shape those strategies, and think more strategically about how to manage any shortages. Expediting is NOT the answer.

For decades manufacturers have maintained excess inventories of most items so they would always be able to produce something, but they have also been short one key component or material regardless. The excess inventories did little to quickly meet customer demand. The current return to "send me all you've got" will only take us back to prior conditions.

Bills of material (BOMs) must be considered as a whole to effectively plan production. Analytics and accurate inventories, customer orders and even routings can enable optimization of output and honest communication with suppliers and customers.

Expecting those in charge of near term planning and execution to optimize in their heads is ridiculous. Help them have the information they need, which is beyond mere data. That requires investment in technology far different from simple MRP calculations.

Ask operations staff to explain the specific causes of any shortages -- geographic, processing, logistics, etc -- so you can help them think strategically about how to best leverage limited critical resources.

During Covid, most of our supply chains operated just as they were designed.

Poorly.

Understanding sensitivities, variation in both signal and noise, and risk elements from global to a local bridge closing, is part of supply chain management.

Issuing purchase orders is a task. Expediting is a task. Neither will resolve your current production problems. Motion and results are two entirely different things.

A chip is not a chip.

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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 decades to come. But the supply chain excuse? It's just like the computer running slowly. It was true at one time, but is rarely the case now. Yet, people still use it. Prior to Covid and the legitimate supply chain problems that followed, the majority of manufacturers would run out of one part while having too many of another. The quality of data in our systems was, and is, a significant cause. Poor mastery of the basics of operations management was, and is, another. We've had over 2-1/2 years to figure out how to plan for and manage supply challenges; we've had decades to improve the quality of our data and our mastery of operations management basics. Blaming others is much easier than acknowledging internal weaknesses, and saying 'we' rather than 'they' is much tougher. Would you rather hear "it's the supply chain, you know" or "they keep moving things around here?" Both are lame excuses. Both are efforts to minimize internal control and impact over business challenges. And neither does anything to help you. Do your employees use the term "we" when referring to something within the company's ecosystem, or "they?" Repeatedly I've asked "but aren't you part of the "they" you refer to?" That kind of accountability is rarely accepted. If each of us quit blaming unnamed third parties for our woes, we might actually prioritize addressing them. We weren't staying close enough with some of our key suppliers and were surprised by shifts in their abilities to deliver. We are addressing that now so you will soon be able to trust and believe our promises again. We failed to prioritize usage of short parts and communicate proactively with the customers impacted. We chased the holy grail of cheap labor all around the world and failed to comprehend the increased risk inherent in that. As we moved to supply outside China we failed to fully examine the new risks we were undertaking and continue to experience shortages and poor communication.

Those four example admissions get closer to the real problems, each of which is ours to own and fix. "It's the supply chain" does nothing to identify or solve real problems. C'mon Man! Stop blaming your supply chain.

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For going on a decade manufacturers have been complaining about a lack of skilled workers. Some have been very proactive in developing connections with trade schools, high schools, universities, and apprenticeship programs. Others choose to rely on internet software to take the process of identifying solid potential employees off internal resources. Some automation makes sense and works well. Other automation reduces workload for current employees, but does little to improve productive output. Is that software identifying the best for you? More likely it is rejecting highly qualified people who don't match the search criteria you specified. The United States brings in about 1,000,000 immigrants per year with an immediate green card and the right to work. Additionally, with recent international upset, the number of refugee immigrants has increased. Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans obviously make up a significant percentage of those, recently augmented by Ukrainians. Many of those immigrants were very productive citizens in their former homes and are intent on becoming the same here. But the universities on their resumes likely don't match the search requirements you've specified for your software. The job titles may not either. The format may not enable them to provide their full native name. If we put up enough obstacles, we can overlook Nobel prize winners. Every city of any size has one or more immigrant support centers to help arriving people find a place to stay and something to eat. Many teach English, both verbal and written, to those who need or want it. Are you aware of them? Have you researched that potential source of great workers? Like residents of this country, they struggle with child care as they seek work. If immigrants can figure out our culture, our business models, our legal and tax systems, surely we can figure out how to hire them legally. Chances are your legal resources are not immigration experts. Chances are anticipation of administrative burden of hiring an immigrant feels overwhelming, and is thus avoided. But chances are its much easier than you imagine. Chances are you could find some of the good workers you seek by looking other than where you always look. As Henry Ford once said, "“If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got”.

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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 lean activities in most companies are focused on that reduction in labor content. Many also target a reduction in cash invested in inventory and delivery lead time to the customer. Let's say progress is made in each of those too. Is that company excellent? Again, they are making internal improvements that help them, but have they done anything to change how the market views them? Does the market truly need them to continue to grow? What does excellence mean to you? What does your market require of you to consider your company excellent? Do your suppliers consider you excellent? Do your employees work hard every day because of your passion for excellence that includes helping them live excellent lives? Does your community believe it is better off because of your existence there? Are you helping the school system become better every day? By confusing true excellence with cost reduction success, it is easy to self proclaim excellence to the world. But that excellence may not really matter. Excellence, like thought leader, is a term that is defined externally. Does your excellence really matter?

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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 there be a seismic shift? Yes. The current decade has hosted a seismic shift in the view of non-renewable sources of energy in general, and coal in particular. Yes, China and others continue to develop new coal mines, but China is also leading most of the world in bring renewable energy online. Yes, Europe will increase use of coal this winter due to the Russian war on Ukraine. But that shift is a short term necessity, not a new normal. So if you owned a coal mine, when would you have shifted your business strategy? In the 2000s? Perhaps not even now. Major players in oil and gas industries are both reacting to and creating a seismic shift in the supply of energy worldwide. The minor shifts are better management of methane; the major shifts are in creating new renewable capabilities. It appears that in the 2030s, EVs will be the new normal. The seismic shift is well underway. Some auto companies have been on that train for a long time, focused on battery development; others are quickly moving that direction right now. Combustion engines will be around for a long time, but their time is largely over. Think coal 30-40 years ago. Pelaton existed before Covid, but sales and service erupted from the 'work from home' and 'stay within your bubble' lifestyle shifts. That company announced plans to build a significant manufacturing plant in northwest Ohio. Ah, but staying out of gyms was not really the new normal. It was a temporary response to a pandemic. As sales plummeted, plans for new production were scuttled. Spending extensively on a new Pelaton was a trend, never to become a seismic shift. Where is your business on the continuum of fad to trend to seismic shift to new normal? Do you observe trends, developing products and services to create a seismic shift in the market around those you believe are long lasting? Or do you wait until someone else creates and verifies the shift before investing in market and product development for the new market expectations? Each of these strategic locations requires different competencies. Include this positioning in your strategy, clearly define and master the competencies that are required to succeed there, continually verify if your position is best for the longer term, and adjust as needed. Building an enduring manufacturing business requires commitment to the mission and constantly scanning the market to optimize your positioning strategy.

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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 that are required now, and will be next year, next decade, and likely next century? If not, it's impossible to build strategic profits. And without strategic profits, your core muscles will get flabby quite quickly. For some, it may be the ability to forecast and react to the mix of short-shelf life requirements of your business. If you are trying to feed people high quality natural foods at an affordable price, that would make sense as at least one of the muscles you must build and always develop. For others, it may be the constant state of flux that a dependency on constant new product development requires. Does your mission demand that you continuously create new offerings? Then you cannot afford to forego investment in your NPD processes and capabilities, market and material research, and global challenges threatening your markets regardless of how tough times may be. Identify those very few muscles that underlie attainment of your mission, and think strategically about profit management to preclude risk to investing in them at all times. No one can afford to take a month or a year off from developing crucial muscles. For more insights into the concepts of strategic profits and building business muscle, contact Becky Morgan at Morgan_at_FulcrumCWI.com or get her book Manufacturing Mastery at Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble or wherever you buy your books.

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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 these simple questions: 1) what happens if you are wrong? 2) what alternatives did you consider and reject? 3) what are the downsides of this decision? If you and your team ask yourselves these three questions when making any decision beyond snacks for the meeting, you'll find improved decision-making becoming your reality. This podcast includes a few other suggestions for you to consider. The important idea is that you not see poor decisions as a fact of life with no way out.

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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, they also began to listen to select parts of the Toyota Production System. Select, as in they chose to see Just-in-Time as reducing inventories rather than designing systems to meet customer demand just in time. The combination of offshoring, adding complexity, and reducing inventories locally was a bomb waiting to be lit. Covid did just that. So what are a number of US manufacturers doing now? They are swinging the pendulum back the other direction by jacking up inventories and relocating sourcing to the US. That makes no more sense now than the decisions to offshore made before. The unintended consequences are in most cases foreseeable, if only we look.We shipped middle class careers to other countries. Wage pressures in the United States are mounting as every industry faces labor shortages. Just how will re-shoring solve your problems now? When is the last time you spoke with "customer support" that is located in the United States? We outsourced our customer relationships to India -- an educated and English speaking country with low wage rates. Because services are less impacted by supply chain disruptions, no one is discussing moving that back to the US. While the thinking of businesses advances in some areas, in critical ones it seems to swing as a pendulum. Core competency, or vertical integration, or conglomerate? Look at the historical trends, and its easy to see the near future. Outsource, face a problem, then in-source. Lower inventories, run out of things, raise inventories. Where is the strategic problem prevention and solution? Going back to what we used to do may be quick and comforting, but that doesn't make it wise. If you haven't developed a robust supplier selection and development process over the past decade, you'll regret making changes now. Bouncing from one undesirable situation to another is not the goal. While speed is important and highly valued, actual strategic thinking is more important. If you insist on moving quickly, and for some of you there is little choice, at least identify the very predictable problems that the quick moves will create. Develop plans quickly to minimize the negative impact. Agile was never intended to mean bounce from one bad decision to another. The value in agile capabilities within your company is its fast learning, fast change incorporating that learning, and then fast learning again. If you skip the learning, incorporate learning steps, you're not agile. You're just chaotic. Stop the pendulum from returning you to prior problems. Think. Analyze. Rely on robust processes you've put in place.

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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 because they look different, or come from somewhere else is too often an effort to hit a target rather than hire the best. When I was in the corporate world a global corporation was looking for a female executive to lead the operations of a technical division. I was told by the executive recruiter I had a head start because I am female. I had no problem gaining an interview because I not only had a strong background but also am a woman. I would have had a problem with getting an offer because I am a woman. My confidence is sufficently high to know I was offered the role because I am competent. Competency and diversity are not mutually exclusive. I honor that company's leadership for working to become more diverse in the 1980s, before it was "a thing." A room filled with Ivy League grads will generate less creativity than a room filled with intelligent people with diverse educational and life backgrounds. When an organization repeatedly chooses to hire people with the same look, the same background, and the same thinking, the organization will fail. Maybe not today, but sooner than later. If we can't figure out how to leverage the experience and thinking of people unlike ourselves, we're not very smart. And that is true whether "we" are a group of black women, a group of middle-aged college-educated citizens, a group of McKinsey alum, or a group of new immigrants. How do you recognize impactful diversity?

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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 rationalization. Too many of us don't do that, don't build it in to our new product development/introduction process, and waste time trying to determine the profitability of each and every product. Some sales folk insist we never eliminate a product because someone might want it someday. Some insist that "line breadth" is fundamental to gaining business with large customers. And some focus only on the products that are easy to sell and that provide healthy commissions. None of that is inherently wrong or bad. Topics like market confusion, internal complexity, cannibalism, brand reinforcement, and offense vs defense products should all be part of your product rationalization process. The primary need is to have one. Just adding products is rarely the right strategy. Whacking the old ones is rarely the right strategy. But there must be a strategy governing what you develop and introduce, what you eliminate, how you present options to meet the needs of your customers, and how you leverage internal competencies to position your company for strong market position. And please don't let Standard Cost Accounting lead you to ill-informed decisions on what makes and loses money for your business.

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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 potential. Sadly, too many get sucked into that revenue potential and make commitments later regretted. Examine these six attributes before deciding a potential customer is one that enables the two of you to succeed together: 1) If you are mission driven, and enduring manufacturing businesses are, a company that does not have a viable externally focused mission will not be a good customer for you. 2) If their demonstrated, not written on the walls, core values are not consistent with yours, they will not be a good customer. When the going gets rough those distinctions will rise to the top. 3) Do their current "partners" tell you that the potential customer really knows and behaves in concert with the true meaning of partnership? Partners do not unilaterally change payment terms. Partners do not take your parts out for bid without you knowing about it. If you want to serve companies that respect you, look for true partners. 4) Do the needs of the company match the direction you want to go? If not, the relationship will be short and will add nothing to your business. 5) Are they committed to getting better in all ways? If not, they will stagnate, bringing you with them. While I have little respect for WalMart as a company, it has taken the lead in many important new technologies, bringing its major suppliers along. Is there a near term advantage to a potential customer, knowing you will want to leave them in a few years? 6) Is their risk tolerance aligned with yours? Larger companies can afford to swing and miss a few times. Smaller ones must be very selective on which pitches to swing for the fences. But mission, core values, partnership, near-term alignment can be insufficient if risk tolerance is very different. But now you have them, and realize they are not a good customer for you. How do you fire them? First, realize you must. They cannot be part of your healthy future. It is merely a question of how and when. Yes, there is a financial reality to this process, but there is also the very important opportunity cost aspect. What could you be doing that you're not because of that customer? Saying "no" is not easy for many of you, but it is a requirement to running a healthy and enduring business. Is it optimal to quote new parts for that existing bad customer? No. Is it optimal to give cost reductions you cannot afford to that customer? No. Is it optimal to obtain a certification that bad customer requires? No, unless they are in a market you want to pursue. Then, yes it is. A bad customer is part of your overall asset allocation. Consciously decide how much you want to invest in them, now and tomorrow. They are likely costing you more than you realize.

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Most manufacturing businesses are much more complex than they need to be, simply from lack of focus on the value of keeping things simple. If we're not paying strict attention, we find ourselves with more customers, suppliers, sku's, and part numbers than we need or that is best for our business. Not all markets are good, not all customers are good, not all suppliers are good, not all products are good for your business. Conscious decisions must be made. The easiest way to implement that is through well thought out policies that are implemented effectively. Parts rationalization is one simplification framework that usually doesn't elicit emotional response to be overcome. There are two primary aspects to the process. (1) Define and enforce a policy of when and why new part numbers can be added, and (2) review and standardize existing bills of materials on the standards that are defined by the policy. Of course that 2nd step must be coordinated through your change management system. A quick example using fasteners as the part category: Do you really need all the fastener part numbers you have in your master list? Typically standards can be set on material, diameter, length, connecting mechanism, and perhaps another one or two characteristics. Those standards would work just fine for the vast majority, if not all, of your products. Use those standards in all new product development, and in every engineering change order to an existing sku. Simultaneously, have someone -- an intern can often do 90% of this project well -- review all "where used" items for each existing fastener part number to determine which ones should be changed to the standard. By stating a date-certain that the project should be fully implemented, and coordinating with all involved parties like supply chain and material handling, you will have simplified aspects of your business in short order. You will have simplified engineering design, materials management and handling, off site service, and spare parts inventory management in this one fairly straight-forward effort.

