A fully populated CMMS with complete bills of materials (BOM) and spare parts inventory records for all assets is a beautiful thing. If it is complete with transaction records assigning labor and material cost to assets and linking everything to production loss records and maintenance work instructions, life is very...

Just when you had resigned yourself to never having a land speeder like Luke Skywalker's, here come some guys using a DVD drive to make you an energy source. They were laser scribing graphene on a sheet of plastic painted with a graphite solution when one of them realized that...

Speaking to manufacturing management teams back in the old millennium, I used to get a laugh by asking four questions:

After reading a few of my blogs last week, my long-suffering bride Trish came away with a question. "You mostly blog," she asked, "about how factories ought to run, rather than the way they actually do, don't you?"

One of the few advantages of being old is that you get to see great ideas come back into fashion. They often return with new names or even whole new sets of buzzwords, but the time-honored idea is still in there, working its magic.

Those of us who have designed a lot of manufacturing cells are often frustrated by operations that just don't want to live in a cell. Heat treatment, cleaning, painting, plating, and a few more exotic operations do best in dedicated areas.

This year, in my capacity as grandfather to a posse of 12, I spent a fair amount of holiday time reading aloud about Grinches and reindeer and lights in the sky. Being a bit of a Grinch, myself, I also spent time getting caught up on material from the Plant...

There's a wonderful atmosphere in a big plant when not much equipment is running. You can hear yourself think. You can savor the smells and sounds of the plant, itself. The place feels almost alive, even when it's resting.

The job of editing for a business to business publication doesn't come with a huge array of perks, but there is one great one. We enjoy pretty free run of the trade show and education resources available to plant people.

Purchasing and introducing new technology isn't easy. It often requires business case development that many technical people haven't learned to do. Teamwork between technical and financial people is usually needed to identify and clear the path, but the value of good ideas can be demonstrated.