More than 25 girls from local high schools Thursday got to see and experience a bit of what manufacturing is like, touring the Inteva plant and putting together an assembly line with a timed exercise. The Alabama Technology Network and Gadsden State Community College brought students in for Girls Employed […]

Manufacturing organizations make every effort to build the finest products available with unsurpassed quality, reliability, performance and value. This ultimately earns the customers’ trust and strengthens their loyalty to the brand. However, these four elements (unsurpassed quality, reliability, performance and value) can run considerably deeper. They must apply to the […]

As the name implies, a lean Six Sigma methodology combines the principles of lean manufacturing (lean) with those of Six Sigma. But why would anyone want to do this? What are the advantages and disadvantages of combining lean and Six Sigma methodologies? What Does Lean Contribute? Lean is a process […]

Great organizations are always changing. I don’t mean change for the sake of change, but planned, structured, progressive change that enables organizations to grow, evolve, survive and thrive in any type of marketplace. When discussing change, many questions arise, such as: “How can you leverage and manage change?” “How can […]

Things break. No matter what you do, there is always a chance that products will fail. The same holds true for bearings, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t prevent many of the issues that result in costly downtime. This article is a guide to the major factors that can […]

Motion Industries Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Genuine Parts Co., recently entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Miller Bearings Inc. Headquartered in Orlando, Florida, Miller Bearings is one of the leading independent distributors in the state for industrial maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) products, including bearings, power transmission […]

SKF recently introduced a new shaft alignment tool with enhanced measuring and reporting capabilities. Developed for use in industrial applications utilizing rotating machines, the TKSA 41 helps identify and correct shaft misalignment to improve equipment uptime and lower maintenance costs. The instrument has been designed to make shaft alignment easy, […]

QUESTION: We are starting discussions about trying to start a lean initiative and are in disagreement about what is the actual number of experts we would need before we embark on such a journey. Somebody told us that it should be about 1% of total plant workers; for example for […]

Manufacturing industries play a tug-of-war between the public and private sectors, each demanding the fastest, cheapest and highest quality products with the lowest environmental impact. Cap-and-trade emissions policies, paired with limited natural resources, have changed the face of modern industry. As a result, lean companies, particularly those with established 5-S […]

If you’ve ever sat in traffic having simultaneous thoughts that “all of these vehicle emissions are bad for the environment,” and “I wish I lived closer to work,” then you already have a sense of how mutual “lean and green” thinking works. The traditional way of thinking goes that “green” […]