The idea of Industry 4.0 represents the fourth revolution in manufacturing.

 

Industrial Revolution Phases Overview:

1.0: Mechanization through water and steam power

2.0: Mass production, assembly lines and electricity

3.0: Introduction to computers and automation

4.0: Enhance 3.0 phase with smart and autonomous systems fueled by data and machine learning

We’ve been talking about conversations in business, now I want to share some ideas about some of the most important conversations you’ll ever have in life.

The conversations you have with your children.

Axtell believes the key to having great relationships—whether in the workplace or at home—is paying attention to your conversations.

In this post, I am going to share a summary of Paul Axtell’s book, “10 Powerful Things to Say to Your Kids.”

In this episode of Leading the Factory Forward, I’ll share 6 ideas that will improve the effectiveness of your meetings at work.

Many times after a meeting, you’re thinking…

“Did that go as planned?”

“Did I share everything that needed to be said?”

“Were other members of the meeting happy with the outcome?”

Meetings, love them or hate them are part of corporate America and as a leader in the industry, facilitating effective meetings is an imperative skill you must possess.

“Hey, can I talk to you privately for a sec?”

Immediately, you feel that pit in your stomach…

Your palms begin to sweat…

You begin thinking the worst…

“Oh no? What happen? What did I do?”

No one likes the feeling of having a difficult conversation.

Conversations... what does it mean to have a good conversation?

How many conversations would you say you have in a day, week, month?

Hundreds? Thousands?

The conversations you have really do matter. They’re the backbone for persuasion, relationships and negotiations.

What you say (and how you say it) really does matter at home and in the workplace.

Moving from the competencies focused on you to the competencies focused on others. This is where the hard work and magic begins to happen.

Today on Leading the Factory Forward, we discuss the next four competencies around Emotional Intelligence.

Coach and Mentor

Conflict Management

Teamwork

Inspirational Leadership

As executive or business leaders you have the ability to shift from having an impact on yourself to impacting others in the workplace.

Today on Leading the Factory Forward, we’ll be discussing the next 4 competencies regarding emotional intelligence.

Positive Outlook

Empathy

Organizational Awareness

Influence

As we move through each episode, we’re beginning to shift from competencies focused on you to competencies focused on interactions with others.

This is where putting in the hard work pays off. There’s a sense of magic that happens at this stage of Emotional Intelligence.

In manufacturing, technical skills are always going to be important, but at a certain point, if you’re looking to level up, it's actually how well you work with people or employees that will really make a difference.

In today’s episode, we’re going to cover four out of the 12 competencies on emotional intelligence:

Emotional self-awareness

Emotional balance/ self-control 

Adaptability

Achievement orientation

In this post, I am going to introduce the concepts and some of my thinking around Emotional Intelligence.

Emotional intelligence sounds like a very daunting word, but in the end, as we look through these skills, it's really common sense. It simply hasn't been common practice in our work and in the world. 

We tend to get consumed by an unending stream of activity and busyness.

Our topic for today is three ideas for finding talent to grow your manufacturing business.

The 3 ideas are:

How do you go about defining what talent you need?

How can you prepare to train new talent?

Some ideas on where to start looking for new talent.

Why is this important? In some sense, it's pretty obvious.

We have a good economy right now and unemployment is low. Most leaders and managers are finding it difficult to attract employees — let alone the right ones.