You spend a great deal of time and money developing unique ideas, products and services. But the more people who know about your plans, the more you risk losing your secrets. To help protect vital intellectual property assets, it's important to require confidentiality agreements.
In the News
Thursday, October 22, 2020
Safety First" should be your corporate mantra. Focusing on the safety of your products as you make them can help avoid complaints and litigation, give you a marketing edge and raise the bar for other manufacturers, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Thursday, October 8, 2020
The term "lean manufacturing" means different things to different people. However, it can generally be agreed upon that lean manufacturing represents a management philosophy that emphasizes the elimination or reduction of waste in order to increase company profitability. In other words, doing more with less.
Thursday, September 24, 2020
Idle machines, production bottlenecks, equipment breakdowns, absent employees, new orders — these are just some factors that can disrupt production and eat into your company's profit.
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Let's say your company has slashed costs to the bone, boosted productivity and taken market share from competitors. But you still want to see some improvement. It's time to find your weakest link and turn it into a strength.
Thursday, August 27, 2020
Internal fraud drains approximately $4.5 trillion dollars annually from global businesses, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE). According to ACFE's latest Report to the Nations, the median internal fraud loss in manufacturing and production companies is $198,000.
Thursday, August 13, 2020
Employee performance objectives are sometimes based on output, but that can be the wrong reward system. It encourages quantity over quality and fosters a mindset of letting the little defects slide. That, in turn, can result in increasing customer rejections rates, which can hurt your company's reputation and send customers elsewhere.
Thursday, July 30, 2020
There are opportunity costs lurking in your electric bill. Performing an energy audit can find your plant's power hogs, which is the first step in slashing energy costs. If you haven't had an energy audit recently or haven't made energy reduction a plant-wide priority, chances are you're spending more for power than you need to.
Thursday, July 16, 2020
Wage and hour laws are some of the most frequently violated in the manufacturing and distribution industry. They can be hard to understand and there's a large discretionary component in their enforcement.
Thursday, July 2, 2020
One of the basic costs of doing business is insuring your workers against injury on the job. Escalating medical bills and other factors have caused Workers' Compensation insurance to increase dramatically. Explore options for reducing the cost of coverage with your insurance agents.