Basic Education Lost in K-12 and Colleges and Universities The gaps in K-12 and higher education have become glaringly apparent to parents and families and businesses over the past 10 – 15 years. “At the K-12 level, the elementary and high school level, we have seen completely flat academic outcomes [...]
Frank Lee The New York Times Frank Lee obituary May 28, 1983. “Frank H. Lee, professor emeritus of engineering graphics at Columbia University and the originator of a program for a combined liberal arts and engineering education. He is credited with the creation and successful development in 1951 at Columbia [...]
“An Air Force investigation of a fatal fighter jet crash in 2020 quietly discovered that key components of the pilot’s ejection seat may have been counterfeit, Air Force Times has learned.” This story reminds us of the importance of quality. What were the lead time and cost drivers that allowed [...]
By Debra Mervyn, The Mervyn Group and Paul Menig BusinessAccelerants.com Survive and Thrive as a Small Electronics Manufacturer in America in 2021 In the wake of 2020, Ascentron, like many Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) companies, is reassessing its business strategy. In the face of changing and fluctuating markets, government regulations, [...]
In February 2020, truckers circled round the capital in protest over governor Kate Brown and the Oregon state legislature’s new taxes: gross receipt’s tax, carbon tax, payroll tax and much more. You name it a tax was levied on it. Oregonians had no idea what was about to befall us in [...]
In previous Reshoring articles, we introduced the power of value stream cost accounting to improve performance, profitability and teamwork. Our case example promised a second article on demystifying cost accounting. I struggled with this commitment due to the events of the past few weeks. As of November 3, [...]
Case Study: A $400 million OEM designing, and manufacturing telecommunications and medical equipment outsourced manufacturing to an Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) company in Mexico. Issues with quality (>10% rejects), on-time delivery (~80%), requirements to maintain excessive finished goods inventory, and the increasing costs associated with managing the EMS contractor (up to [...]
Material originally presented in OMEP Webinar, June 23, 2020. By- Debra Mervyn- The Mervyn Group In-Shoring is defined as using USA based manufacturers and suppliers for the outsourced activities. Near-Shoring (or Regionalization) is the use of countries located on a continent or region for the outsourced activities. Reshoring is bringing back [...]
As described in Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and Reshoring companies were forced to or jumped on the bandwagon to move manufacturing offshore, in part, to lower cost of products or services. Accurate cost accounting started to expose hidden costs chipping away at margins. These hidden costs were not hidden but dumped in [...]
Reading- History of Off Shoring The origins of Offshoring to a U.S.A. enemy can be traced to World War II when Chiang Kai-shek was displaced by Mao, thanks to the United States, but that is another story, Link. Communism ensued and U.S. China problems began at our own hands. History is [...]