Charles Kantz, a supply chain consultant, posted the following questions on LinkedIn today: Are DC/Whses going to disappear? If there is so much effort put into planning and improving lead times while reducing inventory along with planning out the supply chain, why is there a need for warehouse and DC’s here in the US? Shouldn’t […]

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu This past weekend I took the freshly updated Youth […]

I came across this article by Bob Sutton about abusive behavior by business leaders just the other day, and it inspired me: what if, instead of the apparent free rein they have to behave any way they please, we expected the same of our corporate executives as we expect of Boy Scouts? For some reason, […]

After watching the movie A Bridge Too Far again recently, my thoughts turned once more to one of my favorite historians – the man who wrote the book on which the movie is based, Cornelius Ryan. Poking around on the Internet, I was pleased to discover a book of his I’d never read: One Minute […]

Last week, in the Webelos Den I lead, we learned about heroism. One part of the program was to discuss a Scout hero. I figured there had to be some good examples among Eagle Scouts. Sure enough, Bing.com led me to the story of Marine Sergeant (later Colonel) Mitchell Paige, who won the Congressional Medal […]

Three years ago, LinkedIn invited articles featuring the author’s best advice (hence the hashtag). I was just re-reading the one I published there (on 2/15/15), and decided to re-publish it here on my blog, with an update, because it’s even better advice today in my opinion. Here’s my #BestAdvice: Several years ago I had the […]

The best-running manufacturing plant I ever worked in (and I’ve worked in a lot of ‘em) used no Continuous Improvement (CI) methodologies. No Lean, no Six Sigma, no TPM, no TPS, no TQS, none of it (at least none in any programmatic way – though I don’t think you can run a manufacturing plant without […]

“Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!” – Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol Before we get too far down the road past the recent wonderful Christmas […]

Yesterday I read this wonderful recap of the 1967 “Ice Bowl” game in Green Bay, in which the Packers beat the Cowboys with a touchdown in the closing moments of an NFL Championship Game played in temperatures even colder than we’ve had this week. This passage, a remembrance by Packers right guard Jerry Kramer, really […]

The chattering classes are all atwitter over the decline in US manufacturing jobs. And rightly so; the hollowing out of our manufacturing sector is a social problem, a fiscal problem, and even a national security problem. Now, there are a whole lot of factors that have contributed to the decline in US manufacturing employment, so […]