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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 points leaves entirely too much to false assumptions and bad guesses. You are familiar with the 5-Why problem solving process in which we keep asking why until we identify the root cause of the problem we've defined. Strategy is similar. We have a strategy defined at the high level, but must roll it down level by level to understand what its implementation requires. You know you have accomplished that when every employee can reverse that thinking process by describing their priorities and actions "so that." An example: "I am reorganizing the warehouse and receiving area so that we can flawlessly add new materials and components to our storage so that we can begin producing samples of our innovative new products for market test so that we can expand sales of those new products to the most receptive markets so that we can grow our sales and profits so that we can deliver on our owners' mission of providing reliable employment as we serve the evolving needs of the automotive aftermarkets." By using a line-of-sight deployment process surprises are reduced and prioritization and decision making are improved.

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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 create and maintain internal quality records. That information was intended to help you envision the future you are trying to create through digital. It was also intended to help you prioritize. Now it's time to act. No manufacturer has all the information and capabilities needed to design and implement a digital transformation -- not even the Siemen's of the world. They too reach out to external experts. It's possible you'll choose to start slowly with a small company helping you get your arms around machine sensors, data collection/quality/storage/security, and the information you can gain. But that company will not be the best one to lead you through your full transformation. Research systems integrators, talk with your peers, and visit several executives of manufacturers ahead of you on the journey. Attend trade shows and manufacturing conferences to gain a foundational understanding of the opportunities and challenges you will face. This electronic data world is rapidly evolving. Whomever is best today may well not be even among the good tomorrow. When choosing your partners, examine their history of staying in front of the pack, explore their investments and their financial commitments to the future of technologies, and reduce the chances of getting someone whom you outgrow in your first few years. This is an important choice, and not an easy one. It is no place to focus on lowest bid, but rather on most informed and most driven to stay informed.

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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 employees, and more, without focusing on the technologies that make those things possible and effective. In blockchain, it is important to understand the high-level capabilities of the technology and then determine if that capability is of potential value to you right now. First and foremost, understand that blockchain is NOT cryptocurrency. It is the technology that underlies much of those, but it is not the same. Think of Excel as the technology that underlies the financial spreadsheets you use. They are not at all the same thing; your spreadsheet is of value to you and uses Excel as the enabling technology. Blockchain is extremely valuable in creating an agreed upon and verified history of transactions. One use case is known as "smart contracts" in which blockchain recognizes when conditions are met per a contract and can initiate the next step, for example payment approval. This is especially useful in financial transactions and those related to import/export trade. A second use case is that of traceability. Now American manufacturers must sign something that assures the minerals used are not conflict minerals. The reality is that very few actually know. We ask our supplier to assure us of that, and based on their word, we assure the next company in the process. Blockchain can enable traceability from the beginning to the end-point of interest. This is currently in use in much of the diamond industry, where guaranteeing that product is NOT blood diamonds is important to value. Walmart is beginning the process of requiring food suppliers to join their blockchain network to enable traceability of fresh foods from the store all the way back to the field. If your business is transaction light and traceabilty is unimportant, you can likely put blockchain on the back burner for now. But you do owe it to the future of your business to know what it is and what it is not as you draft your digital transformation roadmap.

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We'd love to know of any problems with incoming supplies in time to either fix them, or make them irrelevant to our needs today. But most of us live in the world of surprises and reactions. Think of the airport control tower. They can't afford to have a plane show up with no notice, nor for one to decide to land the other direction. A storm miles away may impact both the inbound and outbound flight potential. Now apply that concept to your supply chain. With the right data at the right time your supply chain team could see exceptions before they become a problem. They can prioritize, make adjustments, and made decisions to minimize any negative impact. That takes data. Think through the kinds of data you would need, and how you would get it. We only want to know about exceptions, which means we need a standard -- or an expected time and location for everything. Then we need the current reality. Data analytics can identify normal acceptable variation and highlight to the supply chain control tower personnel exceptions that require attention. GPS information, updates from your 3PL, weather forecasts, data from your own operations -- those are all part of the equation. As you consider your approach to digital transformation for your manufacturing business, end-to-end supply chain visibility has a place. This term currently refers only to tier one and "should be happening right now" supply chain issues. That's an important start, but next we want will to proactively see supply chain problems and opportunities and more integral information from suppliers' suppliers to customers' customers. We'll address the potential for that in next week's podcast on traceability, smart contracts, and blockchain.

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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, sold and/or serviced by manufacturers have great stories to tell, if only we'll listen. The two primary reasons to consider smart products are: (1) to simplify or improve the user experience, and (2) to provide information for you -- the manufacturer -- to improve design by understanding use in the field with specifics. Kinetico® is a water treatment company that sells both commercial and residential units. Those units have consumables that the user must track and address. To make that much easier for the customer, Kinetico has embedded smart technologies in the units to highlight approaching maintenance needs. Printers have done something fairly similar, in indicating when they are getting low on ink. What would make usage of your products by your customers in their various environments, usage patterns, and other variables easier? Jet engines are made of complex metals (currently) produced through very advanced metallurgical techniques. They hardly seem a candidate for generating masses of electronic data. However, both Rolls-Royce and GE have added data collection, analysis, and prediction capabilities. They now receive a premium, through the "as-a-service" business model for significant improvements in fuel efficiencies and flight routes that save their customers literally millions of dollars. This real-time data capability not only facilitate those immediate operational gains, but also provide information to the design engineers to determine how to develop much improved jet engines. Without data, so many things we take for granted today would be more difficult. When considering your digital transformation, smart products is one arena you cannot afford to overlook. Where you prioritize it is one question, but to ignore the potential is short-sighted.

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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 are mobile. An understanding of the types of mobile devices available and the types of information various employees need in what format will help you envision the physical aspects of this concept. Perhaps now you can see why some companies are prioritizing a private 5G network inside the operations. No one wants a data dump. Some need a single number, some a graph, some a data set, some a visual picture of what they cannot see without the device. No single device will meet all those needs well. Drive device selection by employee need and convenience, not by what the salesman promises. Headsets for AR, VR and MR have great potential to help employees, but so far their in-use success is somewhat limited. The reason? Size and weight mean they are uncomfortable to use consistently. Tablets and phones are familiar to most everyone, but how should they be carried and which is right for presenting which kinds of data? Think of the gains in productivity from merely eliminating the need for workers to find a supervisor to answer questions that could and should be answered with data out of your systems. Or from the supervisor being able to "see" the problem on his phone or tablet while in a different area. All of this technology, data storage and governance, analytics, and provisioning of information exists and is productive right now. Machine health and connected employees are two components to consider when thinking about your digital transformation roadmap. It's helpful to know where you want to be in one-year, two, or five. Not in specifics, but in the capabilities you want the organization to have that are weaknesses now. Giving employees what they need to do their jobs well seems a fundamental responsibility of leadership, and it is. It's not magic, but when you see the vast improvements you'll think it was.

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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 recommended by the manufacturer of the equipment. Some of us are better at that than others. Another step is knowing if equipment is running at the speed it was designed for. Frequently we run it at a slower speed to optimize how it works for us. That's an indication of something wrong. But all of that is merely addressing the basics. The machine health part of a digital transformation -- that is using data and analytics to understand the "why" of our machine operations -- takes us to a much better place. Goals include zero unplanned downtime, cost-effective maintenance, and awareness of the operating environment that best supports the health of the equipment. Predictive maintenance is part of that, but not all of that. Knowing all critical influences on machine health allows your operations to lengthen the life of the equipment, produce higher quality output faster, and reduce costs. Do you wish you knew for certain how ambient temperature and humidity, fluid age and viscosity, vibration, changeovers, variations in power to the equipment and more impact the health of each piece of your equipment? With data and data analytics, you can do that. Every manufacturer has different types of equipment of different ages made by different manufacturers. Each of those pieces of equipment has a different history of use, maintenance, and handling. With data, you can understand all of it, regardless of those distinctions. Industry 4.0 and the digital component of it are instrumental in the future of every manufacturing company. Machine health is one place to start as you pursue this journey.

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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 irrelevant newfangled technology. Imagine the manufacturer that considered computers an irrelevant newfangled technology. The same fate will befall those who consider digital capabilities and the power of data to be irrelevant to their businesses. Transformation means a fundamental change; it does not mean baby steps. Pursuing a digital transformation of your manufacturing business will fundamentally change how you operate, how work is done, the products you offer, and how you interact with customers and suppliers. It is important to begin by getting your arms around large categories of your business operations and how instantaneous access to the right information at the right time and place will be transformational. A few examples include (a) machine health (b) connected employees (c) smart products and (d) end-to-end supply chain. You already try to take care of your equipment, generally via gages and preventative maintenance. You already try to provide information to your employees, but too often involve delays and insufficient facts. You already try to develop good products, but overlook the power of knowing how those products are being used and how they are performing could have on product improvements and true innovation. You already try to stay on top of incoming deliveries and outgoing shipments, but continue to be surprised by failures of the supply chain system. Digital transformation can fundamentally change all of those aspects of your business, and more. If you can imagine it, likely digital can help you attain it with current and evolving technologies.

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We're in a period of shortages and significant inflation. That makes on time delivery and pricing both difficult challenges. But overcome those challenges we must. In this podcast I give an example using numbers of how NOT to raise prices during inflation. We learned a lot from the inflation of the 70s and there is no reason to repeat those errors. The "bad decision" that many make during these times is to try to maintain margin in raising prices to customers. If material and labor prices rise significantly, your cost of goods sold rise. But if you increase prices by the same percentage mark-up as prior, you will price yourself out of the market. It is important to remember that your margin should reflect your value-add. Just because your costs rose doesn't mean your value-add increased also. The market determines price. Of course rising cost of goods sold will be detrimental to cash flow. Add to that the customers that choose to extend payment terms to you and cash flow can be damaging. It is fair and reasonable to increase your prices to reflect that slower cash flow. The question behind all of this is, will your customers accept rising prices? Especially if your lead times are unpredictable. If you've ever needed to understand and demonstrate true partnership with proactive communication, now is the time. Obviously you must cover your costs and make enough to invest in the future. To do that your customers must believe you are treating them fairly and that you are in this inflation thing together. We're all dealing with it. Don't give your market any reason to believe you are taking advantage of inflation to gouge them. Be transparent on costs. The cost-plus pricing model is long dead, but it's easy to fall back on it now. That will not work for more than a very short term. The market always determines price. It is our job to manage costs and value such that the market price results in profits that reflect the value you add.

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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 that we can get what we need and thereby get our customers what they need when they need it. The second is the decision to outsource high labor jobs to low wage rate counties to reduce costs. We all know time is money, but most forgot that when they decided to extend the supply chain. We know that simple is better than complex, but most forgot that when they decided to add complexity to the supply chain. This was not unpredictable. Most supply chains are operating just as they were designed: to function effectively when there are no upheavals of any kind anywhere. Many pundits, and sadly many highly visible executives, have placed the blame on Just in Time (JIT) for the current woes. That reflects another failure to understand. JIT is not about carrying the lowest inventories possible. Never was; never will be. Except by those who focus only on current income statements and balance sheets. The assumption that revenues will be received as long as we get orders and operations doesn't screw it up is laughable; except that it is that assumption that has us where we are. So what can you do now to address the risks of your supply chain? Start by identifying the first tier suppliers for your most critical product family. Not just where you issue the PO, but where the product is actually made and what options that supplier has for producing it elsewhere. You'll likely be surprised by how little your team actually knows about even this simple starting place. Next, move to the second tier of that most critical family. Where does your supplier get his critical supplies? What options does he have? Eventually you'll move to understanding the first few tiers of your other product families. Do you use Salesforce? Many do. It has a simple maps add-on, through which you can indicate the locations of your first tier supplier operations. Then your second. As a storm approaches somewhere in the world, you can see if your key suppliers will likely face challenges. Government upheavals? Governments shutting down areas as part of the response to Covid or some other cause. It's not hard to get the information to anticipate problems. Yes, it takes attention and effort to set it up, and it takes someone caring enough to look. Will that prevent all your future supply chain challenges? Of course not. But if it flags many of them and you are proactive, the customer impact of changing events worldwide will be reduced. And that's your responsibility.

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"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 year? Afraid of them? Yes, some may still be dangerous, but many have paid their debt and turned their lives around. Why would you assume they are all dangerous while complaining about lack of workers. How many adults who graduated a few years ago, perhaps wandered a bit, but in the last year have engaged in some form of additional education or training? That would tell you the person wants to learn and do more. Why not talk with them? Do you believe all young adults with autism are capable of no more than returning shopping carts from the parking lot to the inside of the store? That is the limit for some, but not for many. One of my clients now employees about a dozen autistic young adults in their manufacturing operations. One has bought a house and a car and is now running CNC equipment. Yes, that took over a year, but how many of you have wasted a year avoiding candidates outside your typical pool? If you keep looking where you've always looked, look for the same experience levels you've always demanded, and aren't willing to invest in training, well then, I can't help you. No one can help you. Perhaps you're counting on a recession to send your pool to your door? Silly. Do you host high school seniors from inner city schools, or college dropouts? Do you have open house visits for the community? Do you work with your peers to hire people they feel forced to release because of a drop in demand? If you're one of the executives saying "no one wants to work" you're one of the executives digging his own grave. Many want to work. Many want to learn and grow. But many do insist on being treated as a human being and not a cog. Look away from the "usual suspects" if you truly want to hire some of the best people in your geographic area.

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Practice makes perfect. We all know that to be largely true, so let's use that axiom to prepare our businesses for change. Your organization likely assigns people to departments based on their incoming skill sets, and then to specific roles. Most rarely stray from that initial assignment. The average employee can become expert in a small window of knowledge and skill using that method, but your organization is then filled with people who only know one small area and one historical methodology. Insist that starting on the first of next month two members of your leadership team switch roles. You might be one of those leaders. If you recoil in horror at the thought of your director of engineering switching roles with your director of supply chain, you've just proven the point. True "A" players listen, learn, and lead. Those are skills not confined to whatever education they received one, or 30, years ago. By insisting they switch roles, each will gain a very different perspective on the organization, the products and services, the markets, and the organizational potential to deal with change. The switch could last six months, or five years. The point is that each needs to gain different perspective, different ways of looking at the same question, and be forced to think differently about why and how things are done. Also do that at mid and lower levels of your organization. Certainly I don't advise playing a version of musical chairs with enough chairs for all. We want to introduce controlled chaos, not wild chaos. Select a few key individuals in each arena, and switch their responsibilities. How does that prepare your organization for change? Simply, by inducing it. The longer people have had a single area of responsibility, the more invested they become in "the old way" of doing it. Gaining comfort with the unknown is a crucial step in any claim to agility. Agility has to exist throughout the organization in the form of thinking, openness, creativity, and approach to risk. You know another slap in the face will hit your industry soon. You do not likely know where it will emanate, nor when it will appear. The more stagnant your organization -- often confused with stable -- the less you will recognize its approach. Practice dealing with change. Take time to identify what worked and what didn't. Take time to integrate lessons learned, and especially, the limitations to those lessons. Not all lessons learned from history will be helpful in the future. It is the recognition of, the absorption of, and the reaction to an externally driven change that separates the successful from the faded. By practicing those competencies with internally driven change, we can develop the skills that real change requires. And those real changes are foisted on us by the world around us, not by the calendar or "when we're ready." Prepare now, so you can see and ride the wave then.

