Good manufacturing practices are practices that manufacturers that produce food, beverages, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices must follow. Good manufacturing practices, or GMP, are sometimes also known as current good manufacturing practices, or cGMP. The point of putting the “c” to represent current is to remind manufacturers that they must stay up to date in their efforts, using the latest systems and technologies to ensure good manufacturing practices.

In this article, we’ll introduce you to the GMP/cGMP, including the regulatory agencies that enforce them in the United States, and we’ll link you to some additional resources where you can learn more.

If you’d like help with cGMP training or Quality training at your manufacturing facility, contact us.

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This year (2020) the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) updated the National Electrical Code, also known as NEC and NFPA 70. The NFPA reviews and updates the NEC on a regular basis (the last update was in 2017) in order to keep up with changing technology and safety issues. This new update includes a number of changes, including the most recent requirements for electrical wiring, overcurrent protection, equipment installation, and more.

We’ve released a series of new and/or updated online courses to align with the 2020 NEC changes and will be releasing a second round of online training courses for NEC shortly after that.

In this article, we’ll give you a brief overview of some of the changes to the National Electrical Code. Be sure to contact us if you need help with training on this important topic.

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The Project Management Institute, or PMI, publishes a book called A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, which is often known as the PMBOK, PMBOK Guide, or simply The Guide.

In this article, we’ll share some key tips you should know about the PMBOK if you’re a project manager or thinking of becoming a project manager, if you’re thinking of buying the PMBOK, and/or if you’re thinking of sitting for the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification or other certifications.

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One of the hallmarks of lean manufacturing is visual management. In our continuing series of articles on lean manufacturing, which supplement our online training courses on continuous improvement and lean manufacturing, we’ll introduce you to the basic concepts of visual management in this article.

We hope you find this article helpful in terms of understanding visual management better but also in terms of implementing your own lean and continuous improvement efforts at your workplace. Let us know if you need some help with training solutions at your work and until then, read on below and have a great day.

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Reactive maintenance is a major drain on efficiency, running time, and costs. You probably know this, but what are you doing to avoid it?

And, how much reactive maintenance are you actually performing as opposed to companies that are in the top-quartile for performing the least reactive maintenance?

By moving to more preventive, predictive, and conditions-based maintenance, you can

For example, in 2010 the US Department of Energy claimed that returns of conditions-based maintenance included 10x return on investment; 25-35% reduction in maintenance costs; 70-75% reduction in breakdowns; 35-45% reduction in downtime; and a 20-25% increase in production. Sounds pretty good, no? Or how about this Jones Lang LaSalle report showing that not only does an investment in preventive maintenance pay for itself, but that in fact it results in an average 545% return on investment (wow!).

How much reactive maintenance should you be performing? Our friends at the University of Tennessee’s Reliability & Maintainability Center (RMC) suggest 10%, plus or mine 5% either way. That amount of reactive maintenance would put your organization in what they refer to as the “top quartile” when it comes to reactive maintenance activity. Likewise, they recommend your organization’s preventive maintenance rate be about 70% if you want to hit that same top quartile.

In this article, we’ll give you a convincing list of just SOME of the reasons why your organization should reduce the amount of reactive maintenance you perform (and yes, we think our maintenance training solutions may help you reach this goal of reduced reactive maintenance).

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A critical element of lean manufacturing is listening to, understanding, acting on, and aligning your actions with the voice of the customer.

This makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. Remind yourself what lean manufacturing is all about–it’s about removing waste so you can create the most value as measured by what the customer is willing to pay for, right?

But you can’t create the most value for your customer if you’re not aware of the true voice of the customer, right?

Read on to learn more.

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Lean manufacturing is at root about increasing the value an organization provides to its customers and decreasing waste. Lean organizations do this by creating a process of continuous improvement that places an emphasis on organizational learning.

We’ll explain more in this article on  these foundational concepts of lean manufacturing.

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