Content By Ryan E. Day

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Bridging the Gap Between Strategy and Execution
By: Ryan E. Day 03/15/2022

Business is changing at a faster rate than ever before, forcing companies to find ways to adapt and pivot. Keeping the entire organization aligned with current goals can be a daunting task, but surviving and thriving depends on it.

One popular method to ensure enterprisewide alignment of assets is to develop objectives and key results (OKR). OKRs are popular enough that industry leaders such as Google and Netflix use them to close the gap between their strategy and execution.

If a company’s OKRs are not well defined and highly visible, front-line workers—and management as well—can often shift energy and resources in a direction misaligned with company goals. And when company goals change, OKRs change to reflect the new direction. When OKRs are front and center, manpower can be spent more efficaciously.

Profit.co’s CEO and founder Bastin Gerald, and COO and president Senthil Rajagopalan, have combined their decades of business management experience to author three books offering readers an in-depth understanding of OKR concepts, strategy, and execution.

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Risk and Opportunity in Your Supply Chain
By: Ryan E. Day 02/14/2022

ISO 9001:2015, Clause 6.1 introduces the term “actions to address risks and opportunities,” as a replacement for the standard’s previous term, “preventive actions.” The juxtaposition of “risks” and “opportunities” seems to imply a relational nature between the two concepts. But is it still realistic to apply this notion after the beating administered by 2020 and 2021?

I think most organizations would agree that 2020 and 2021 have been a challenge above and beyond anything in the last three decades, as unknown risks to workforce and supply chain have compounded already known, but growing, cybersecurity risks. If we were to take a SWOT approach going into 2022, perhaps we could identify possible opportunities in the risks that are sure to carry over from the past two years.

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Independent Auto Dealerships: An American Gray Swan?
By: Ryan E. Day 01/31/2022

Chickens come home to roost, and canaries meet their demise in coal mines. But hey, we knew there was a high probability of each happening eventually, right? However, when a black swan shows up with severe impact and consequences, everyone is caught off guard. I’m wondering if it’s a black swan when you could have seen it coming?

A swan of a different color

Oddly enough, definitions of the term usually include ambivalent statements concerning hindsight:
“A Black Swan event is an event in human history that was unprecedented and unexpected at the point in time it occurred. However, after evaluating the surrounding context, domain experts (and in some cases even laymen) can usually conclude: ‘It was bound to happen.’”
—Black Swan

“A black swan is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterized by their extreme rarity, severe impact, and the widespread insistence they were obvious in hindsight.”
—Investopedia

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A 40-Year-Old Bone of Contention
By: Ryan E. Day 01/13/2022

Quality Digest (QD) was born 40 years ago. Birthed as Quality Circle Institute (QCI), the organization was conceived as a consultancy focused on bringing the success of quality control circles at Lockheed to organizations that were beginning to awaken to the importance of employee involvement in the improvement process. But times change and ideas evolve, and QCI became QD to better represent the broader quality industry, especially the movement toward international standards. In fact, the very definition of quality, and its role in manufacturing and business, has been something of a bone of contention all along.

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It’s Time to Apply Risk Management to President Biden’s Vaccine Mandates
By: Ryan E. Day 11/04/2021

‘By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including sections 3301, 3302, and 7301 of title 5, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows....”

Why do these words make me cringe? Well, because when presidential ink hits paper, all the ramifications get real. All the things that make for healthy debate become regulations that impact our businesses on a daily basis—and in a big way. Today, I’m talking about President Biden’s vaccine mandates or executive orders.

It’s already well known that President Biden’s “Executive Order on Ensuring Adequate COVID Safety Protocols for Federal Contractors,” aka Executive Order 14043, requires all “federal workforce and individuals interacting with the federal workforce” to be fully vaccinated by Nov. 22, 2021. This is the first of two executive orders (EO) signed on Sept. 9, 2021.

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AI in the Sky: Deep Learning Drones
By: Ryan E. Day 10/11/2021

Aquiline Drones Corp. (AD) quips that, “All roads lead to AI.” Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) integration make that statement hard to argue against, and the astute application of AI to AD’s cloud-based services also makes a lot of sense. So, smart drones are a real thing. But are they smart enough to solve problems and create a return on investment?

I’ve already written about AI in relation to the supply chain and automation, and with good reason. According to a report by Grand View Research, worldwide revenues for the AI market, including software, hardware, and services, are forecast to grow 40.2 percent annually, topping $997.77 billion by the end of 2028. Now, with AD acquiring ElluminAI Labs, I’m exploring AI in the realm of commercial aerial drones.

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Confocal Microscopy for 3D Surface Finish Measurement and Analysis
By: Ryan E. Day 09/16/2021

Manufacturing is a very competitive business where high-quality products are expected. And some clients require extremely tight surface measurement tolerances, so being competitive means investing in tools that can satisfy customer requirements.

The confocal advantage

Submicron 3D observation and measurement is a game-changing reality with confocal microscopy. Optical and standard digital microscopes are unable to measure such tiny shapes with the level of resolution and clarity that smart manufacturing demands.

Operators using Olympus’ LEXT OL5100 laser microscope have the advantage of more than 17,000X magnification. This kind of power allows for nanometer-scale measurements used for step-height and volumetric measurements. Many manufacturing clients also require surface roughness analysis of materials at this scale.

Olympus LEXT OL5100
Olympus LEXT OL5100 microscope

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Can Video Marketing Be Effective in the B2B Arena?
By: Ryan E. Day 08/18/2021

It is estimated that in 2021, the average person watches more than 100 minutes of online video every day. But is that relevant to your B2B marketing efforts?

“The vast bulk of this video consumption is marketing content,” says Maury Rogow, CEO of Rip Media Group and CMO of TheVideoBot. “Big-budget marketers are trying to out-shout each other, which does not work. It particularly fails to work in the business-to-business sector, where the marketing targets are professionals already being bombarded by cold calls.”

Rather than attempting to pump up the volume even more, Rogow suggests that ROI-conscious B2B marketers combine microtargeting with personalized video.

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Cybersecurity Takes Center Stage in Risk Management
By: Ryan E. Day 07/27/2021

With the migration to remote and hybrid work during the last year, cyberattacks have increased at a rate of three to five times compared to pre-Covid. No big surprise that, for many businesses, virtual private newtworks (VPNs) have become standard operating procedure for security. But is VPN’s castle-and-moat concept an effective security strategy in today’s hybrid workplace?

The ubiquity of the decentralized workforce is now evident—we may never revert to the pre-Covid leviathan offices. Even before 2020 brought the world to a standstill, the office environment was fast becoming less centralized with the rise of software as a service (SaaS) applications for businesses.

Many companies are claiming an increase in productivity with their work-from-home (WFH) employees. And there must be a savings in operating costs associated with office closures. However, there is a downside.

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Cutting Costs With Smart Reusable Plastic Containers
By: Ryan E. Day 06/08/2021

Automation in the fresh produce sector is standard fare these days. What may not be so standard are the containers that get the produce from farm to market. The quality of produce containers has a direct impact on the quality of the produce—and maximizing profit margins for produce distributors and retailers.

As a produce retailer’s operation scales up, the need for reliable containers grows respectively. Standardized containers, such as IFCO’s reusable plastic containers (RPC), can be a significant advantage for automated logistics centers that might be handling more than a million containers every month. Even the smallest deviation of a few millimeters in container size can create cascading issues.

Unlocking hidden efficiencies

Using RPCs enables a one-touch system that contributes to time savings and reduced labor costs related to handling, storage, and transportation of fresh food.