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Most of us believe we know training when we see it, and many of us think we know what coaching is. But all too frequently succession planning is poorly done, if at all, because of using the wrong process at the wrong time. When is training appropriate and who should provide it? Often your best performer is the wrong person to train. When is managing appropriate? Is succession planning part of managing? Yes, it is. Is being assigned a coach a bad sign? Not at all. Coaching is used when you and your manager agree to work with an outside expert in developing specific interpersonal skills. The coach should be an experienced professional and the three of you should work together as a team. Mentoring is different from these first three, and is typically the least specific and the most life-changing. It involves the care and insights of a leader within the organization, on some occasion an external resource, that you trust. The two of you reach an agreement that you can talk freely and privately about situations she observes in you, or about which you request insights from her. This is typically opportunistic more than a regular schedule, and the scope is wide open rather than aligned to specific goals. Which of these is most appropriate in succession planning depends on the role or skillset being planned. Succession planning for shop floor operator positions are typically training of different or advanced skills to ensure flexibility for scheduling and for the future. It is typically the manager who identifies where succession planning is needed and who will be involved in executing it. Managers are responsible for developing each member of the team, and the team as a whole. Coaches are part of a 3-person team -- the employee, the boss, and the coach -- to work to improve identified interpersonal skills of the employee. There is a defined scope and agreed measures of improvement. Mentors can often be the difference between stagnation and realizing and reaching our potential. Succession planning can only be successful for all involved if it reflects the goals of individuals, teams, and the organization, and it uses the right tools in the right ways at the right times with qualified resources. As a person not satisfied to spend the rest of your career doing what you do right now, become familiar with each of these and learn to recognize when each is appropriate -- for you, for your team, and in some cases, for others.

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"Didn't used to be!" That was my grandmother's reply to my screaming "there's a stop sign there!" as she barreled through an intersection years ago. We all struggle with change, primarily that initiated by others but impacting us. We thought the internet would provide an open and fully visible marketplace for goods, services, and employees. It has failed miserably in all of those. It is easy to research a topic, or a company, or a person, but it is not easy to discern fact from fiction. The internet has also removed the human from many important decisions. Yes, there is decision-logic used in the filtering process, but it generally fails us. If your future depends on winning price-based internet RFQs, your future is dark indeed. If you look for suppliers through that same process, your future is equally dark. Right now unemployment is at records lows -- the definition of "full employment"-- while job unfilled positions are at record highs. That could lead one to believe that we need more people. While baby boomers are retiring, more people is not the answer. We need a more effective, and less efficient, labor marketplace. Most companies have outsourced reviewing resumes to bots and keywords, and most looking for the right company and right opportunity try to play the game. It's just not working. Companies scanning via bots for X number of years of experience, X degree, proficiency with X ERP system, and more, may tick some boxes, but excludes many very strong people committed to learning, growing, and contributing. Manufacturers employ the whole person, and employees work for the whole organization. Our current internet-based marketplace excludes those concepts entirely. That could work if you were hiring robots, but you're not. Companies that hire people who check the boxes but are not interested in learning and growing are hiring the wrong people. But that's what they look for per their bots and keywords. The world has changed and continues to change more and more rapidly. The smart among us drive and guide that change; the rest are like my grandmother: "Didn't used to be!" A person who understands the culture you want, the learning and growth opportunities you offer, and who can see past the buzzwords of a resume should be looking at resumes. Hiring managers should be talking with candidates who check few boxes, but who could contribute greatly to driving the company's future. Hire someone who has 10 years experience running a specific model of CNC equipment will give you that. And typically, nothing more. You can improve the effectiveness of your corner of the labor marketplace by re-injecting the human aspect. The human who will improve your culture; the company who seeks all of you and not just your degree or what you've always done. Someone has to take the lead. It might as well be you.

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My grandfather was involved in two very serious accidents as a farmer. In the first, his little brother was killed as the two of them rode the wagon to do chores. In the second, his tractor blew up, burning his entire body. My grandmother couldn't figure out who that dark man was walking through the crops straight to her. Luckily, he recovered. Farming was very dangerous, much less so then. Farm accidents still happen, and many are fatal. As people left farms to move to the city, they took jobs in manufacturing. It was known until recently as dark, dank, and dangerous. It took OSHA and unions to bring safer work environments to manufacturing, but we still have a long way to go. Better manufacturers, the only ones I would want to work with, rarely have recordable incidents. Many look at "near-misses" now. I'm proud of the drastic improvements in safety in manufacturing environments. We've addressed many of those we can see. It's time to turn to those we don't see. Ergonomic injuries. An employee out with a back injury or shoulder strain is not pulling a fast one. She is suffering from the way her job is designed to be done. In offices, few chairs are ergonomically sound, and many desks and tables are at inappropriate height for safe work. In the factory, reaching, carrying, lifting, lowering and more are all potential causes of ergonomic harm. If your engineers and maintenance professionals are not trained on ergonomic design, how can they be expected to provide a safe work environment for everyone. I encourage you to take the following two actions: (1) do not sign a capital expenditure request until you are comfortable that every aspect of design, operation, maintenance, and material handling have considered ergonomics and eliminated poor work processes that will lead to injury, and (2) one day per week, walk through your operations to specifically observe work. Look for anything that requires reaching, lifting/carrying/lowering of anything over a few pounds, and work with the employees to figure out how to eliminate the unsafe practice. Yes, I said "a few pounds," not the 25 or 40 pounds many discuss. Strength is one thing; ergonomically safe another entirely. If you think it's no big deal, I invite you to do a job handling over 25 pounds repeatedly throughout the day. No, I don't. I don't want you to get a soft tissue injury that can be as serious as those lost fingers or bruises that are easier to see.

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In last week's podcast I suggested any effort to reduce lead time start with the obvious (not to all, sadly). Define it. And I encourage you to define it from the viewpoint of your customer. Then measure it. Then break it down into component steps and look at elapsed time for each of those. Your metrics must reflect the truth, not excluding the miracle you pulled off or those orders that took forever but it wasn't your fault. Your customer expects you to be reliable, and faster over time. Now it is time to define where you're headed. "Reduce Lead Time" has no real meaning by itself. Do you want to eliminate those outliers? Do you want to shift the entire performance curve to the left? Do you want to control the range so variability in performance is limited? Now that you know what lead time means for you, and you have honestly measured performance over a period, and broken the total elapsed time into component steps, and you have stated your goal, you're ready to move forward. Start with simplifying. The vast majority of lead time is wasted time, not time invested in actually adding value. In most manufacturers the value-add time is close to 5% and the wasted time close to 95%. Is it easy to read a work order, or do employees need to find someone to ask a clarifying question? Is it easy to know what to work on next? Does an employee have to ask sales a clarifying question? If so, that means that early in the process we are not providing all the information needed. By this process of identifying where variability of lead-time is high, it is easy to spot where simplification and completeness would help. Do it. Don't accept "that's not my job" from anyone in the process that should be accountable for providing complete information in an easily understandable means. You'll be amazed by the reduction in wasted time by simply resolving these frustrating issues. Frustrating to your employees, and to your customers.

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Leadtime is either a competitive advantage, or a competitive disadvantage to your manufacturing business. Most of you want to improve it, i.e., reduce it. That will also reduce your cost structure. So how do you start? First, you must have a clear definition of leadtime. It means different things to different people. To improve something, you must first define it. I encourage you to think of your leadtime as your customer does: from when he decides he wants it to when it is actually in his hands exactly as ordered. Yes, that includes multiple steps over which you have no control, but it also includes many steps that are yours and yours alone. Unreliable suppliers impact your leadtime to customers? That's your problem to fix, not your customers. The first three steps to improving lead time are: 1) First, define it clearly 2) Second, measure it accurately. No excuses. 3) And third, break those measurements into clearly defined substeps in the process. Lead time is not only a function of Operations. Internal order processing, customer responses to questions, outgoing shipping to the customer -- even if it is their truck. Only by knowing what your current performance is: average, highs, lows, and reliability and predictability, can you begin to improve it. Otherwise, you're chasing rainbows.

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Think about bowling. The American kind. Where we, hopefully, roll the ball down the lane to knock over a set of 10 pins. As children, the bowling alley manager would kindly place bumpers in the alleys on each side of the lane to keep our balls from all falling in there and never hitting a pin. As we get better, the bumpers could be removed. We still put the ball in the alley every now and then, but at least most of our balls hit a pin -- or several! The lessons from children's bowling are rich. We want them to try without massive frustration. As they get better and better, we remove the bumpers. If they backslide, we can again use the bumpers. You've given your team mission, vision, and core values. You've defined the strategy. And now it's time for them to execute that strategy. But how do you ensure they can be successful as they learn? Of course, by using bumpers. Bumpers for your strategy define what is in, and what is out, and provide a viable logic test for every attempt to execute the strategy. Is what we're doing within the bumpers? Are we forgetting about the guidelines and using company resources to pursue every great idea we have -- even those well outside the bumpers? Even the highest performing organizations need bumpers. They define the outside limits of alignment. We do not need to march single file to the goal, but we also can't wonder aimlessly that general direction and expect success. This podcast suggests how you can capture those "in the alley" ideas for later consideration, if you choose to, but focuses on how and why the bumpers are important.

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It's easy to become enamored with a product concept. The concept of the possible is exciting. But if you want to make a difference, or profitably provide your product to the world, a strategy must come first. What problem does it address? What potential does it create? Who cares, and how fast will they care? How will you source it, produce it, and get it to market? How will the part of the world you intend to sell it to even find out about it? There are very few cases of "build it and they will come." And most of those get the attention of better financed and staffed organizations. What is your plan? Of course passion about your product idea is important. If you don't care why would anyone else? But passion alone leads to frustration when no one seems to know or care how great it is. I know an existing manufacturer sitting on an outstanding product because, despite investing years and millions of dollars, it has not figured out how to make it for a price anyone would be willing to pay. The proof of concept was completed over five years ago. And here they sit, frustrated, watching a potentially huge advantage slip away because they won't partner with companies that could solve their problem. Falling in love with a product is fun; getting it to market requires a strategy.

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Industry 4.0 is all about the wise capture, analytics, and use of data. Typically companies seek to improve the speed and quality of decision-making, often automating the implementation of rules-based decisions, in their IIoT efforts. Digital transformation uses data for those, and even more forward looking scenarios that currently are impossible or very time consuming to consider. As always, the first and most important question is "why?" Why do we want to begin collecting and using more data? Again, better and faster decision making is often the answer. Actually implementing decisions automatically requires that various data sources can connect with one another and initiate action of some kind. Providing information to improve product capabilities or reliability is a different set of data and different processes. The what, when, and where of data collection depends on the problem you are addressing. Your steps into Industry 4.0 will require comfort with data analytics at some level. The basics you can likely handle with existing staff even at a smaller company, but without an intro to statistics level of understanding even that can be dicey. Yes, algorithms exist that can do the math, but who will determine which algorithm is appropriate? Your engineers will have some basic statistical understanding, but remember they study math much more than statistics. To begin, first answer the business question of why? Once the high-level why is understood, prioritize based on low level potential as you learn. And again, just because you can doesn't mean you should. For example, collecting data on whether or not a machine is running is easy, but who would do what when based on that data? Correlation of data is often important. Measuring the temperature variation of the fluids in a machine can be useful, but is more useful when correlated with production data, machine speed, or other variables that help you understand if the temperature variation matters. Every manufacturer has long been collecting data, much of it of poor quality and useless. You can't afford to continue accepting those weaknesses. As you begin a pilot, draft data governance rules and responsibilities. Just as you'll learn from the pilot, you'll learn from the draft of data governance. And remember: More is NOT necessarily better. Once you've begun a pilot, enforce assessment, learning, and then move on. Improve that pilot, or better yet, expand that experiment. Pilot purgatory is no better than ignoring Industry 4.0 completely.

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Industry 4.0 is the topic of conversation in manufacturing today. But most of us have not yet figured out all we can and should do with Industry 3.0. What's the difference, and do we need to wait? Simply put, Industry 3.0 refers to automation, and Industry 4.0 refers to data -- the collection, analysis and improved faster decision making it can enable. But does anyone really care what we call it? Likely your manufacturing business can benefit from both, even today. In deciding what to automate in your manufacturing business, I suggest four initial areas of focus. Those are safety, speed, precision, and leveraging human capabilities. In this podcast I discuss those four, and how to think about why you would consider each. In my next podcast, I will discuss Industry 4.0 -- how to think about data in propelling your business forward.

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An enduring business must offer more than today's product and serve more than today's industries. Products come and go, as do industries. Just ask the buggy whip manufacturers. Outside of a few religious sects, the product and the industry are dead. If they had seen themselves as "guidance and speed control" experts, demand would be sky high today for their expertise. They wouldn't be working with leather and they likely wouldn't be relying on local sales. You may think a mission of grand proportions and a value statement of equally grand proportions is silly. What is silly is going out of business because you think too small. Let's say you design, make and sell catalytic converters to the automobile industry. Your future is short term and dreary. Every major manufacturer is emphasizing conversion to electric vehicles, which do not need your product. You've known that is coming for years, and today it is in your face. Yes, improving efficiencies offered near term value over the past decades, but it doesn't position a business to endure. I hope you saw yourself as more than your product and more than your industry long ago. If so, your future can be very bright. If you simply want to ride your horse until it dies, you can. It's likely sicker than you realize.

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Today's operational crises often interfere with the strategic thinking of leaders. We can't let that happen, except in the most unusual of circumstances. Expediting orders is not the job of the C-level executive, nor of the VP-level. Nor even of the site manager. If the orders are late due to a systemic problem within the organization, of course those roles must be aware, and must allocate resources to identify the problem and eliminate it for the future. The urgent is easy to see; the important often doesn't appear with flashing lights. As leaders we must know and define the important. That certainly includes clear strategic thinking with our eyes scanning the future while identifying current ripples that could become tidal waves. Prioritization is not easy, but every great leader is exceptionally good at it. Identifying the top priority for your business does not imply that nothing else gets done; only that the top priority is not sacrificed to accomplish those other important considerations. Look at your schedule. Do you have time blocked -- often a few days all together -- to clear your mind of today's emergencies and to think deeply about the future of your organization? Most of us don't. We think strategically when time allows. The obvious question is: what is your personal top priority as the lead executive? Start with that question, then ensure your calendar supports the answer. Don't leave the most important to chance.

