Manufacturing insights

Folks, It’s become sort of voguish to mark consumer product packaging with descriptions such as “Proudly Designed in Silicon Valley” and “Thoughtfully Assembled in the USA”. While the written words may be (technically) true, they’re no substitute for properly listing the Country of Origin (“COO”) on the product and/or package. Mess up on this and […]

Folks, My wife is a special education teacher for primary school kids, and her job is extraordinarily more difficult than anything you or I do. We were recently at one of her work social events and I overheard something about The Zone of Proximal Development. I learned that this is Lev Vygotsky’s theory of learning […]

Folks, When I was a young engineer, my first position was in the printed circuit board industry. [And thank you to the Emello family for giving me my start! Back then, I didn’t appreciate the enduring value of having to do every job in the plant. IThat job gave me an “Industrial PhD” that continues […]

Folks, John Doe, member of the ground breaking punk band X, released a superb solo album in 1995, “Kissing So Hard”. By that time, Mr. Doe had evolved into a country-punk artist and the sixth track “Kissing (So Hard)” proved that he was as much poet as musician. What does all this got to do […]

Folks, We were recently approached by an early stage medical device company. Without revealing any product details, they’ve designed a specialized bandage that’s used to control traumatic bleeding. The company is led by two physicians and a finance professional. The founders have hacked several bandages and asked for our assistance in making product models to […]

Folks, It was quite a year… Again. Twelve months ago, we were all looking forward to a return to some form of normalcy. At the start of the new year, normalcy appears to be whatever we’re all doing to keep pushing forward. Several trends in new product sourcing and manufacturing emerged or were reinforced last […]