A proud new iPhone owner in 2008 was surprised to find this photo on his brand new device. This young girl, who looks around 13 years old, works in the Foxconn plant that assembled the phone. Editor's Note (3/16/2012): This American Life…

Last week, I predicted that manufacturers would dramatically increase their adoption of cloud-based software as the benefits of cloud begin to outweigh any possible concerns. And upon further research, it appears that I am not the…

New product launches are exciting but stressful! Launch haphazardly and you will find yourself on board a sinking ship. Launch strategically and you can accelerate your time to market, minimize your overall investment and maximize your profits—and with lower risk!…

Although a solid change management process is absolutely necessary, it’s easy to fall into an overly complicated, unnecessary or misunderstood engineering change request (ECR) process—especially if your process lacks purpose.In some cases, by the time you craft the ECR,…

When you’re starting up, it can be difficult to know which business tools are essential to success and which can be put off until you have more capital and better market security. But there’s one…

Choosing a part numbering scheme is one of the more important decisions you make as you move toward production.Once you commit to a part numbering scheme, you are married to it for a long time to come, so you need to…

It’s the end of the year—the best time to get organized for the year to come. If you found yourself struggling with out-of-control changes in 2011, maybe it’s finally time to create and formalize an engineering change process. While creating a process to manage the unexpected may seem oxymoronic, for […]

With 80% of people residing within 50 miles of a coast, it’s not surprising that efforts to better understand and protect our oceans get a lot of attention. Our customer, Liquid Robotics, has been all over the news lately…