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Do your operations folk trust the sales team to provide a high quality forecast, one that can and should be used for operational planning? Does the sales team generate a sales forecast for which it wants to be held accountable? Or does one side second guess the second with finance left to pick up the pieces? Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is a supply chain tool that has been around for decades, but too few manufacturers use it well even today. If your business wants to increase alignment within and with outside customers and suppliers, S&OP is a great tool to do just that. The process is solid in theory, and implementation in your organization can be challenging. Understand the how and why of the process and your implementation becomes easier and faster. The goal is one set of numbers that the entire organization accepts and acts upon. No more second guessing. An effective S&OP process leads to improved performance in every area of the business. If you are unfamiliar with the process, I encourage you to read an old book by two friends of mine, Bob Stahl and Tom Wallace: S&OP, the How-to Handbook. If you are familiar with the concept, but don't know how to get started or how to make it actually work effectively in your business, reach out. Rebecca Morgan Fulcrum ConsultingWorks, Inc www.fulcrumcwi.com morgan@fulcrumcwi.com

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A recent LA times article shared survey results that found the vast majority of CEOs are in fear of losing their jobs in 2022. In public companies CEOs get replaced every few years. Most are paid enough to not worry about it, but most also want a new CEO role to prove their worth. Over 90% of those same survey respondents also shared that they must overhaul their corporate model within 3 years. As an example, GE is splitting into three different businesses under the leadership of a new CEO. In this case the new CEO is a very capable person who truly understands the value of people and splitting up the company is undoing the conglomeration activities that made Jack Welch famous -- a smart move for the business. A huge cultural shift for the business and a huge change impacting a significant number of companies. As CEOs sit in fear, knowing they must lead significant changes within their organizations, what can we expect from all those beneath them on the organizational chart who have to actually make the changes? Many employees are in fear of losing their jobs, even within a company that very rarely fires anyone. That fear, coupled with CEO fear, can freeze an organization. We can expect significant disruption within companies and industries with few accomplishing any measure of success. If a company does not perform well with ambiguity, there is no chance of success. Massive change efforts are needed, which requires different thinking and will involve more failure events than most companies are used to accepting. Those failure events are a test of leadership. Who should the employee trust, and how much personal skin should they put in the game? My response: Trust yourself, and put skin in the game to improve the value of your work as you make it more enjoyable. Is that a risk for the employee living paycheck to paycheck? I don't see any more risk than that of keeping her head down doing as she is told. Every company, private or public, must soon create a new model and develop new value and skills while marching through ambiguity. Any employee that can share an experience of dealing well with ambiguity, even in a failed effort, has value. Any employee that can share experiences of initiating improvements in his own work and the processes impacted has value. Any employee who can only share coming to work and doing as he's told will have value to companies on a fast track to elimination; no one else. Work is how we provide value to the world in exchange for money. The more value you bring, the more money you can obtain in exchange. Think, challenge, try, learn, fail sometimes, and keep thinking, challenging, trying and learning. There is no better way to build the value you bring, recognize and reach your personal potential, and improve everything you touch. Just because many CEOs live in fear of losing their jobs does not mean non-C-Suiters should live the same way. Just as I am, each of you is an unfinished human with much more to offer the world by offering it to yourself. Empathize with the CEO. You too may have felt fear of getting fired. The good news is there are so many more opportunities for you to continue your path of development and accomplishment than he is willing to consider. CEOs are not generally bad people. They are just highly visible and scrutinized. If it is a leader you want to follow, do that. If not, do something else. And importantly, have fun along the way.

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Despite claims to the contrary, quality is not what differentiates one manufacturer from his competitors. Sure, there are those better at consistent quality than others, but the top 20% of suppliers of a particular good or service all have predictable and reliable quality. While you may provide great quality, that is not the enterprise capability that matters. Enterprise capabilities are those aspects of a business that are crucial to ongoing success. They are not defined by your product or service. They are the thinking, integrating, and value-adding your organization has mastered that differentiate you. So what are those characteristics of your business? There are three common ingredients that together work to identify, develop, and maintain those capabilities. They are the business operating system, the design competency, and the development of people. The first has little to do with software and everything to do with processes, culture, and strategies that define "how we think and act." The second is not limited to product or service. Every aspect of an enduring business is well designed, from design for profitability to process design, to a commitment for intentional design to replace accidental evolution. "Because we always have" reflects an organization that is not well designed. The third ingredient, development of people, is woven through daily activities and conversations, with no interruptions for "busy season" or "slow season." If your products or customers disappeared tomorrow, what important value could your business provide the next day? If you have no answer, you are focused on the mechanics of your business and not on the true value it could provide. The enterprise capabilities that tomorrow will require on not the same as those of today. But they will be identified, developed and maintained through those same 3 ingredients: the business operating system, design competency permeating the entire organization, and development of people. And those systems are what are designed to build in the cost, quality and speed attributes that you target. Or not.

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Manufacturing Operations Strategist Rebecca Morgan, president of Fulcrum ConsultingWorks, Inc in Cleveland, OH, has advised leaders of mid-size manufacturers for over 30 years, after being one herself. In her recent book, https://www.mfgmastery.com (Manufacturing Mastery: The Path to Building Successful and Enduring Manufacturing Businesses), she discusses five common self-induced obstacles. "One of the most common self-induced obstacles to success and endurance in closely-held manufacturers is a lack of discipline," says Morgan. "That is a primary reason why we keep solving the same problems over and over, why alignment throughout an organization is rare, and why both speed and costs do not meet market needs." Trying to avoid micromanagement and committed to moving quickly, leaders all-to-often say something, believe it is happening, and move on to the next thing. Unfortunately, people look at leaders as role models. When they see the leader keep moving on to something new, they believe they should as well. That is a significant problem. Morgan explains that "follow up is an important part of communicating and reinforcing priorities and decisions. Without it no one is sure what they should be working on first. That is expensive and a terrible waste of resources." PDCA is a concept approaching 75 years old, and one that most companies claim to follow. But few do. Plan-Do-Check-Act is a model for solving problems and for learning. "It requires an underlying commitment to discipline," says Morgan, "and few companies are truly willing to take the time to learn and improve." Lack of discipline is not the only self-induced obstacle in a manufacturing business, but it is one that is instrumental in precluding success. A strong leader will not accept this obstacle within the organization.

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Is there a business anywhere that has not been impacted by the changes of the last few years? I can't think of one. Is there any business anywhere that will return to its 2019 "normal?" I can't think of one. Regardless of industry, business models are changing. Many were hit over ten years ago; most in the past 3-5. If the primary business model in your industry has not yet changed, it will soon. In this podcast Rebecca Morgan explains what a business model is, provides examples of several from the recent past, and provides the questions a leader must consider in evaluating potential business models that better fit the value and financial needs of all.

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We're surrounded and buffeted by all types of disruption. Until recently, customers bullied suppliers, employers bullied employees, and companies made few exceptions to the rules long established. But then the world changed. And the reactions of human beings -- people -- to those changes, and especially to what those changes made possible, has disrupted every business. While that has happened, the pace of technological change has quickened as the pace of discovery in both tech and application has accelerated. For manufacturers, who tend to be a laggard group when it comes to adopting change, these are confusing and challenging times. It is common to believe the evolving technologies can be ignored for several more years as we try to wrap our arms about the changes people now expect. Ah, but it is not so. There is no escaping disruption. There is only preparing for it, or creating it. The heads-down tactical mindset of most manufacturers is limiting their abilities to envision a vastly different future. And we can not create a future we cannot envision. So, like the ostrich..... No business can avoid disruption. No business can operate as it did before and survive the future. Imagine a manufacturer with no heat or electricity, with no computers, one that demands women work only in clerical roles and that men wear ties and fedoras to work. That hires only white Christians. Disruption comes in many forms and at many speeds. It is not becoming slower or more narrow. While you may hope this digital transformation stuff will bypass your industry, it will only do so as it leaves you in its dust. You'll be replaced by something better and faster and more environmentally friendly. You cannot escape disruption. Learn how to create it and thrive in it. Or learn about bankruptcy laws in your country.

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Boring. Entry level. But rarely done well. Quit looking for silver bullets, at least until your organization has mastered executing the basics every single day. Don't look for Big Data until you've got your small data under control. That means data governance fully defined and executed such that your internal data is timely and accurate. Don't look for mapping plug-ins to show if any of your supplier or customer facilities are in the path of that storm until your internal data is complete and accurate. If your company does a solid job of continually rationalizing parts, goods, customers and suppliers so that you are working with the optimal number and choices of each, accurate and timely data is much easier to maintain. If your company is making significant improvements in processes, but not updating the records that document and reinforce that, the improvements fade. You should be able to ask any fundamental question of your leadership team and get a data-backed accurate response, even if embarrassing, in seconds. You should get the same answer to that question regardless of whom you ask. The best companies don't let poor execution of the basics interfere with efforts to lead the pack. It's never too late to go back to basics.

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Manufacturing in early 2022 faces a number of challenges, varying by location and industry. But the one most of you share is the inability to attract and retain high potential employees. Recruiting is not a perfect process, and don't assume that yours is even well-designed. Hiring is an equally imperfect process. Why do I say that? Look at the hiring mistakes you've made. Short-lived honeymoons are the obvious ones, but sometimes it takes a few years to realize that the person you once believed a great match is not. Maybe he changed; maybe you did. Many companies utilize exit interviews in an attempt to understand why good people leave. Those rarely provide accurate information, and even more rarely generally applicable information. We've all heard that people don't leave a job; they leave a boss. That is often the case, but not always. Let's take a more proactive approach and find out why people stay with your organization. No blind surveys, no focus groups, no assumptions. Have 1:1 conversations with each person, because each is an individual with his own individual priorities and interests, and ask "why do you continue to work for us?" But that's only half of the question. The other part is what aspects of the role or the organization prevent them from having a great day every single day? There is no reason to assume that everyone will have a bad day at work, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that "work" should be a dirty word. Of course things won't always go right, but that is not sufficient for a bad day. Bad days are caused by much more than that. Were the things that went wrong preventable? Were the things that went wrong more interpersonal than functional? So for each, what are the primary factors keeping them from having a great day every day? You can work with the organization and the person to adjust roles and responsibilities, to eliminate unpleasant parts of the role, to steadily increase the good-day/bad-day ratio until it reaches 1:0. Your sales team will tell you it is much easier to keep a current customer than to find a new one. The same is true with good employees. After they leave is a bad time to ask them what it would take to make them stay.

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While 2020 and 2021 tossed us all around with unexpected changes, 2022 may well offer much the same. But none of us can afford to be victims. It's time to identify that one thing contributing the most to holding you back. Every company has unspoken assumptions. You know, those ideas that are so obvious to people that there is no need to speak them. But, frequently those are NOT true, and in many cases do not need to be true. Here are a few examples: -"our market grows by 3%/year no matter what" -"to avoid lawsuits we need to treat everyone the same" -"our customers don't know what they're doing" -"money is the best motivator" -""they" won't let us" -""they" don't come up with any good ideas Those examples may not be true for you company, but they should give you enough help that you can identify the one undermining your progress. Identify the unspoken assumptions that underpin action and decision-making at your organization and decide if you truly want your business believing those are true. Or that you want them to be true. Once you identify and challenge those, there will always be one that has the biggest restraining impact on your organization. Do something about it. Now. Then take on the next ones. If you believe your organization doesn't have any of these, that may be the unspoken assumption that is holding you back the most!

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This week between Christmas and New Year is commonly wasted by US manufacturers. I get the holiday spirit, and that people need to relax and have personal time. But can your business afford to lose 2-3% productivity every year-end? Heijunka is a part of the Toyota Production System thinking system; most of us think of it as a tool. But that important concept of level-loading to eliminate less visible wastes is a critical thought process. Most consider Muda the form of waste to be eliminated, but it is only one family of waste. Mura is the family of wastes that emanate from unevenness, irregularity and lack of uniformity. An even flow of product and information will always be superior to that of start-stop. What does that have to do with Christmas and New Year? That same thinking process should be applied to how we observe, reflect, learn and improve. In fact, the phrase continuous improvement reflects just that. Why do so few of us actually continuously improve? Simply we seem to favor the "slam on the accelerator; then slam on the brakes" approach. While performing the traditional year-end exercise of looking back to see what we could or should do differently this next year, ask yourself if the most important change would be to observe, reflect, learn, and apply every single day? Heijunka thinking applies to our thinking, not just to production. Let's make that the lesson learned this last year and implement the improvement immediately. Why would you wait?

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We've been living with a global pandemic for two years now. Those looking for some "new normal" may not realize this is it, at least for now. You've learned how to handle remote work, safely lead onsite work, and communicate with all your constituencies in new and different ways. The part that continues to confound everyone is the supply chain, with labor a close second place. Both of those require some of that innovative culture you've been talking about. Every industry is facing shortages, and many have made adjustments to account for that. Service industries have rationalized offerings and hours to reflect what they can supply reliably. Many of those have shifted massive supply to internet-based methodologies. Yet it seems the majority of manufacturers have not done much of any of that. Step 1: Your receiving personnel are not simply twittering their thumbs day after day. You may not get everything you ordered when you hoped to receive it, but you do have some inventory. Parts of your supply chain are working. Step 2: Quit crying over what challenges you are facing, and focus instead on what you can do to help your customers and markets with what you do have. Claim to have an innovative culture? Now's the time to prove it. Step 3: Work with suppliers and customers to determine what specification changes can be better supplied, if approved. Then take action as that supply chain can to keep each of you moving forward. If the answer is none, change industries. That doesn't mean leave manufacturing; it does mean deal with the reality you face. Step 4: Keep trigger mechanisms in place -- or put them in place if for some reason you don't have them -- for advance notice of changes coming down the pike. Keep the pity party brief and emphasize what options and for whom you can create. That may change weekly, so act quickly with the knowledge that steps you are taking may be near-term only. Step 5: What strategic and operational changes do you need to make right now? What if this is the "new normal?" If your business model and strategy haven't changed, when do you intend to respond to this global upheaval? There are strengths in your supply chain. Perhaps some of your customers do have a truly innovative mindset that you need to call on. Same for your suppliers. And the same for the employees you've never asked to leap way beyond any box you may have believed you're in. If you're not looking for what you can do with what you can obtain, or what creative changes you can make to remain viable, what are you doing? As we all know, hope is not a strategy.

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The end of the calendar year is just that. Nothing more, nothing less. We behave as if the turning of the calendar page marks a huge turning point for our organizations. Is January 1, 2022 really a critical day in the future of your company? Is December 31 less critical? For public companies, the end of the month, the quarter, and the year are false demarcations of results that have entirely too big an impact on behaviors. For non-public companies, those same calendar pages are used in similar ways: as false deadlines and false starting lines. Developing, finalizing, and implementing your strategy should be an ongoing process, not one determined by the calendar. Don't waste the first few months of 2022, nor any of the others. Every quarter, every month, and every day is of strategic import to your business. Depending on the calendar to tell you when to start and when to finish makes no sense. Depending on your grasp of reality, your vision for the future, and your strategic priorities as of right now does make sense.

