How Mueller Water Reduced Injuries by 20% and Scrap by 60% with Dozuki

Mueller Water is a leading manufacturer of water and gas distribution products used by municipalities, utilities, and contractors. With more than 3,500 employees and a legacy...

How Dozuki Improves Learning & Development

Manufacturers are under pressure. Veteran employees are retiring fast. New hires arrive daily. Turnover remains high. Meanwhile, production tasks are more complex than ever.

How Airstream Reduced Turnover by 83% with Dozuki

By 2017, Airstream was experiencing record-breaking demand. Weekly production targets hit 120 trailers, and the company quickly outgrew its existing footprint. Teams were...

Closing the Skills Gap Before It Costs You

Manufacturers are under pressure. Veteran employees are retiring fast. New hires arrive daily. Meanwhile, production tasks are more complex than ever. Keeping up with...

The New Blueprint for Manufacturing Skills Development

Manufacturing leaders face a stark truth: without skilled workers, even the most advanced equipment or optimized workflows fall flat. With 27% of the manufacturing workforce

A Paradigm Shift in Quality

"Do not create defects, do not pass defects and do not accept defects." This philosophy is critical for manufacturing digital transformation.In this episode, we sit down...

Skillsets + Mindsets = Frontline Employee Engagement

"I need to know I'm spending my time solving problems, not finding them."Wise words from Jonathan Keiper at MPP Innovation, who talks about the significance of engaging the...

I Got 99 Problems, But Skills Ain’t One

How many of your frontline manufacturing workers are engaged, productive, and feel a sense of ownership in their process? Manufacturing Digital recently reported that...

Knowledge vs. Skills: Why Manufacturers Must Train For Both

Two terms manufacturing leaders use a lot are knowledge and skills. You’ve probably read material and even participated in training programs around topics like tribal...

Driving Fear Off The Factory Floor

Did you know there are five fears that all human beings share? Below is the official list, according to the widely cited psychological research outlined in Karl Albrecht’s...

What Manufacturing Leaders Need to Know About Workforce Empowerment

Empowered workers require enlightened leaders. Organizations can either act as an incentive (or an obstruction!) to the expression of a frontline worker's sense of ownership.

Frontline Of The Future, Part 4

According to recent numbers from the Bureau of Labor, there are 12,559,000 manufacturing employees in the country. That’s eight percent of our nation’s employment. And yet,...

Manufacturing Doesn’t Have A Hiring Problem, It Has A Retention Problem

Consider two pieces of recent industry data: 75% of the workforce will be millennials by 2025. (Forbes) Thousands of experienced workers are retiring daily. The Silver Tsunami

How to Deliver People Centric Manufacturing Training

“The supervisor is the customer of the training.” When Vitalii Potapenko of Solar Plastics first shared these words with us, we knew their company was doing something special...

A New Model For Manufacturing Hiring

Constraint, Currency & Clarity What invention had the most profound impact on manufacturing hiring? Not the steam engine. Not the assembly line. Not lean practices. Not...

How To Accelerate Frontline Learning With TWI

Frontline supervisors are not educated as teachers or coaches. The good news is, they can learn that skill. Most training programs focus on training operators, and we have...

5 Ways to Fix the Skills Gap on the Factory Floor

Properly addressing the skills gap takes time. But before you start forming an internal task force or scheduling strategy meetings, consider what impact you can have on the...

Best Practices On How To Retain Factory Workers

Manufacturing companies rely on workers to be the frontline of production. And while companies across all sectors struggle to recover from a labor crisis perpetuated in part...

6 Common Manufacturing Facility Hazards & Effective Solutions

Manufacturing facilities serve an important function in a country’s economy, as they create jobs, increase wealth through added value and taxes, promote trade, and support...

7 Best Practices in Manufacturing Training for Employees

Training employees is a surefire way to improve productivity and efficiency within manufacturing. As the company grows and expands, its employees must also grow with it,...

Using Digital Tools as a Recruitment Tool in Manufacturing

Manufacturers are being squeezed in both directions these days. Demand for products is outpacing their ability to secure raw materials for production, and they don’t have...

How the Best Plant Managers Solve Production Challenges

As a manufacturing plant manager, meeting production targets, reducing downtime, and filling empty roles are all ongoing goals. The best plant managers know that these goals...

Career Progression in the Manufacturing Industry

Today's manufacturing facilities are clean and modern workplaces that offer a variety of unique and exciting career opportunities. Join our conversation with Joe Renaud from...

Using Standards to Empower the Frontline Workforce

Chad Nelson is a Lean Six-Sigma Operations Manager at 3M and has a wealth of knowledge about standardized work and engaging frontline workers with improvement efforts. Join...

How to Manage Change on the Plant Floor

Change management is a crucial part of any digital transformation or improvement efforts on the plant floor. But how do you deal with stubborn employees or older workers that...

Digital Technology Trends in Manufacturing

In the past, manufacturing technology was focused on improving equipment and tools. Now, the industry is shifting its priorities towards workforce enablement. How will the...

ISO 9001 Certification is Easier Than You Think

Is audit anxiety holding your company back from ISO 9001 compliance? While it may seem like a daunting task, many businesses are closer to certification (and...

Adapting Training to Meet the Needs of the Modern Manufacturer

Manufacturers are faced with a much different workforce than they've traditionally dealt with. Previous generations had more foundational knowledge, incoming generations need...

Why HR Shouldn't Manage Your Technical Skills Training

Amid the Silver Tsunami, HR departments are hustling to onboard and fill personnel gaps, but they can’t predict the evolving demands of your operations. Manufacturing...

