Management Archives

HIT Solutions and Accessa Coatings Solutions Launch “The Consultancy”

Published on June 9, 2015

INDIANAPOLIS—The debut issue of “The Consultancy” is now available. The quarterly publication from HIT Solutions and Accessa Coatings Solutions features industry insights for people who count on coatings and specialty products to grow their businesses. The May-July 2015 issue includes: Wood Trends: 8 To Know Right Now Sales Are Up!: 4 Ways to Ensure Your Finishing Line Keeps Up 2 Advances in ...
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3 New industry agenda items for progressive metalworkers

Published on January 3, 2015

Here’s the on-ramp for 2015. There are 3 lanes, choose yours carefully. The HIT boys voted to bring back six of the Bastard’s more critical stories of the few past months. I’ve organized them into the 3 topics most likely to make your next general operations agenda. Six beefy short summaries follow; which themselves offer conversational takeaways. Click the link to the published story and hit th...
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Collaboration—critical, but attractive choices

Published on July 28, 2014

Call it what you like but relationships where collaboration thrive is a one-plus-one equals-three proposition. Task by task, you can achieve shared goals that are more meaningful within your company, more valuable to your customers and more strategic within the supply chain. Companies that want to grow seek the competitive advantage gained from collaborative efforts. They see the disruptive comple...
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From data to wisdom: charting your shop’s new path

Published on May 22, 2014

Before metalworking coolants are drawn, lubricants changed, adhesives applied or before any conversion coating solution is even dreamt about, data are being collected and managed somewhere along the food chain. I am no expert in data science but I do appreciate how much (and how fast) industry is being tantalized with the power of data. What’s relevant for any shop is that meaningful data manageme...
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25 Industrious news bits challenge YOU to connect the dots

Published on April 29, 2014

It’s not so much in the collecting of the dots as it is in the connecting a link to your business that matters. Just last week one of my favorites, the best selling business author, Seth Godin wrote “Connecting dots, solving the problem that hasn't been solved before, seeing the pattern before it is made obvious, is more essential than ever before. Why then, do we spend so much time collecting dot...
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Lip service, nosebleeds and value propositions

Published on March 24, 2014

Why do we find it so hard to walk the talk when it comes to the importance of human capital? No one argues the importance of people to our businesses. CEOs famously assert in their public relations efforts “people are our most important asset.” And in survey after survey we hear various leaders, for small and larger operations alike, recount the importance of good people and the relationship of hu...
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Quality Assurance? Call me crazy

Published on February 26, 2014

With some companies, recording customer phone calls is common practice. Under the guise of “quality improvement,” or Quality Assurance, you can expect a utility or an insurance company to offer you the fair and familiar warning. “This call might be monitored or recorded for quality assurance purposes ….” Something like that. I’m never really sure. All they said was it “might” be recorded. I must s...
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Lubrication and predictive maintenance

Published on January 28, 2014

A game to win Recently, billionaire and technology magnate, Bill Gates, subjected himself to an open game of chess with the newly crowned world champion (23-year-old Norwegian, Magnus Carlson). Save publicity, I’m not sure what the motive was because Bill was greased in exactly 1 minute, 20 seconds—after just nine moves of chess. Always the pragmatic, Gates told the audience during the first coupl...
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26 News bits, on trend

Published on December 20, 2013

Connect the dots. Adapt and prosper The pace of change will never be as slow as it is today. Business has become a race to connect the dots and make sense of a frenetic and fast moving world. Some of us will get lost in the mire. What do you do? Change happens so quickly we’re lucky if we even notice. Trends are obscure, noise is high and relevance is lost. In spite of these challenges, looking o...
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Five insights: leaning in and moving forward

Published on December 2, 2013

Ideas for a mind-set of success You used to be able to hold job security hostage with depth of experience and knowledge about your area of expertise. But of course these things are changing like everything else. Pin this one on the sheer speed of knowledge transfer (information age). It is rendering territorial (domain) knowledge far less valuable than it once was. Consider recent history. GM’s Ri...
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