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No one wants to be micromanaged, and no leader wants to be called a micromanager. But if leaders are not following up with their teams regularly, misalignment and ineffective prioritization are predictable. Casual conversations in the hallway, a comment in a meeting, or a sentence in an email may be understood as an order by the subordinate, and as just-a-thought by the leader. Or those same comments may be considered just the leader's thought at the time by the subordinate, and a high priority action item by the leader. If misalignment is more common in your organization than you would choose, disciplined follow up is one easy means of eliminating much of it. If you have 1:1 meetings with your team regularly, that is a great opportunity to review their tasks and priorities, see what help or clarification may be needed, and make any adjustments the two of you see fit. If you don't have scheduled 1:1 meetings, or even worse, don't keep most of those, it's time for leadership discipline there as well. There is absolutely nothing close to micromanaging about reviewing priorities, needs, and progress. There is absolutely nothing close to effective leadership in dropping in frequently to examine the details of your teams' activities. Disciplined follow up requires mutual respect and trust. Micromanaging reflects lack of respect and trust by leadership, and promotes the return of those undesirable feelings.

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Is the time you sell to your employer time well spent? If it puts food on the table, shelter over your head, and clothes on your children, then it is. But could it be, and should it be, spent very differently? Most companies have mission statements; the majority of those look inward and inspire little. We may not be able to change that, but we can ensure that's not true for our own lives. We've all heard that no one ever on their death bed said they wished they had worked more, but perhaps that because they were doing meaningless work. If you have a pit in your stomach when going to work, it's past time to change jobs. Perhaps change industries or careers. Do you feel Groundhog Day on each trip? Is that what you want to remember? If your intent is to make enough money to support your family comfortably and spend as much time as possible with your family, you don't have to accept a miserable role in a miserable organization. Concentrate instead on how that job with that company contributes to your life and that of others you care about positively. Or better yet, move to a role where you can learn and grow and have fun while being a part of something bigger than yourself. Those positions exist and they do not preclude providing a comfortable level of financial support and significant support for the whole person that is you -- the person who attends sporting events and spelling bees. Your job matters. If you believe it doesn't, find a different one. Do that until you have a means of support that builds your skills, brings you joy, and makes you proud of how the world is better because of what you do.

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If ambiguity is a major problem within your manufacturing organization your leadership likely demonstrates cognitive dissonance with regularity. Hypocrisy at its most obvious, cognitive dissonance is the discomfort that arises from holding two opposing views at the same time. If your leadership team doesn't suffer that discomfort but your people can feel that you should, you likely say one thing and do another. People are your most important resource yet they are not treated with respect for the whole person, they are suspect in their explanations, and they are the first to be cut when cash flow suffers. Suppliers are your partners, yet you unilaterally extend payment terms when you want, and violate contract commitments when you choose to. If your organization has a stated mission and declares core values, but behaves to the contrary, your people cannot help but be living in ambiguity that the leadership is needlessly creating. Successful and enduring businesses actively look for cognitive dissonance within and bring those conversations to the surface. Professional disagreement is one thing; talking out of both sides of your mouth another entirely. Cognitive dissonance is not about disagreement among people but within a single person. When that person is in leadership, the entire organization is put in that uncomfortable position. Look out for those disconnects, discuss and resolve them, and save your company the wasted energy and time they create. Otherwise you'll be limping along until you can walk no further.

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The latest entry on our buzzword bingo cards is "futureproof." In reaction to the worldwide pandemic and ongoing supply chain disruption we've begun using this term to say "we won't let anything blindside us again!" That's an insane concept in application. None of us can afford to invest resources on all the very low probability risks out there at the expense of investing in what accomplishing our mission and vision requires. We could invest effort in becoming more proficient at risk identification and management. The downside of chasing the holy grail of cheap labor to places we couldn't find on a globe, places that we know provide unsafe and environmentally damaging processes for workers, was fairly obvious. But the vast majority chose that option over all the others available. That was either very poor risk identification and mitigation or those companies willingly accepted the risk of international upheaval from any potential source for cheap prices. Finish Strong™️ means anything worth doing is worth doing well. Enduring businesses have missions and visions that matter and focus on doing the important well. That means investing strategic profits in what matters during all business cycles. Enduring businesses, by definition, are committed to Finish Strong™️. What are businesses that pursue futureproofing committed to? Do they prepare equally for the incredibly low probability event and the high probability event? There are legitimate concepts on your buzzword bingo concept, but I doubt that futureproof will be one of those.

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You face numerous external obstacles to success, and those you identify and address. But your internally generated obstacles are often overlooked entirely. Surprising to many of you is the fact that low expectations is one of the most common. When John F. Kennedy established the goal of sending a man to the moon and returning him safely home, no one knew how. But the expectation was set. And importantly, resources required to accomplish this seemingly far-fetched goal were supplied. Working with one Operations VP to define and implement an operations strategy, we agreed to a 3-year goal of reducing product cost by 25%. We didn’t know how, but we had a few ideas and commitment. His boss, the COO, reduced that goal to 20%, believing it to be unreachable. The expectation placed on operations was lowered. Wishful thinking is very different from high expectations and high expectations cannot emanate from frustration or anger. High expectations that are important to the larger picture and are supported by invested resources should be the norm for every manufacturing business that intends to endure. Kennedy said: “…not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” Look at the expectations you have placed on your organization and team. Do they “measure the best of our energies and skills?” Does meeting them propel your business and team forward into new potential? While your business faces many impediments in becoming an enduring one, do not let self-induced obstacles like low expectations be among them.

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No manufacturing organization can become successful, much less enduring, without a leadership team and culture that is disciplined. We all know that variability negatively impacts quality, and that's true not only for products, but for communication, decision-making, processes, and more. As a leader it is your responsibility to ensure that employees understand organizational priorities and how day-to-day actions must mesh with them. Just because you give an order doesn't mean it is implemented, or that it will be. Leaders and managers are frequently known for dropping ideas and suggestions in hallway conversations, emails, or meetings with many of those really reflecting "thinking out loud" and not actual decisions. Disciplined follow up by leaders to ensure the entire team understands priorities and is working on the right things is crucial. It is NOT micromanaging unless you are telling the worker how to do the work. Verifying significance and common understanding, listening to challenges and providing help to address them, and communicating clearly when things change is part of disciplined leadership. Discipline does not preclude innovative or agile cultures; in fact it is a requirement of both of those. How disciplined is process design and execution, prioritization, decision-making, communication, and capturing and sharing knowledge in your manufacturing organization? Probably not enough.

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Entirely too many leaders refuse to lead. The evidence? They refuse to sequence priorities and share the reasoning of that sequence with all employees to use in making decisions. If leaders don't make the hard decisions, they abdicate them to those with less information and vision. Afraid if you sequence them the lower ones won't get done? Well, there's nothing wrong with that. You've just identified too many priorities for the organization's capacity. Wouldn't a good leadership team rather see Priority One completed and Priority moving along the path, than to see none of them completed? You want an aligned organization? How will you ever obtain that if the leadership team isn't aligned? If you provide sequenced priorities and explain the reasoning behind them, your team can make aligned and higher quality decisions day in and day out. Yes, the leader who "owns" the lowest priority may not get what he wants when he wants it, but the most important priorities for the future of the business will be satisfied. Leverage one set of sequenced priorities by (1) gaining leadership team commitment and alignment on them, (2) sharing those with the entire team, and (3) do not change them every time the phone rings!

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Most everyone is declaring the importance of innovation and an innovative culture to future success. And many claim to offer both now. Not true in most cases. Yes, there have been significant innovations in technology and materials. But can your business honestly claim that its market now receives new and innovative value from doing business with you that it didn't get last year? Most, emphasizing the word 'honestly,' cannot. Most all can claim iterative changes. Sadly many of our engineers graduate without the basics that were ingrained a few decades ago. Design for Manufacturing is often overlooked, as is design for service. Too much design now relies on software "optimization" programs. Optimization mathematics and software has been around for a long time; I personally used and wrote some of it in the late 1970s. But we're skipping important aspects of design and frequently overlooking innovation entirely. Reduce weight by x, cost by y, number of parts by z. Those parameters are not unimportant, but rarely reflect innovation. The PC, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPod were all innovative. The thousands of versions of each since, while more powerful and capable, are iterative. Love the camera, and it took some amazing engineering to figure out how to get it so high quality in the phone, but ..... Don't let yourself off easy. Being truly innovative today will set you apart from the rest. Coming out with Rev 15 won't.

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Energy around the world is now expensive and in many places unavailable. The transition from carbon-based to renewables is coming, and brings with it complexities that many of cannot even imagine. Storage and transmission, the current state of our grid, changes to the grid that are required, and more stand between us and smoothly available power that we need. We'll get there but it will be ugly in the interim. Every manufacturer requires energy; every one of us must gain an understanding of the coming challenges and the alternatives we have to minimize disruptions to our businesses. Disruptions will happen during the transition. We must develop plans and capabilities to ensure that our equipment, data access and sharing, and communication are not damaged by the challenges. Start thinking about these issues now.

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Full transparency is coming to your manufacturing business. People are demanding it. Technology is enabling it. The 2021 supply chain disruptions demonstrated the need for it. So what does that mean for your manufacturing business? If you've always been open and trustworthy, it becomes a competitive advantage. If not, either change your behaviors or pay the price. You have 5 constituencies that are gaining better insights into the actual core values and mission of your company. Will employees be attracted if, like Amazon, you are known to provide poor working conditions and fire for little to no reason? Will suppliers want to work with you, if like GE, you are known for unilaterally extending payment terms and refusing to buy inventories that the contract specifies? Will communities want you to move there, if like Foxconn, you are known for false promises? If customers know how you source materials, will they be attracted, or know that your core values do not extend beyond your property lines? Can investors trust the information you provide, or will they be reminded of Pollyanna? Transparency is a competitive advantage for some, and can be for anyone who is trustworthy and lives attractive core values. It will kill other manufacturing businesses. Which are you?

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To endure a manufacturing business must continually metamorphose into an organization delivering increasing value to all of its constituents. Why? Because the competition is not only not sitting still; new forms of competition are sprouting up where it is difficult to envision them. Your value must evolve as the wants and needs of your constituents evolve. While manufacturing will not die, individual manufacturing companies will if they do not learn to thrive in our evolving world. If your organization is intimidated by the requirements of accelerating improvement, your personal, demonstrable openness to learning and calm guidance through ambiguity will make an all-important difference. Not all change is good, but smart strategic change is required. And you can't take too much time to do that.

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Snow storms and federal government shutdowns introduced the concept of "essential workers" decades ago. COVID-19 not only brought it front and center; the pandemic completely redefined the term. Consumers have choices on what, when, and how to buy. In 2020 and 2021 they have demonstrated considerable flexibility in those choices that surprised many. Those changing decisions have impacted virtually all manufacturers, either directly or indirectly. Have you given thought not just to traditional competitive advantage, but what it means for your business to be truly essential? In consulting, the primary competition is the potential client deciding to do nothing. The best of us have had to know how to become essential for years. Now it's your turn. What alternatives do your customers have? Likely many more than you've considered previously. To become essential will require an unwavering focus on the needs -- the true needs -- of your market.

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"May you live in interesting times." We certainly do. Supply chain shortages like we've never seen, an international pandemic that continues to mutate, and strong consumer demand. Oh, and a labor shortage faced by most every manufacturer. Resist the temptation to hire warm bodies. They are never what you need. What you do need is reliable people who want to learn and grow and who share your mission. As you continue to look externally for them, don't overlook those currently in your employ. It is again, tempting, to work those you have longer hours and harder and stop all employee development and improvement activities. Bad decisions. It is more important than ever to understand the potential of those you have and which processes waste them the most. Acknowledge that process waste and ask your team if they could develop and implement a meaningful improvement if you gave them a few hours to think and work together on it. If they say "no" then either move on to the next wasteful process -- you have many -- and do the same, or identify other resources that can do something about it soon. If they say "yes," then make the time for the team to address that nagging messy process. You'll have happier employees and more productive ones later this week. Do that again, and then again. While they work on reducing the size of that challenge, you can identify two or three employees who are capable of more and are quick learners; identify a limited number of higher value tasks that they could learn and master sufficiently with the right exposure and training. Then execute that. Provide follow on support for them as they struggle occasionally. Output may suffer this week, but it will improve next week and the next. Keep doing this a bit each week so you fully leverage the valuable employees you already have. No farmer would let food rot on the vine while he was in search for new land; you shouldn't either.

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Organizational structure is a strategic choice and should not simply default to “what we’ve always done.” Companies are often organized by skill set or primary tasks, not by authority or decision-making responsibilities. Structures rarely are designed to instill core values or magnify human potential. Does your current structure develop personnel, align decision-making authority with expertise, and facilitate the culture important to business success? Understanding why you have your current organizational structure—and why a different structure might better facilitate endurance—is a great place to start. 5YruaYk0568wyUoqbGOW

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It wasn't difficult to see this coming. This podcast from 2013 explained how chasing cheap labor was very short sighted and doomed to fail. The addendum, just added, explains how companies that recognize the value of talent and their responsibility in investing in it can endure, while others cannot. Don't let a line item on your P&L fool you into silly decisions. Don't let the IRS determine when you will invest in people, equipment, or the future. It's your business. If you think it matters, act accordingly.

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The CEO cannot be the only strategic thinker in your manufacturing organization. Nor can the leadership team be the only source. Not every decision is strategic, but every decision is better made in the context of a larger picture. How big a picture do your employees need to have? Not all are the same and all require something to pull them out of myopia. You can ask these 4 questions when the opportunity presents, which will be multiple times per day: -- "How does that fit with...?" -- "What applies here?" -- "What is the distinction that is really important to this?" -- What other pieces of the puzzle are impacted?" Most of those questions are best leveraged with the addition of a very few situation specific words, but by themselves will get people thinking. Some of us are strategic, some conceptual, some linear, and some literal thinkers. Helping each move just a little toward a higher level as you ask questions will improve the quality of decision-making throughout your entire organization. These 4 questions are not a panacea, not a silver bullet. But they are easy and will move the needle. That's reason enough to use them.

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Technologies that can and will disrupt manufacturing are evolving rapidly. If they are to be disruptive, they will be adopted and integrated into the business and operational performance of those businesses. This podcast explains that I, as the Disruptive Technologies track leader for the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (www.ame.org) Fall 2022 International Conference in Dallas Tx am asking for audience ideas on which technologies you believe will disrupt your industry within the next 5 years. These technologies cannot be pie in the sky theory, nor flash in the pan efforts, but rather those in practical and effective implementation in a few manufacturing businesses currently and expected to infiltrate and change the industry forever. Please send your ideas to Morgan@FulcrumCWI.com with the subject line "disruptive technologies."

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Fear can paralyze; risk can be managed. The Delta variant of Covid-19 is spreading primarily among the unvaccinated. We are currently facing supply and demand uncertainties that have crippled many manufacturers, but it's time to turn our eyes to managing specific risks. You know how to deal with many of the uncertainties -- like how to produce safely in your facilities and how to schedule workers as schools change schedules. In most cases we know what we don't know, which should remove fear and enable risk management to take over. In the USA Covid-19 is increasing in unvaccinated areas, which are easily identified. If your supply or demand emanates from one of those areas, you face more risk than if they were not. Working to mitigate those risks now is a priority. Most first world countries, other than Australia, are vaccinated. That's not the case for second and third world countries, although progress is being made. Again, information on vaccination rates is available and can help you foresee additional challenges. The chip industry is facing structural challenges; those shortages will likely still be with us through the end of 2022. Many other material shortages can be significantly reduced by logistical adjustments that are underway. I anticipate most to be resolved by early 2022. You may have other projections that drive your risk management. The key is that you not be overwhelmed by today's expediting needs and keep your eyes on the future. Knowing what you don't know is a significant advantage over what you faced in 2020. BUT, the newest variant -- Lambda -- is already in over 20 countries, with one case identified in the US. Sadly, it does not appear to respond to current vaccines. But at least we know that, and you can prepare better this time around.

