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There are a lot of innovations in manufacturing getting press in recent years, but most of them relate to the improvement of productivity through process improvement – continuous improvement, supply chain management, culture and developing talent. But there is one radically innovative technology that is flying under the radar but is already poised to bring the sci-fi future into today’s factories.

Many small manufacturers get their start innovating around a single hit product but building on early success is often the hardest thing for a business to do. As Robert Glazer explains, “When you bet your company's future on just one product's explosive success, that doesn't automatically translate to long-term growth.”

The most successful manufacturers understand that resting on success can kill even the most popular businesses. A commitment to ongoing product development is the best way to ensure future relevancy. Developing additional products that align with a current area of expertise is crucial to building the brand and driving growth.

While logistics is typically forward-facing, focusing on the details and costs associated with getting items produced and delivered to end users, reverse logistics is concerned with the analysis of products going in the opposite direction.

Moving items backwards in the supply chain is how companies recoup value from products that are not useful in their current state or location, making reverse logistics just as important for effective supply chain management.

Manufacturing is a broad term that is thrown around loosely in the news and in the public domain. 

We've heard for decades about the "decline of manufacturing", but depending on how you measure it, it's not always clear there has been a decline. Frequently a decline of jobs in manufacturing is reported as implying a decline in production, but it is often a result of higher productivity that comes from more automation, improved supply chain logistics and systems. This itself can lead to a decline in employment. 

Reverse logistics is already a fast-growing element of manufacturing and distribution, but lacks the wider understanding it deserves. As a result, many businesses that are unwittingly executing on reverse logistics are missing an opportunity to make it a smooth, efficient and potentially profitable part of their business as they would expect from other process areas.

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While many companies are just catching their breath from recent holiday shipments, this New England DC is in the midst of ramping up for its annual busy season - Spring Golf!

Making New Year’s resolutions is something we all do, or joke about, or both. But regardless of which category you think you belong in, there’s no question that the New Year is a good time to re-examine how you do things and implement improvements in the workplace.  But where do you start? Every year, the list of “we should…” is a long one, but here are a few ideas that we think are a good place to start:

There is perhaps no more important part of your facility than your dock. It’s the start – and the end – of your day, your end-to-end process, and your accounting for your shipments! So making the processes that depend on your dock as smooth and efficient as possible gives everything in-between a better foundation for success.

Two years after the launch of our PowerSwap Nucleus^TM battery pack, we’ve seen a lot of success stories from our customers who’ve upgraded from their original Sealed Lead Acid (SLA) power packs. Although Lithium is something we are all using day-to-day in our personal lives in our cell phones, laptop and almost any other rechargeable device we have, we still get a lot of questions from our customers and readers about some of the more basic aspects of our power packs.

This year has been another banner year for all of us and our customers at Newcastle Systems, and with the short week we have for the Thanksgiving holiday, we wanted to take a moment to take stock and share some of what we are thankful for: