Practical Manufacturing Insight
We write about data quality, OEE, downtime analysis, and the gap between what a dashboard shows and what happened on the floor.
All Articles
When Your Best Operator Retires: Keeping Tribal Knowledge in the Plant
Every plant has a station that runs well because of one person. How to find where knowledge is concentrated, capture it where the work happens, and cross-train before it walks out the door.
Three Industry 4.0 Projects You Can Start Today
Three projects a plant can start this month: paperless quality checks, attendance and skills tracking, and efficiency and production reporting. Each one targets a clear problem and pays back quickly.
A Practical Manufacturing Analytics Roadmap for the AI Era
The five stages of manufacturing analytics, from data collection to prescriptive recommendations, and what newer AI tools do and don't change about the order you build them in.
How Are You Deciding Where Your Team's Time Is Spent?
Where the team spends its week often comes down to instinct, habit, or whoever spoke loudest at the morning meeting. What changes when downtime and scrap data sit behind those decisions.
Stress-Free Quality Audits Start with Paperless Quality
When quality records live in binders, audit prep means searching them. What a digital check system does differently, what it needs to include, and what auditors ask to see.
A Story from the Visual Inspection Station
Paper tally sheets, repair tags and racks full of defective parts, and how a serial number scan at the inspection station replaces them.
What Can Manufacturing Learn from Retail Analytics?
What retail focus groups, surveys and customer histories can teach a plant about collecting shop floor data, plus five steps for building data collection around one clear question.
On Paper I Look Very Good at Golf. My OEE Looks the Same Way.
If your OEE is above 85% and targets are always beaten — are you world class, or are you taking mulligans?
How a Tier 1 Supplier Improved FTT by 11 Points and OEE by 22 Points
A water pump manufacturer moved its paper quality checks into 10in6 Scheduled Quality Checks. Six months later, first-time-through was up 11 points and OEE up 22.
Vuteq Canada: Always Driving for Improvement
Two years of 10in6, two back-to-back corporate Kaizen awards. Vuteq Canada's VP shares what made the difference.
Toyota Boshoku: "Their Knowledge Is Far Better Than Any Company I've Used"
The IT Manager at Toyota Boshoku Mississippi on what 24/7 support looks like from the customer's side.
OEE the Right Way: Measuring It Honestly
Soft ideal cycle times, breakdowns relabelled as planned downtime, and scrap entered at shift end all inflate OEE. How to measure it so the number points at your losses.
Why Your Downtime Reason Codes Are Lying to You
Operators pick the fastest reason code, not the most accurate one. How to build a reason code list where the quick pick is the right one, and how to spot downtime data you can't trust.
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