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My book Manufacturing Mastery: The Path to Building Successful and Enduring Manufacturing Businesses will be available September 1, 2021. For pre-orders, I am offering benefits that will help you build your enduring business. The benefits offered differ for quantities from ≧ 3, 7, or 25. Check it out at www.mfgmastery.com and choose which works best for you.

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With labor, plastics, chips, cans and many other global shortages, demand is far greater than supply for many manufacturers. The question is: How best do we handle that? Allocation is the term for allocating your limited supply. It should always start with a strategy -- 100% to top customers, or split among markets or customers, or something else. Once the market-facing strategy is in place, execution must be flawless. Truth and honesty are crucial, as your customers need that to plan their own business reactions. Constant communication of what and when that they can use is one side of the coin; constant commuication of honestly what they need and when, considering other shortages they are facing themselves, is the least they can do for you. While working to resolve the shortages you face in a critical path mindset, serve your markets as best you can. These scenarios are horrible times to over promise.

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It's one thing to focus on eliminating problems between shipment and delivery, the typical point of supply chain visibility. It's quite another to discover there is a small facility in some backwater country that is integral to your entire supply chain. Visibility into the high level participants in your end-to-end supply chain is an important component of risk management. This podcast gives you an overview of how to get started identifying the players and the primary points of risk.

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The term Supply Chain Visibility is not well understood. Here I explain the meaning and how to get started with the tactical processes that support your efforts to receive supplies on time, and deliver to your customers on time. This data based exception identification and resolution status system, often called a supply chain tower, is less complicated than many think and gets to the level of detail that is required to solve very near-term impediments to performance. This is important when we care less about shipping on time and more about actual receipt on time, which should be all of us all the time.

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Industrial Internet of Things is the digitization of important variables, with that data converted into information that creates faster and better decision making. Business leaders often believe the software development part is the most challenging, but that's far from true. In fact, programming is the easy part of IIoT. The business decisions, the data to be collected and retained, and the actual integration of the information into decision making and directly into operations is the biggest challenge you will face. Think about those first, then add a few sensors, collect some data, convert it into information, and see how your integration plans work. Like every other major change in thinking, doing, or deciding, change management needs cannot be overlooked.

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The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is by definition about the digitization of factors important to your business operations that is not currently captured as data. It could be temperature, speed, humidity, wear or any number of other factors. Digitization creates data, which must be converted into information if it's to be worth the time and effort to capture it. That information must enable or make better and/or faster decisions than would have been made without it. There are any number of business considerations in implementing worthwhile IIoT, and there are multiple data decisions that must be made as well. Today's podcast summarizes the four S's important in the design of your IIoT system: (1) Security, (2) Stability, (3) Scalability, and (4) Standards. Don't put those off! This 3 minute podcast includes explanations and examples of each.

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It’s never about the product; it’s always about the value the product or service delivers to the customer. That’s where logic converts to emotion, and emotion is what involves people in the dream. Saying your mission is to be the best at whatever it is that you do, using whatever technology you use, is meaningless to the outside world. Do you think anyone states that they want to be mediocre or lousy? So how would that empty statement really excite others to join and support your journey? It doesn’t. Over a recent lunch we discussed his mission statement. His website currently states: “Our mission is to produce the highest quality vinyl records from both a sonic and aesthetic perspective at a fair price.” That is much better than most I see, but after I asked “why?” a few times, he responded that he is devoted to enabling people worldwide to enjoy listening to music that sounds as close to the original as possible. It’s not about vinyl records. It’s about the enjoyment of music lovers as they listen to his product, which does sound as close to the original as current technologies allow. Do you notice the difference? It’s never about the product; it’s always about the value the product or service delivers to the customer. That’s where logic converts to emotion, and emotion is what involves people in the dream.

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Mission, vision, and core value statements were once considered serious. And then fluff, because companies had them, but didn't live them. Thank goodness we’re never too old to learn! I have come to realize that Mission Matters! So do vision and core values. Together they attract the people and partners you want, or chase them away. They provide a touchstone for how your organization intends to improve the lives of those it touches, or a source of derision. They give a consistent direction to strategy and priorities, or aren’t even considered.

No one creates company-specific definitions of those guideposts to sabotage market perception, much less spurn needed resources. The walking away happens when those phrases are discredited by company behavior. Or irrelevance. Mission is not a tagline, nor a phrase copied from a different website. It is why your business exists. It attracts, or it repels. Or it promotes apathy.

Your mission does not have to be world-changing and should not be quixotic. But if few share it, endurance will be elusive for your company.

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CEOs, COOs, and consultants like myself do NOT know everything. We shouldn't pretend to, nor expect ourselves to. We do need to constantly focus on learning, thinking, and applying what makes sense. We all too often overemphasize the differences and underestimate the similarities of our operations with that of others. Becoming skilled at recognizing which differences truly matter in a specific circumstance and which similarities allow us to learn the most is crucial to the effective leader of a manufacturing business. Lazy leaders believe that copy/paste is a step forward, when it is doomed to fail. For example, failing to comprehend the thinking system behind its tools, many see a Toyota tool like kanban and try to copy/paste it into our own operations. Toyota developed, and continues to evolve kanban and every other visible tool it has to address its own business challenges and its own current state. They don't have you in mind. When we observe others, strong leaders will focus on the thinking behind what they see that seems effective; then we ask ourselves how that thinking might make us better. Some of it won't. It's up to us to recognize the difference. That's why Toyota lets everyone, including its competitors visit its factories. No one can see what they do that makes them special, and the vast majority of visitors are seeking silver bullets, not entirely different thinking. You and I can learn by observation, listening, and thinking. The first two without the third are dangerous. The third without the first two is stymied by our own myopic blinders. Let's actively prioritize learning from everything we observe, and applying to our own businesses the thinking that helps us move forward.

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Inconvenience and risk are present in our manufacturing businesses every day. Some should not prevent us from moving forward now; others represent to much potential risk -- probability and/or severity -- and require delay as we better understand and plan. You likely do much of this in your head daily, but may not realize that all your employees do the same things. You are not likely aware of what assessment process each uses. Worker accidents often emanates from failure to understand risk, or the belief that management would expect them to not let a little inconvenience keep them from moving forward. I encourage your to blatantly discuss out loud your decision making assessment so employees can begin to understand the level of risk the company is willing to accept. And please make clear that taking a chance that could involve an accident is something the company wants no one to do, ever. Help your employees actively understand the concepts of risk identification and assessment, and how to align their decision making with the company risk tolerance. Move forward, or delay? Clear communication of actual decision making criteria can reduce fear of second-guessing and speed your organization's progress.

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Last week’s podcast exposed my frustration with executives and journalists who claim to understand lean but obviously, to me and my opinionated thinking, do not. Today I will share a few of the critical distinctions that underlie my passion. First, when I hear the word “lean” I immediately think of the Toyota Business and Toyota Production Systems. The 1991 one book, The Machine That Changed the World, shared the findings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's $5 million, five-year study on the future of the automobile. This book made the term lean production known worldwide. The association with the word “lean” and Toyota’s “they’re doing something different there” performance got the attention of many manufacturing leaders. Because no company wants its named operating system to refer to a different company, Ford has the Ford Production System and Danaher has the Danaher Business System. The majority simply refer to what they are doing as “lean.” The problem, for me at least, is that the word “lean” has no consistent meaning across, or even within, companies. But the word is used as if it reflects a specific operating system approach. It does not. For example, a company will say it uses Kanban, a tool from TPS, as evidence they are lean. That tool, to Toyota, reflects a stopgap measure on their way to creating flow. It is a system they designed to meet their needs at the time. Toyota has modified that tool many times, and differently to reflect various conditions, as it becomes closer to the ability to flow. Whether it involves a card or not, is irrelevant. The information on the card is irrelevant. What is relevant is that Toyota uses it as a means of scheduling, inventory control that the people involved in the process design and manage. It is used between various process steps to highlight currently necessary interruptions to flow, which are then attacked. Kanban is not the goal for them, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be. The Toyota Business and Production Systems are ways of thinking and behaving, not a set of tools. A tool may evolve out of thinking to solve a problem or generate an opportunity. Tools are not the purpose nor the goal for that company. They are simply a means to an end, with the focus always on the end. While I have been to many Toyota facilities, and have invested time with many current and former Toyota leaders, I know enough to know I understand very little of TPS. But I passionately understand that. JIT, the subject of last week’s rant, is a goal driving many Toyota efforts. It is not an inventory management method. To any and all who want to use Toyota, or another leading manufacturer, as a model for thinking and behavior, please do not believe that copy/paste is the answer for you. It is not. That thinking is one of the primary distinctions between TPS and lean proponents.

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The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are fact-based high-quality newspapers. Each has acquired ‘political leanings’ in some of their writing, but for business articles they are widely respected. Each has recently published a poorly researched and factually incorrect article about the impact of the current supply chain upheavals on the preponderance of Just-in-Time inventory strategies in American manufacturing businesses. The error is in believing that their sources understood JIT and had discovered some new failing. They were right in stating that JIT was originated by Toyota. They are right in that many manufacturers are moving as quickly as they can from minimal inventories to holding significant quantities in storage to protect themselves from future supply interruptions. The authors were wrong in believing and writing that those manufacturers ever understood JIT or had implemented the concepts wisely. JIT is so much more than lowering inventories, but few chose to do all the hard work that effective and managed JIT involves. Why has Toyota not suffered the chip shortage the way their automotive competitors have? Because several months earlier they had acquired a significant quantity as they foresaw the potential for a significant supply issue. That wasn’t luck. That was supply chain visibility and risk management. JIT was never intended to be an inventory strategy. It was always a means for Toyota to highlight problems in the system and address them before they could become severe. That is the point that both articles missed completely. And apparently their sources simply did not understand that incredibly basic aspect of the JIT philosophy. Which means their manufacturing businesses think they are lean but do not understand what that means at all. So now those companies are back to high inventory dollars and all the problems that come with that. They’ve learned a lesson from the current crises, but the wrong one! It is not JIT that failed. It was the leaders who believed JIT was an inventory management system that failed. Supply chain visibility is not a digital transformation catch phrase. It is one element of building a resilient manufacturing business. As you analyze what works and what doesn’t for your manufacturing company, always dig deep to understand WHY. Luck or current conditions can make you believe things that simply are not true. So can failure to identify and track the underlying assumptions you make. And sadly, so can reading Wall Street Journal or New York Times articles that rely on ill informed sources and lazy journalists.

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When I was growing up in manufacturing a primary point of friction between leadership and production workers was “quality or quantity.” Leaders did not understand what was so irrational about their expectation; the two should not be mutually exclusive. The production workers, however, who worked with existing processes, couldn’t see why management would expect such a thing when their day-to-day experience was that a choice had to be made. Yet today, I see comments on LinkedIn about the requirement to choose two of the triumvirate of cheap, fast, and good. This is another false distinction, just as was quality and quantity. In new product development we are told that we must choose between budget, timing, and good design. This is another false choice that exists because we haven’t figured out how to meet budget and schedule while creating excellent design. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, just like quantity and quality were never mutually exclusive. Solutions rest not on demanding a more likeable schedule and budget or reducing product expectations, but on answering the question: “what is preventing us from accomplishing all 3?” Why do people still accept false choices? Because it’s easier to think “woe is us” than to dig deep to determine what’s making us believe the choice cannot be overcome. Let’s get over that today. That doesn’t require that we know exactly how to eliminate a perceived contradiction, but that we recognize what it is and that we commit to figuring out how to eliminate it. “Because it’s hard” is no reason to be stuck tomorrow with today’s challenges.

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I wish we would all quit acting like everything was “normal,” implying steady and predictable, before Covid. It’s like we’ve all decided to recall “the good old days” the way octogenarians do. What has really happened is that we were comfortable with the types of ongoing constant change, something unexpected happened that impacted all of us around the world, and we act like all the ongoing constant change we now experience is something different. It’s not. Peter Drucker’s book The Age of Discontinuity; Guidelines to Our Changing Society was first published in 1969. While hardly the first major treatise on our changing world, his is well known. He pointed out 4 primary discontinuities impacting the world then, and those 4 impact us still. First, he mentioned technology. We’d all agree that technical developments impact all of us today. Next, he described the shift from an international economy to a world economy. Sure feels like we’re there right now also. As a matter of fact, Covid woke many to the true world nature of our everyday lives. Talk of reshoring is primarily that: talk. Yes, a few governments will identify some truly strategic supply chain sources and consider a national strategy to ensure more reliable supply. Fear of China controlling many resources and technologies and its threat of conquering Taiwan – the major source of semiconductors to the world – will have a much bigger impact on adjustments to world sourcing than Covid ever would. We will continue to be a global economy. Drucker’s 3rd discontinuity was “a new sociopolitical reality, embracing business, government, and other pluralistic institutions.” That surely sounds familiar and current to you. His 4th was “the rising importance of knowledge and of formal education, with resulting implications for work, life, leisure, and leadership.” He recommended major changes to our educational institutions to provide more flexible and appropriate “on demand” educational opportunities. Another very familiar topic. In our lifetimes, and before, there has been constant change, and most of it for the good. My mother much prefers indoor plumbing and electric lighting. I much prefer my reliable and safe automobile that I chose based on internet research. Each of us can name many things we find improved over a year ago, and the pandemic was underway then. Different does not mean bad or worse. If you think the “old normal” was great, and eagerly anticipate a return to it, life won’t be easy for you. The human species does not move backward; we move forward. You may not like all the new options and challenges, but it is more productive to accept that they are coming tomorrow, and again the day after that. Discontinuity is continuous. Even the broad drivers remain similar over decades. Stop looking for any “normal” other than that of discontinuity. That is what is normal, and it is what was normal last year too. I encourage you to make a list of the top 5 things that impact your daily life negatively that have changed dramatically in the past year. What are the odds of them returning to prior status? If high, then stop fretting and simply wait; if low odds, wrap your head and emotions around succeeding in the newness tomorrow will bring. I hate that I cannot travel internationally now, but I will again. It will be different, and better in many ways.

