The single most important thing manufacturing leaders can do to engage their employees is to share the ‘why’ behind their daily work, says Kathleen Skarvan, CEO at New Prague, MN-based Electromed—Quality’s 2021 Plant of the Year.

Vaccines are being rolled out across the globe. The process is occurring faster in some areas than others, sure, but the fact that a vaccine is being distributed at all means that the worst is behind us and that everything will go back to normal. Right?

One of the most powerful images from nature has also become a powerful metaphor—the wave.

This past year has been ripe with massive disruptions. In fact, 94% of manufacturers surveyed say demand has significantly changed as a result of COVID-19. 

It can be said that 2020 has been a year of paradigm shifts in both our personal and professional lives. Friends, families, and co-workers have had to make big changes to stay connected; so too has the world of Quality Management System (QMS) audits.

Before January 2020, if you had asked an organization whether they had considered a pandemic as a risk to the organization, most would have answered no. 

Since the rise of additive manufacturing (AM) in the 2010s, many businesses across the world are now looking at this method of manufacturing to see where it can add benefits across the supply chain.

A merchant has a fox, a rabbit, and a head of lettuce and sits on the edge of a river. He has a small raft capable of carrying only himself and one item at a time, but without his supervision, the fox will eat the rabbit, and the rabbit will eat the lettuce. 

The U.S. manufacturing industry’s skilled labor shortage has been widely reported in the past decade. Millions of jobs became vacant due to the retirement of baby boomers and economic expansion.