We are already familiar with the story of having to convince someone about digital transformation: you found a fast, cheap and efficient solution for your factory, you left the last project meeting excited, but you still don't know how to persuade your boss. The ROI is positive, he can take a lot of benefits from it, so can you, and the company will win. But you can't make him/her jump in. It can be frustrating to go through a situation like the one above. But the idea of this article is to help you implement something new by convincing your boss of how important it is for everyone. And that's the first tip: everyone needs to realize that they are winning. First of all: it's all about negotiation Like it or not, you are a negotiator. Negotiation is a fact of life. These two sentences open one of the most important and best-selling books on the art of negotiating, "Getting to Yes" (Penguin Books), by authors William L. Ury, Roger Fisher. If we are all the time making agreements and resolving conflicts of interest in our lives, it is also true that, in a negotiation, the road…

For any type of business that wants to be successful, they will need to understand and fully implement the lean manufacturing principles. This is a business concept that has been around for decades but it is only now that the actual effects of the lean manufacturing method are being felt. If you go back to the 1970s, many large corporations tried to use lean manufacturing methods as a way to cut costs and improve productivity. But now, almost every major company that you look to for a new job or even an employee is doing this. What is Lean Manufacturing? Lean manufacturing, or Lean production, is a management philosophy from the Toyota Production System that focuses on reducing the seven types of waste (overproduction, lead time, transportation, overprocessing, inventory, motion, and defects). By eliminating this waste, quality improves and production time and costs decrease. Lean tools include continuous review processes (kaizen), pull production (in the kanban sense), and fail-safe elements/processes (Poka-Yoke). Lean Manufacturing was developed by Toyota executive Taiichi Ohno during Japan's post-World War II reconstruction period. The term was coined in 1988 by John Krafcik, but more clearly defined and popularized by James P. Womack and…

PackIOT decided to create a Benchmark Report to understand how digital mature are the packaging manufacturers around the globe. The goal of this benchmark report is to help the packaging industries to have a better understanding of itself during the journey through Digital Transformation. If the Digital Transformation could be defined as the attempt of companies and businesses to use technology and tools to innovate certain processes and products within the enterprise environment, the Digital Maturity would be the stage that the company is during this transformation. A digital mature organization is more prepared to respond and take advantage of technological innovations.  And that is why you should get a full understanding of what is your stage of Digital Maturity and where you are among the whole packaging industries. To build a complete report, we are approaching themes like: the importance of a transparent, easy and accessible information flow inside the factory; how involving people with different specializations in specific projects can bring success to your company; real-time data collection to see the trends, get insights and identify what is harming the manufacturing proccess; using the fast information flow to act upon unexpected problems in a short period of time; and…