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Modern Manufacturing
Plex Manufacturing Blog
Overcoming Challenges to Becoming a Quality Leader
"Quality is everyone's responsibility."This decades-old quote from quality researcher and educator W. Edwards Deming has stood the test of time for good reason: essential to both products and processes, quality can be influenced by every role up and down the manufacturing process. Everyone shares the burden of maintaining and improving quality — and therefore can also share in the success of…
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Will It Go Round in Circles?
Many have heard the 1972 song by Billy Preston called Will It Go Round in Circles?It was a catchy tune, but if you listen to the words, you realize the singer had no idea if his suggestions would work or “go round in circles.”Others have wondered the same thing about a more recent trend called the circular economy. Since its conception, most have considered the concept aspirational rather than…
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Improve Your Improvements by Digitizing Processes
In traditional manufacturing, continuous improvement was a misnomer. It wasn't that practitioners were insincere or wrong. But manual processes, data acquisition, and analysis, created hard limits to what the most zealous continuous improvement methodologies could achieve....
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Success with Suppliers: How to Ensure Your Partner & Supplier Network Meets Your Quality Standards
In most industries, product quality is a primary factor determining whether businesses are successful or not. Of course, there are many things that impact product quality, from quality leadership to employee talent to company culture. All of those apply in the manufacturing sector, but manufacturers also depend heavily on their partner and supplier networks to build good products that their…
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Automotive Manufacturing Trends for the Balance of the Decade
Each year brings new predictions of the future. These predictions include what to expect, what will happen, and which technologies will power the expectations.While these predictions are always interesting to consider, they should be kept in the context of reality to have value for automotive manufacturers. With a rapidly evolving landscape, this industry is producers are under intense pressure…
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Digital Building Blocks for Leadership
Manufacturers inevitably begin with operational efficiency, cost reduction, and process improvement during the foundational stages of a digital journey. Beyond that, the tendency is to retain vestiges of traditional thinking that “wall off” other functional areas as separate from the production focus....
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Great Leadership Builds Great Culture. Great Culture Creates Great Products.
In every business – no matter the industry – quality is a two-way street. The way a company is managed directly impacts the products and services they develop. Every business wants to deliver a quality product. But an organization can only deliver that great product if executives are great at managing and leading the company. Culture, in particular, is an essential part of this equation. To…
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When Customers Come Knocking: The Link Between Demand and Execution
There's an old business phrase that says that the customer is always right. While many companies have tied themselves into knots trying to service ever-changing consumer tastes, there is one area they often neglect to address in their efforts.What if the message customers send points to your system more than your product? And what if the things they ask for require you to abandon a manual system…
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Digital Building Blocks for Operational Efficiency
As Industry 4.0 continues to shape industries across the globe, one of the most significant beneficiaries of the power of these technologies is operational efficiency within manufacturing.This is particularly true with the rise of the role of robots in manufacturing industries and the supply chain....
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Contents May Settle, But You Don't Have To
Everyone has experienced the disappointment of opening a bag of chips or crackers and looking inside only to see half-empty space. Often, the product contains the cryptic warning "Caution: Contents May Have Settled."Visually, this isn't very pleasant, but everyone knows the content volume is the same. It's just the space between the products affected by the journey from factory to retail shelf.…
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