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Showing posts with the label Knowlege Workers

Your Tool Crib Is Telling You Something: Cycle Counts as an Early Warning

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A year ago, I wrote about setting up cycle counting for supply items in the Plex ERP tool crib. We covered why counting a little throughout the year works better than doing one large annual count, how to set up counts in Plex, and the basics of ABC classification and assigning ownership. That post focused on how to count . This one is about what the count results can teach you. Listen to this post When the Counts Start Drifting You set up the cycle types, define the parameters, and get Plex Mobile scanning. Counts happen on schedule—and then the same variances keep appearing. A few carbide inserts are short. A drill index is over. The differences aren’t huge, but they keep coming back. The first instinct may be to count more often. But if the same items repeatedly drift in the same direction, counting more frequently probably won’t fix the caus...
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Rescuing Tribal Knowledge: How Connected Workers are Future-Proofing the Shop Floor

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Walk into any manufacturing shop floor, and you’ll see incredible feats of engineering. Automated arms moving with millimeter precision, CNC machines whirring, and dashboards tracking OEE in real-time. But look closer at the human element, and you’ll often find a different story: a veteran operator tapping a gauge just right to fix a pressure spike, a scribbled note taped to a control panel, or a crucial troubleshooting step trapped entirely inside someone’s head. In manufacturing, the greatest asset isn't the machinery—it’s the collective intelligence of the people running it. Yet, as a generation of highly skilled workers prepares for retirement, factories face a quiet crisis: the tribal knowledge drain. The Cost of Silent Knowledge When a seasoned technician retires, their decades of problem-solving don't automatically get transferred to the next hire. They walk out the door. For the incoming digital-native workforce, traditional training methods—like thick, dusty paper bind...
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