It's been four years since I started this blog with a simple but powerful idea: there's massive potential for improvement in the operations of small and medium-sized factories. Today, I want to revisit this topic, especially in light of the incredible technological developments we've seen globally—yet, somewhat ironically, many of our factories still rely heavily on good old spreadsheets for their daily operations.

Today, I'd like to chat about something that's been on my mind since I first stepped into the manufacturing world. Back then, the first thing I did was to make sure that every order leaving the factory was photographed. It wasn't just about taking pictures though. We developed a quality checklist to match customer requirements with what was actually being delivered. Photos were our proof, our records.

If you've ever been on the customer side of waiting days for a quote on standard spare parts, you know how frustrating it can be. It seems counterintuitive, right? In an age where almost everything is instant, why do we still face delays in such straightforward processes? Well, today I want to unpack this issue and explore some solutions that can help businesses speed up their response times and keep customers happy.

I want to share a little story about my unexpected journey into the world of selection software, specifically the kind used in factories. It all started back in 2015. I was working in the quality department, far removed from anything related to sales or software development. My company had just pivoted to creating specialized machines for data centers, and my curiosity sparked.

Today, I want to share some buzz-worthy news that could revolutionize our field. Imagine a material that could make electric motors, batteries and electronics much cheaper. It might finally get us the flying cars that Peter Thiel wanted. Sounds good? It's called LK-99 and might become the material of our lifetime.

Selling is an art that is often misunderstood and rarely taught. Schools across the world dedicate hours to mathematics, history, and science, yet the art of selling, a crucial life skill, is often ignored. This isn't just about being a good salesperson in the traditional sense, but it's a skill that is applicable in every facet of our lives. Last week I had a training session with some colleagues and wanted to share some of the key takeaways.

In about six months time, lots of students will need to make one of the first most important decisions in their life: what career to study. The ones finishing high-school have kind of decided which path to choose (STEM, arts, economics, etc.) but the final choice will be taken in the middle of the year.
This is the case of my little cousin, who is stressed for not having a clear picture on what to do next year.

I'm writing this post to share my thoughts about the latest advancements from OpenAI. Specifically, I want to talk about their new flagship they've just released. I remember when I first got access to former OpenAI's API. I was super excited and all...but I didn't use it...I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous now. I had this incredible tool at my fingertips and I just let it sit there. History of my life tbh.

In my opinion, factory tours are hands down the best way to create trust between you and your customers. Let's think it for a second: there are already millions of factories in the world...the fact that your customers have decided to buy from you it's a huge achievement on its own. They have choosen you instead of all your competitors, so congratulations! Now it's your turn to impress them, and a good way of doing so it's by inviting them to your factory.

One of the most common mistakes everyone makes when investing money in the market is not having a solid plan for each possible scenario, bullish or bearish. We've all seen the huge uptrend after the COVID crash on March 2020, but markets are efficient and can correct at any point in time.
For that reason, best we can do is having a journal stating how to trade the market in any given condition.

In today's fast-paced business world, it's surprising how many factories still operate without any form of statistical forecasting. Instead of leveraging advanced techniques to predict future demand, many purchasing departments rely on rudimentary methods that barely scratch the surface. This approach not only limits growth but also misses out on significant opportunities for profitability and efficiency.

Main advantage of being in a big company is having business intelligence (BI) tools to extract information about your system. Typically data is uploaded to the ERP system, and then is automatically imported to the BI tool on a daily basis.
Unfortunately, vast majority of companies don't use these data for more than getting some sales figures. In fact, you can do much more than that, especially in operations side.

Although one could get statistics from a certain component based on previous years consumption, it's not enough to fully understand customer needs. We need to link specific components to sales orders, and study the interaction between these two.
All these data is already uploaded to ERP factory systems, since it's a mandatory step for releasing manufacturing orders, but we need to perform some analysis to get valuable insights from it.

Sales people try to make the buying process as easy as possible for the customer. If price and delivery are good, purchase order is half-way guaranteed.
Lead time of the product is key, so placing purchase orders as early as possible for the right components is critical. In order to do so, technical department must upload the units to the system, and here is where the ball stops rolling.

I wanted to take a moment to share some personal reflections and experiences from the past couple of years, particularly the rollercoaster that was 2020. It's been a year that none of us will ever forget, marked by a global pandemic that has reshaped our lives in ways we never imagined.

We all have meetings. Some of them are useful, others can be solved with an email, and others just last too long. In business, time is money, and meetings take a huge part of the working labor. Instead of wasting precious hours in pointless reunions, workers could be doing something more productive.
In order to not waste so much time, one efficient way to assign and track tasks between the employees is by using specific productivity tools.

We are all living difficult times right now, no matter where you are based. There is too much uncertainty about work and life in general, and it doesn't seem to change in a short period of time. Everyone is afraid of losing their job, but there are some sectors that keep their operation up and running even when the economy is collapsing.
Factories are one of those strong fields where lack of work might not be a problem - or at least not as much as other sectors.

Workers need documentation. A lot. That's a fact. Problem is, keeping this documentation updated is way too time-consuming and a waste of papers. Since tablets prices have decreased quite a lot in the last few years, one possibility is having all this documentation centralized, controlled and updated in real-time for all the workers.
Every factory can benefit from these digital documents and rest assured that there won't be any quality flaw nor customer's claims.

There is no doubt Microsoft Excel is one the most popular packages out there. Easy to use and robust. However, sometimes just having numbers and text can be overwhelming.
Visual management is key to stay productive, and having everything organized in one place helps pretty much on this task. There is a new type of database that can help you in several areas of your company, from managing the inventory at your warehouse to keeping track of your competitors at sales.

Quality should be one of the top priorities in any factory. No doubt everyone wants to have the best product that fits the client's requirements but, how easy is to secure the customer acceptance criteria? How can data be retrieved and digitalized in a factory floor full of papers? In a nutshell, how robust are these proofs in the event of a customer claim?
In this post you will find out how to get meaningful data out of your factory, both for the client's point of view and internal continuous improvement.

When sales people are killing it, production might turn into a kind of a mess. Orders get more difficult to manage as missing material is the new standard, change management becomes a nightmare and factory buffers are just gone. Even remembering the location of the finished products can be really challenging.
Have you ever wanted to have full control of the work at the factory floor in these extreme situations? Discover how workers are tracking daily operations with a simple collaborative tool.