Welcome to the first edition of the Five-Minute Gemba, a bi-weekly newsletter designed to help you accelerate your Industry 4.0 Journey. The other morning, I woke up at 4 AM with my brain spinning, in full problem-solving mode. A technical issue I had encountered for one of my CIMCO Machine Data Collection customers evidently was prioritized in my slumbering brain. I had … [Read more...]
About Joe Hackman
FMG No. 2 – What Are You Filtering?
Recently, I experienced a real life episode of “The Old Woman Who Swallowed the Fly.” As the nursery rhyme goes, her story starts with a problem (swallowing a fly), and quickly escalates as she attempts to resolve it. Eventually, after swallowing a horse, she dies. Luckily for me, I didn’t actually swallow a fly and my story has a happy ending. Here’s how my nursery rhyme … [Read more...]
FMG No. 3 – Build Your Creativity
“Human workers in the future will need to be creative to fully realize the benefits of all the new things for the future—new products, ways of working and technologies. Robots currently can’t compete with humans on creativity. The future workplace is going to demand new ways of thinking, and human creativity is the key to it. “ - Bernard Marr, “The 10 Vital Skills You Will Need … [Read more...]
FMG No. 4 – Introduce A Fresh Perspective
In 2014, my family relocated from Danville to El Dorado Hills, California, just one year after I decided to shift the focus of Managed Solutions to smart manufacturing endeavors (you can read the entire story starting with “The Adventure Begins”). During our new home search, much of my work supplies were in storage, which forced me to work more resourcefully. When we did find … [Read more...]
FMG No. 5 – By All Means Necessary
Thank you to any and all veteran’s reading this, I appreciate your service. This year we've seen a lot of people struggling and grinding their way through adversity. Recently one of my Manufacturing Industry contacts, Andrew Stackpole, posted a brief but sincere message. His hashtags, and the accompanying photo drew me in: I decided to investigate his art site. When I … [Read more...]
FMG No. 6 – Our Manhattan Project
Today, many of you are likely recovering from a much smaller than usual Thanksgiving Day of food, friends, and family. With that in mind, today is more like a “Two-Minute Gemba.” I recently finished reading "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", an autobiography by physicist and overall curious character, Richard Feynman. Feynman was involved with the Manhattan Project, an … [Read more...]