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As manufacturers are searching high and low for employees, it is crucial that we not make bad hiring decisions out of a sense of desperation. A warm body is not what you need. Today we’ll dig into how to attract candidates who can help you create a future that you can’t even predict well right now. Technology is the future of manufacturing, yet we need other than technologists. We need to identify those who can help us learn, change, and grow as an organization. Machines make better machines than people ever will. And conversely, people make better people than machines ever will. Hiring people for repetitive and low-thinking tasks is an extremely short-term strategy. No one will be happy with that. Trying to automate judgement, creativity, passion, and fascination with learning will fail. Start by determining if you really need a person or if you should pursue task automation instead. Many roles are repetitive and require only rules-based decision-making. Physical automation can handle much of the repetitive rules-based decision-making work in production arenas. A good candidate can be wasted if we’re not careful. We don’t need bad ones. If we want people who can and will think, we need to provide them work opportunities where thinking is integral to the job. Most employees can do much more than is asked of them. At virtually every one of the clients I’ve worked with over 30 years, I’ve discovered employees with great potential who management considered high-maintenance complainers, and others management liked who only did what they were told. Does leadership style attract, develop, and retain the kind of employees you need? Are the job roles offered consistent with the type of employees you need? Perhaps before you look for candidates it is worth looking at the actual work. Eliminate or automate lousy work. Your company will be a much stronger magnet for people who are creative, passionate, and fascinated with learning. Those are the ones fundamental to your company’s success. Becky Morgan Morgan@FulcrumCWI.com https://www.fulcrumcwi.com @Fulcrumcwi https://www.linkedin.com/in/beckymorganfulcrum/

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Today I will be sharing ideas with you about selecting suppliers for your manufacturing business. It is NOT based on the lowest purchase order price, and if you think it is, you or your boss are very short sighted. Let me explain a better more productive process. Which is better for your organization: paying $1 each but they are sometimes late and sometimes have bad ones mixed in with the good ones, and invoices are often wrong, OR $1.02 each but they always arrive on time with excellent quality and invoices are never an issue? Let’s say you buy 1,000 of these each month. The difference in PO accounts payable would be $20. That easily pays for the better performance of the 2nd supplier. Even if you buy 100,000 per month, the $2,000 difference is more than paid for by your internal efficiencies gained. In fact, the more you buy, the more your internal costs for dealing with the lower PO price supplier. With his performance problems he will rarely be the smart business choice. But he might be. Could the 1st supplier bring value to your organization with industry trends he sees, by recommending changes during your product design that save you money and increases performance, on providing an environment for his workforce that is aligned with your core values? In this case he may be the better choice, as he is likely willing to have you help him improve quality in both product and invoice processes. You see, true commitment to core values and mutual dedication to joint improvement of competitive advantage speaks highly about your organization, and his. That means your employees are less likely to read your core values plaque on the wall and laugh as they see how you select suppliers. They will see mutual respect is a total commitment, not just a convenient theory. Those reactions will enhance their dedication to doing their best for you and your organization as they see how you contribute to making their job easier. Now, your accounting group may tell you that you’re overpaying if the PO price of your chosen supplier is higher than someone else’s, but they will be wrong. It’s just that PO price is easy to compare while all the improved trust, mutual development and cooperation is harder to measure. You’ll know it’s there, and your supplier will know it’s there, but you accountants may not. It will show in the bottom line, but not in the Cost of Goods Sold where they expect it to be. It’s your job to make your organization more competitive as you support the mission and vision in concert with core values. That definitely involves working with the supplier to lower his costs so he can lower his price to you. It does not mean throwing out an excellent supplier because of a few thousand dollars that aren’t real anyway. I encourage you to define what you believe are the attributes of an excellent supplier who will help your organization improve. Discuss that list with the CFO; cost accountants may well not understand what you’re showing them. Reach agreement on those characteristics with the CFO. Then evaluate your current suppliers for consistency with that expectation. Help them understand your expectations and how you will listen to and support their needs in providing them. If they have no interest, it may well be time to search for alternatives. Now you know how to evaluate those options. You will see a logical priority evolving from knowing how many you need to replace, their current negative impact and the resources you have to bring on a new supplier. That costs also. But over time, if you want the best suppliers to help your company succeed, this is a process that must begin. I hope that most of your suppliers are willing and able to work with you for mutual advantage. For those who are not, there is much more to implementing this than I can explain in a 5-minute podcast, but you know where to start! You know how I’m going to close this podcast: Start now, and as always, Finish Strong. www.fulcrumcwi.com

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I hope you have a mission for why your manufacturing company exists, and that you have some kind of vision for what it should look like in a few short years to ensure you’re closer to accomplishing that mission. Your business is somewhere right now. You haven’t accomplished the mission so where you are now is insufficient for where you intend to be. That tells you that no matter where your company is right now, it has to be in a different place in a few months and an even better place 6 months after that, if you are to bring the vision to reality. The question is “how?” What do you do to get from here to there? Logical steps to take in moving from here to there are: 1) If you don’t have clarity of why you’re in business – your mission – I suggest you work on that. It drives everything else. Without it, your organization is taking a random walk, which is hardly the foundation for building an enduring manufacturing business. 2) Complete a hard-nosed assessment of where you are now on the important “chunks” of your business 3) Complete a hard-nosed assessment of where you need to be in 6 – 24 months on those chunks 4) Specify what those gaps mean 5) Identify each considered change to close the gaps either foundational, or strategic. Prioritize the gaps in terms of reduced risk or requirement to move forward, and then fold that into your operating improvement and strategic plans. None of these steps is particularly easy, but you will become better with practice. You know how I’m going to close this podcast: Start now, and as always, Finish Strong. www.fulcrumcwi.com

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Everyone says they have, want to, or will transform their business. Few do. The digital transformation looks more like adding sensors than any significant change so far in most manufacturers. But transformation is crucial to the longevity of your business. It’s not a one-and-done activity and is never for the faint of heart. Perhaps that’s why the average lifespan of manufacturing businesses is falling. So what makes successful transformation so difficult? Well, first and foremost, a vision of the future is required. What are you transforming from, and to, and how will you know when it is successful? Implementing ERP is hardly transformation. Entering a new market is rarely transformational. Both are decisions that change the nature of work for some, but neither assures a healthy business five years from now. Another impediment is lack of commitment. We want it and we want it now. We are no different from our customers in that regard. I encourage you to think deeply about your business: its present, and its future. Where do current markets seem to be headed? Which markets could disappear, or become disrupted by different thinking? The answer to those last two questions is all of them! Envision the possibilities, commit to leading your team with unbridled passion and energy to accomplish the organization’s mission consistent with those possibilities, and identify a first step worth taking. If you can’t provide unbridled passion and energy to the transformed next future of your company, the first step worth taking is to identify who can. Ensure that person lives and breathes your core values, cares about your mission, and can accept the baton from your outstretched hand to lead the transformation that must come. That’s not failure on your part; that, my friend, is success. Start now, and as always, Finish Strong. www.fulcrumcwi.com

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Today’s topic is “how fast should your company improve?” While the bottom-line answer is the same for most all manufacturers, it is worth first looking at the question by size of company. Small manufacturers face a challenge just getting orders in and out and all too often don’t focus on making significant improvements. That last part is why so many of them struggle to grow or to catch their breath. It’s the well-known conundrum of we’re too busy to figure out how to do it better. Mid-sized manufacturers, those generally between $100MM and $1B, have systems and processes in place to facilitate order processing, as well as non-value-adding functions like accounting, scheduling, and engineering change management. In this range the challenge is often complacency from a healthy balance sheet and confusing meaningful progress with starting each inning on 3rd base. Those over $1B in sales have the resources to improve quickly, but often insist that it’s much harder to turn a large ship than it is a small one. So while the reasoning is different, most manufacturers have excuses for why they improve at the rate they do and not faster. No company is too big, or too small, to fail. Amazon made Sears irrelevant. Uber made taxis a dying breed. Smart phones made pagers and landlines things of the past. Craft beers made Budweiser and Miller-Coors cry. The internet killed newspapers and the stupid business model they had relied upon. Here’s what each of you needs to do:

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People want what they want when they want it. That’s hardly a crazy concept; just one most manufacturers don’t believe applies to them. But it does. The JIT concept has been saying that for a long time, but again, many manufacturers didn’t believe their customers really wanted or needed that. Here’s the thing: No one cares how hard your business is, or why you find it so difficult to provide what is needed or wanted at the right time. The more widespread this expectation becomes, and it is already embedded in the life of most consumers, the less willing your customers are to live with a lower level of delivery performance from you. You think B2B is different from consumer goods? Your customers are consumers too. Customer expectations continue to evolve, and all of it is more in the vein of “I want what I want when I want it and where I want it and just exactly like I want it.” That is not going to reverse itself, hording toilet paper to the contrary. No manufacturer can afford to continue to make large lots with long lead-times with limited customization while expecting customers to pay for inventory impacted by an engineering change. You may not like it, but it is true, nonetheless. Here’s the question for you to ask, and then answer, for every aspect of your business: “What would it take to….?” The end of that question could be “to cut lead-times in half,” or “to cut lot sizes in half,” or “to implement customer requested changes in under an hour,” or anything else. User-controlled pull is one aspect of evolving, but reasonable. customer expectations. There are others. Like location-independence. Start asking the questions today, answer them, take action, and then ask them again. And of course, with each step in the process, Finish Strong.

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While the integral role of supply chain, which includes inventory decisions, has become more obvious to everyone, and college degrees in supply chain are increasing, many manufacturers still see it as a renamed purchasing department. Effective procurement is an important profession, but it does not define nor integrate inventory strategies into the company mission, core values, and strategy. If anywhere at all, that is likely the responsibility of planning or scheduling, or supply chain. But do any of them really do that for your business? Setting up parameters in your ERP system is not strategic inventory management. Nor is negotiating for volume discounts with suppliers. Both of those may be worth doing, but neither adds value in a vacuum. Most inventory decisions today are based more on supplier pricing, lead-times, and financial scenarios. A company that is currently highly profitable pays little attention to inventory, until sales and profits sag or a major outage occurs. Then, all the sudden, things change. It is important to gain meaningful understanding of the role of inventories in the business and operations strategies, and in accomplishing the mission consistent with core values. That is not a one-hour meeting. It is developing strategic thinking skills and line-of-sight connections from individual decisions to those elements. One good question to start with is: “how would we know if our inventory strategy supported our mission, core values and business and operations strategy?” Follow that with: “what changes to our inventory strategy could improve that interconnectedness?”

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Well, you’ve certainly had a chance to see just how strong your supply chain is, as well as how well your organization can plan and execute shifts in volume and mix. More importantly, you have likely seen weaknesses in the multi-level understanding of the supply chain, including towards the customer. As you’ve gained 12 months experience dealing with how this particular pandemic impacted your business, it’s important that you no longer let it absorb more attention than it needs to. Now is time to strategize your future, using what you’ve learned. I challenge you to answer these 4 questions:

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In a recent webinar, attendees responded to a poll by answering that uncertainty around Covid is one of the biggest concerns about 2021. It shouldn’t be! I started with responder poll results. I found the responses to this question: “My biggest concerns for 2021 are…” intriguing. The number one response was “continued uncertainty around Covid” while the 2nd most common response was “new regulations from Democratic administration.” Fifty percent chose the first, and 38% chose the latter. When I pursued the reasoning for ongoing Covid concerns, the dominant response was related to new variants. They each admitted that they knew how to handle scheduling and keeping people safe. Many had reduced product offerings and felt comfortable they could make smart rationalization decisions as conditions might change. They had confidence in science to modify vaccines quickly to address new variants. Yet that worry remained top of the list. When we can define our areas of uncertainty, and have recently experienced them, there is no excuse for not being ready if they reoccur. Here are 3 things every manufacturer should have at hand right now: · What are the key triggers that would lead to a change in strategy as of now? · Who is tracking them to wave the flag should it be needed? · Do you know what decisions you would make under various conditions? Plan for the predictable, be ready for the likely, and have a disaster recovery plan for all monsters that you find under the bed. If you already know them, they are more a difficult pet than a true monster.

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Since IBM’s Watson, many have hoped that Artificial Intelligence, or AI, would be able to rummage through a pile of data, pick out what is relevant, and create some new learning that matters. That hope has been proven futile, at least with our current thinking and capabilities. That doesn’t mean AI is useless; we have learned through trial and error that one has to have a clear understanding of the question he is asking AI to answer. The more narrowly we define the question, and the more relevant the data fed to AI, the better it will uncover an insight of value to you and your business. Perhaps it makes sense for you to begin by working to understand key contributors to variation in scrap of a particular type of metal that you process, or on certain equipment, or level of product design complexity. AI needs accurate and relevant data inputs over a period of time with sufficient detail to provide valid output. AI might discover that ambient temperature impacts scrap, but only if that is part of the data at a sufficient level of detail. The same is true for die temperature or pressure variations. AI will produce invalid or inadequate output if the input data doesn’t include potential contributors to the problem you want to solve. Once you have gained experience with AI, you will learn how to better examine broader and more lasting questions. AI is NOT a starting point of Industry 4.0, nor for most of you is it even early stage. Processes to provide clean data, some of which sensors can generate, but some of which will come from other systems or from people, must be mastered for the technology to help you solve big problems.

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I believe Operations should be responsible for customer retention and customer service. Marketing creates awareness, Sales brings in new customers, and it is operational performance -- or lack thereof -- that keeps them happy and wanting more. But regardless of where you locate the responsibility, it must be somewhere in your organization! Too many manufacturers have decided to outsource customer service to customers, and have given us lousy tools to use in servicing ourselves. Using automation as an internal cost cutting tool, companies gave us the tree-routing phone system. Call the number, figure out how to get to the person who can actually help you by punching different numbers, only to discover that that person can’t help you and you’re in the death loop of “no way forward.” Having frustrated most of us by that sad process, businesses added to it online “chat bots” to make us even crazier. I readily admit there are appropriate uses for bots. They can answer the most common and simple questions; things like store hours. For any conversation that has the least bit of nuance, they fail miserably. Either prioritize customer retention and service by doing it well, giving customers high quality tools if you insist we take care of ourselves, or admit that customers are not part of your business model. Now, wouldn't that be embarrassing? But for some, it would be true. Are you one of those? Many of you are.

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If your manufacturing business is not designed to ensure robust processes within speed, cost, quality, and agility parameters; if your business is not designed to endure for decades; if your business is not designed to thrive through ambiguity, then by definition, it is not designed to be profitable. That would seem to be a significant weakness, don’t you think? Design cannot be limited to products. Design your business for long term success, and then, as always, Finish Strong®️ Morgan@fulcrumcwi.com www.FulcrumCWI.com

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Manufacturers typically fall into three categories: those with proprietary products sold under their brand names, those who contract manufacture for others, and those who do both. Those who do both often provide private labeling for customers of products very similar to their current proprietary offerings. If you only offer what you’ve always sold to the same people you’ve always offered it to, you’ve got a short, narrow runway. Sadly, current conditions provide a perfect example of why considering your business the same as your product or current production / market mix is dangerous. The first rule is do NOT think of your business as what you currently do and for whom you currently do it. If you only advertise selling to the construction market and I’m not in it, I will never consider you a potential source for anything I need. Determine what value you provide that your current market treasures, and then which other markets equally treasure that value. Your challenge is to think much more broadly than the parts you currently sell. Think about the value you provide, to your customers, your suppliers, your employees, your investors and to your community. They all want you to succeed.

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An exception to our 6 minute limit, this 30 minute podcast addresses "what are current supply chain conditions internationally?" "What is the challenge with vaccine distribution?" and "what is China's role in the supply chain now?" Australian, Irish and North American experts discuss these topics from their "feet on the ground" perspective. The insights are timely and valuable. This was recorded initially for the Dublin Ireland radio program Interlinks Tertulia on Supply Chain. Patrick Daly, Evan Bulmer, David Ogilve and me, Becky Morgan, offer insights for your manufacturing business.