Why Sharepoint Fails at Knowledge Management

Many industrial businesses rely on generic document management tools, like Microsoft Sharepoint, to store and share files. As a document management strategy, this makes...

Document Management Vs. Knowledge Management

Understanding the distinction between document management and knowledge management is vital to operational excellence. While the terms can sometimes be used interchangeably,...

The Missing Piece of Your Digital Transformation Strategy

Unprecedented. There probably isn’t a better word to describe 2020 as a whole. 2020 saw accelerated change across almost all industries and aspects of our lives. In...

How to Write Better Lockout/Tagout Procedures

Lockout/Tagout (LOTO) procedures are some of the most common in industrial and manufacturing environments. Despite this, failure to adequately train employees on LOTO...

How to Capture Expert Knowledge Before it's Lost

It’s no secret. Manufacturers are coping with a massive wave of retirements. With over a quarter of the workforce over the age of 55, many workers are leaving their jobs with...

How To Cross-Train Your Workforce

Cross-training is an essential component of any successful manufacturing company. The flexibility it creates enables your operations to continue regardless of what operators...

What is Tribal Knowledge?

Many industrial businesses have heard of the dangers of relying on tribal knowledge. But what exactly does tribal knowledge mean? How does tribal knowledge impact my...

Breaking Down the Skills Gap: Tribal Knowledge

As the skills gap widens and more employees retire, decades of experience and company investment is predicted to walk out the door. With nearly ten thousand people turning...

Breaking Down the Skills Gap: Training

Manufacturing Institute estimated that 2.4 million job openings in manufacturing—accounting for half of all open positions—will go unfilled between 2018 and 2028 as a direct...

Breaking Down the Skills Gap: Recruiting & Retirement

For those in the manufacturing and industrial sector, what’s commonly known as the skills gap is a well-documented issue. As a growing number of Americans retire, they take...

Insights from the Field: Can Tribal Knowledge Actually Work?

Recently, I had a chance to visit one of our larger manufacturing clients. Of the many insights gained on that trip, one stood above the rest — tribal knowledge used to...

Manage Workforce Training with Dozuki Courses

At Dozuki, we’ve made it our mission to make Standard Work an industry standard. We envision documented standards and worker knowledge continuously improving alongside one...

How On-the-Job Training is Hurting Manufacturing

While on-the-job training is practical for certain applications, manufacturers rely on it too heavily as a method for on-boarding and training employees. Companies looking...

How to Reduce Tribal Knowledge and Downtime with Dozuki Answers

The conveyor belt on line one stopped running and production came to a halt. It was the second time in a week that this happened. The maintenance team and engineers spend the...

What Chipotle Taught Us About Training Standards

Chipotle, the Mexican food chain, has been in the spotlight recently for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately, not all coverage has been “good press.” A string of food safety...

7 Stats in Celebration of Manufacturing Day

In the past, we put together a dream team of manufacturing icons and their contributions. In celebration of Manufacturing Day 2018, we’d like to share key statistics to...

The Manufacturing Skills Gap is an Opportunity

There is a pending manufacturing skills gap impacting the United States workforce. Millions of positions are expected to go unfilled in the coming years, with reports...

What to Look for in QMS Software

Traditional quality management system (QMS) software does exactly what it’s supposed to do. Like file cabinets for the digital world, they organize and control your company...

Implementing Continuous Improvement with Dozuki

Is your company interested in reaping the benefits of continuous improvement (transparency, efficiency, cost reductions, etc.) but aren't sure where to begin? Dozuki has you...

Got Standards? The Million Dollar Grammar Mistake

Maine based Oakhurst Dairy was recently sued by a handful of truck drivers seeking more than four years worth of overtime pay—but the suit wasn’t about milk distribution at...

Deadly Instructions: Using Visuals to Train Safely

In 2016 OSHA reported 2.8 million workplace injuries, with 440,000 of them occurring in the manufacturing industry alone. For manufacturers, that means for every 100 workers,...

5 Technical Writing Mistakes to Avoid

Here at Dozuki, we see a lot of technical documents. In all of this written work, we inevitably come across some mistakes. But hey, pobody’s nerfect. That said, when you see...

Millennials, Vinyls, and Documentation

Vinyl is in the midst of a comeback. Perhaps it’s due to the unpredictable whims of Millennial trends. Or, perhaps it’s the byproduct of a digital backlash from consumers...

18 Books for Better Employee Training

Books are a great way to learn new techniques to train and connect with your employees. Topics can range from practical business practices, to more subjective insights into...

Patagonia's Journey to Train Their Customers

For years, Patagonia has set a high standard for product lifespan with their Ironclad Guarantee and unparalleled customer service. They’ve been providing free repair services...

Lean Startups Need to Start Documenting to Scale

For startups that have begun to establish themselves as a sustainable business, growing pains are only a matter of time. Any experienced entrepreneur will tell you that...

How Sloppy Revision Control Cost WIPP Half a Billion Dollars

In 2014 a nuclear Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, NM was the victim of poor revision control practices that lead to a half-billion dollar mistake; shutting...

Feature Spotlight: Photo Markup and Special Bullets

Here at Dozuki, we emphasize the importance of creating visual work instructions, because we believe visual is always better. However, visual documentation doesn’t stop with...

How to Write a Great User Manual in 12 Steps

A great user manual educates people about a product, while also teaching them how to use product features effectively. As an author, your ultimate goal is comprehension—you...

What McDonald’s Can Teach Us About Training

Many years ago while managing the final inspection, packaging and shipping areas of a production plant, I was looking for a person to promote to line leader. I was having a...