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Now that approved vaccines for Covid-19 exist, why is it so difficult to get them from the manufacturers into the hands of those who inject, and then into the arms of those who want to be vaccinated? For those of us with years in the supply chain profession, it is maddening. Yes, there are complexities to this challenge, but so what? Nothing that we shouldn’t have been able to handle. So why are we fumbling this so badly? While it is frustrating to watch our government, and many others around the world, fumble this badly, many manufacturers make equally preventable mistakes for the very same reasons. Poor communication, inability to deal with uncertainty, and substituting simplistic for simple. What about your manufacturing business seems complicated and gives you and your constituencies fits? I assure you, it can be simplified and made more robust and effective. You may not be in the life-or-death business, but you can certainly do better than our current vaccine-in-arms processes. See distinctions, see commonalities, give a clear “remember our why” so people can make better decisions, and don’t complexify what can be simple.

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About 5 years ago I published a podcast explaining the difference between push and pull scheduling and inventory management systems. Since then, several have argued that I didn’t give ERP and its push scheduling methodology its due. They insist that modern additions have included “electronic Kanban,” something they describe as a “pull” system, and that the software packages are much more responsive than before. Tightly wrapping the teets of a cow and calling it a bull doesn’t make it so. Electronic Kanban eliminates the critical visual element of a true Kanban system. If you are ever frustrated by the cashier’s inability to calculate your change without using the electronic system, you have lived at least one of the downsides of this thinking. Whether push or pull, or something else, the goal is to have the right stuff in the right quantity at the right place at the right time. AND TO SEE AND ADDRESS PROBLEMS THAT KEEP THAT FROM HAPPENING EXACTLY THAT WAY. You don’t have to quit using your ERP system for scheduling to strategically manage inventory and make important process improvements to better support your customer. But it helps.

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There are those who say problem solving looks backwards and innovation looks forward. I would argue that sometimes effective problem solving requires innovation and sometimes creating a different future can benefit from leveraging problem-solving methodologies. To problem solve the future, begin to focus on the gap between “what is happening” and “what could be happening” instead of on the traditional problem-solving question of “what should be happening.” What does your mission and vision implore you to do that you’re not currently accomplishing? Ask “why can’t we?” Ask “why haven’t we?” Ask “what’s slowing us down?” Ask “what opportunity are we not fully leveraging?” Look backwards to solve the most impactful problems, and forward to create the future. And of course, no matter which methodologies you use, always remember to Finish Strong®.

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When Sirius and XM satellite radio were first developed, the skeptics asked why anyone would ever pay for radio when they could already get it for free. The answer is the value placed on location independence. Network tv was surpassed by cable and then satellite, which has now been largely replaced by Netflix and other streaming services. What’s the attraction? Users want control over what they enjoy, as well as when and where. The days of traditional entertainment companies pushing their schedules on consumers are gone. That same “user controlled pull” trend is reflected in services like iTunes and Spotify that have changed the economic model of music. Consumers want to take their lives with them wherever they go without any effort. That same thought process is impacting business-to-business products and services. The third one is in fact bifurcated: Bitcoin is an example of devotion to efficient and completely untraceable secrecy while Facebook is an example of the desire to publicize everything.

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The words “thank you,” said with honest energy mean a lot to the person receiving them. This has been one heck of a year for most of us. Constant change outside our influence or control in many cases, along with the changes that happen in our personal lives, and of course the changes every manufacturer must be making regardless of external upheaval. “Thank you.” “Thank you for being you.” “I personally appreciate your efforts to come to work, to stay safe, and to keep the health and safety of others front and center.” If you mean it, say it. Even the person who had to miss work to help kids with remote learning, or who had to be quarantined, or who contracted Covid, put in extra effort for the benefit of your manufacturing business. Any who volunteered to take unpaid time or use paid time off when your business needed them to also contributed to your organization. As you prepare to move into 2021, the communication, shared sacrifice or gain, and working together under difficult circumstances of 2020 should not be forgotten. None will be less important then. My personal mission is to help as many involved with manufacturing as I possibly can. You are part of that. Thank you for turning to me for insights into your manufacturing business. I would like to believe this is a win-win. Stay safe, stay healthy and, as always, Finish Strong®

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Everyone believes “things will be different around here when I’m in charge!” But different isn’t necessarily better, now is it? Consider these characteristics of very strong leaders that I’ve observed in recent conversations: I have been interviewing founders and leaders of a wide variety of international manufacturers over the past several months as part of writing my new book. Each has been a wonderful exchange with amazing people. This group of leaders is hardly an unbiased sample, as I am intentionally reaching out to those I suspect have “enduring business” encoded in their DNA. Through those conversations I have noted a few dominant commonalities shared by all. It is easy to build passion, to try to be trustworthy, and to understand leadership’s role in responsibility. It is much more difficult for none of those to be situational. They must be the normal condition, unwavering. That is the hard part of leadership.

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One of the many challenges of being a smaller manufacturer is that customers expect just as much value from you as from anyone else. No small business passes are handed out. So how do you stay on top of the whirlwind surrounding you? Often the easiest and best ways to do that is to take advantage of every plant tour you can arrange. And sometimes offices have amazing things to share with you too. For example, one of the most powerful supply chain towers I’ve seen in execution is in an office building south of Nashville, Tennessee. Think of a supply chain tower as similar to the flight control tower at an airport. Rather than try to envision, plan and implement a tower on your own, go see one in action. Ask tons of questions about what has been learned, keys to effectiveness, and more.

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Your business has metrics that you invest in recording and considering. In normal times you know generally how to interpret them. You can quickly perceive how involved you need to get in addressing a potential problem or verifying what appears to be amazing success. These continue to be abnormal times worldwide. While we’ve gotten used to wearing masks, regular sanitizing, and maintaining distance, we are not yet as comfortable deciphering the uncertainties of how employees, suppliers and customers are dealing with today’s pandemic. Variations in order quantities previously may well have been normal; now you wonder if they indicate something much more specific. Looking not at trailing indicators like the financials in most KPIs, but at your leading indicator KPIs, it is worth examining the calculations, the timing, and the interpretations. Few things last forever, and that includes effective leading indicators to help you drive your business toward to the future. We’d rather identify needed changes in advance, which takes prioritization and intention. As Joe Lewis said, “everyone has a plan until they get hit.” The more you can foresee the jabs and uppercuts, the better you can dodge them. While lying on the mat is a bad time to find out this fighter is very different from the last one you faced.

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Loyalty must be very important to companies today. Hotels, airlines, rental cars all offer loyalty programs. So to do clothing and grocery stores. Even my hair styling shop has a loyalty program. The first few such programs in any given industry probably made a difference for repeat business. But no longer. I’ve never been convinced that bribery is the best route to gaining loyalty. There have to be better ways. Do you know from each group whose loyalty is most important to you? Do you know for sure if you have it from them? And importantly, do you understand which exact conditions have enticed any of those “chosen few” to be loyal to your organization? There is one trick that can attract and maintain loyalty. While everyone can do it, few do it well. That trick is to demonstrate honest caring and respect in every single interaction.

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For many years the phrase fit for purpose referred to whether or not a consumer product could adequately perform the function or functions for which it was purchased. That is a minimum standard for the phrase. To bring clarity to the purpose of your personal leadership may require answering this question: “what should be changed for the better as a result of my leadership?” Clearly this question presumes that leaders exist to create improved conditions, a case that should bring no argument. Every leader has to lift her head to ask, “how would I know if my leadership is fit for purpose?” and then “what do I need to change to ensure that metric has real meaning?” Is it okay to be adequate? Leaders at every level should be asked to examine these questions. Adequate is not the goal, nor is it our potential. Self-reflection is valuable. As always, start now and Finish Strong®

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What a few months ago we called crisis and swirling ambiguity we now call life. Spreading equipment apart, requiring facemasks inside, sanitizing every surface that hands touch – those are our reality; there is no reason to revert any of that back to prior standards. When Covid is under control, and it will be, we still have colds and other transferable health realities. If you haven’t already, it’s time to optimize production conditions within these parameters. Your business is different than it was a year ago, and likely different than it will be next year. But whether we’re in the third wave, the fourth or some other place of ambiguity, we can and will figure out how to continue the work towards our missions and visions. That is why they are so important to manufacturers.

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Each of us can use help from someone else, whether for advice, assurance, or challenging thinking. The key challenge is to identify lifelines that can actually help us when we need it in the way that we need it, and to know when we should use them. Wouldn’t the comfort of knowing you have a reliable experienced lifeline available to you make each day just a bit less stressful? Identify your lifeline. Develop a mutually beneficial relationship. And then call it whenever you need to. That may not be for months, or it may be twice tomorrow. But won’t it be nice knowing that incredible resource is there for you when you need it most?

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Manufacturers have numerous policies in place. Attendance, customer returns, payment terms, and more. The vast majority are because of a lack of trust in employees to make good decisions. As a customer, have you ever heard the words “that’s our policy” and felt comfortable that your best interest was given the respect it deserves? “That’s our policy” means you are a number, not a person. It means that regardless of the reasonableness or importance of your request, tough luck. Obviously, someone in the organization, if you go high enough, has the discretion to overrule the policy for a logical exception but only they are believed to have the brains and judgement to do so. Otherwise, discretion would be afforded the first person you talked with.

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A recent LinkedIn post of mine attracted responses from a wide variety of degreed professionals -- biologists, film, ethics, psychology. I asked what from their college education was most valuable today. None currently work in their degree area of specialization, but all could easily give great examples of how what they learned in college applied widely to their lives and professions. Most position descriptions list a relevant college degree as a requirement. Just exactly which college degree would NOT be relevant? The ability to think, learn, and apply wisely coupled with insatiable curiosity is more valuable than a specific degree.

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Would you describe your business culture as accountable? Many CEOs I talk with want more accountability in their organizations and are not quite sure how to achieve that. Here’s the trick: accountability, like ethics, cannot be situational. Start with this: · You cannot hold people accountable for performing miracles. · Holding the right people accountable is more important than “rounding up the usual suspects.” Process capability -- repeatable, reliable and predictable -- is a requirement.

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I saw today that two privately held manufacturers in the Greater Cleveland Ohio area are investing heavily in expanding their production footprint. I am excited for both of them because they are taking important steps in building a stronger future. The two businesses that are expanding enough to make the headlines have no less uncertainty than those who hunker down. Should you invest in your manufacturing business now? Consider these important questions before deciding either way.

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There are two primary reasons why any business would change: Fear, or Opportunity. Today, how can any manufacturing business in North America not see a multitude of both threats and opportunities? Absolutely nothing is static. The case for change surrounds us. It is not episodic. It is continuous and growing. It is not a management edict.

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The paucity of adequate contingency planning for our supply chains became apparent early in the COVID-19 emergency. Sensitivity analysis with contingencies is an active responsibility of supply chain management (SCM).

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It's easy to lose focus on the important things as we bounce from one shiny object to another. These four questions will ensure your team is productive, effective, and enjoying working for the organization.

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Despite the fact that none of us can predict the future, all of us know some of what is coming. And most of us can make pretty good guesses about other approaching influences.

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Leaders are supposed to make the tough decisions. And the important ones. But everyone else should be capable of making good decisions as well, the decisions appropriate to their role in the organization. Here's how to develop solid thinking when making decisions throughout your organization.

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It is very likely that your business model will have to change within a few short years. Here I share 3 quick examples to help you see what to look for. And then I offer you help.

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I recently signed a contract with Taylor & Francis to write a book. I quickly determined that the process of writing a book requires strategy and process, just like anything else we want to accomplish. My friend and colleague Alan Willett recently published Lead With Speed, a book designed to guide on budget, on time, high quality project results. That's what I want so I am leveraging some of Alan's insights.

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Managers who delay necessary actions often do so out of a distaste for conflict. I’ll bet you can think of 2 or 3 decisions you should be making right now, but you’re hesitant to do so. Examine the reason why you delay the action you know you should take. Lack of confidence? Fear of handling it incorrectly? Being 2nd guessed by your boss?

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Your business will be most successful when you consider it a culmination of a series of races, some run simultaneously, and each one that you and your team must finish strong. Sometimes finishing may mean pulling up lame and preparing for the next race, sometimes it may mean making a significant course correction, sometimes it may mean changing your relay partners. But you, and your business, can only win the race to your vision when in each effort you repeatedly Finish Strong.

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Business strategy, supply chain and operations strategy, mission, vision and core values are inextricably linked. If you didn't realize that before you should now. This podcast explains the one big lesson you should take from this crisis and what to do next.

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Most of us are sick and tired of Zoom meetings. The quick move from office to work-from-home changed the way we communicate and develop relationships. Sadly, we are using a valuable tool (Zoom for most of us) to replace meetings, instead of vastly improve them. Here are simple solutions to fix that!

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Globalization is one of those Pandora's Boxes that once opened, cannot be closed. And like Pandora's Box, hope remains despite the current experiences of pain and sorrow. To understand why globalization will continue to change, but is certainly not dead, one must only consider why it occurred in the first place.

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As we find ourselves fighting COVID, an economic crisis, limited travel, and protests on the street, The Boston Globe has announced a new hiring plan for 2021 interns. The actual document says “reframe our summer internship and training program to a diversity internship and training program in which all participants will be students or recent graduates of color.”

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My 89-year-old mother lives a 2-day drive away, and asked that I visit her. During COVID, the standard risk assessment had picked up another key variable. As with most decisions, there are options, variables, and the probabilities of occurrence and severity of any specific risk coming to fruition. In business and in life, it is rare that "throw caution to the wind" is a valid path forward. But also in both, "do nothing" is rarely a valid path forward. I decided to fly.

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The aftermath of COVID-19 and the associated socioeconomic impacts have thrown ice water on the dreams of most manufacturers. Markets are gone; competitors are arising from the most unexpected places; agility is a requirement. People will always eat food, yet the family farm is largely gone. Nothing lasts forever. So what steps are critical to escaping the quicksand of despair and creating a new future? Invest under 5 minutes here.

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To ingrain a new culture, and for many companies that is a culture of innovation, we know we must quit doing what we've always done or we'll get what we've always gotten. But that's a really scary thought. Isn't there another way?

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The front pages are shouting about broken supply chains as the world fights COVID-19. But are they broken? I suggest they are not; they are performing as designed. Strategy, risk assessment and financial analysis led us to this point. Few manufacturers carry extra everything on the small chance that their market will triple overnight. That decision means that when a tripling happens, the supply chain will not meet demand. The risk was deemed acceptable in the trade-off with financial investments. Be sure to understand the problem before rushing to solution.

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COVID-19 has impacted every business in some way. But helping your customers should still be reflected in your priorities.

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I wouldn't ask you to subscribe before you are comfortable with what you will be receiving. This trailer gives you that information.

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Success manifests itself when your tagline and brand promise exist in reality. When they are in fact what the customer experiences. Here I describe four organizational situations which impact the answer to that question, and what actions to take in each one.

Finish Strong® by Becky Morgan: Recent Episodes

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