Think, Share & Learn

Women have been helping move manufacturing forward for more than a century, from the plant floor to the lab to the executive team. This feature celebrates the leaders, engineers, organizers, and operators who helped shape the industry and what their legacy says about manufacturing today

A practical guide for managers on how to address ongoing attendance issues with a clear improvement plan, set expectations, document next steps, and use a ready-made template to support consistent follow-through.

The automotive labor shortage is not abstract. It shows up in missed stations, slower cycles, extra overtime, rising quality risk, and shift targets that get harder to hit even when the line never fully stops.

A single absence can hit labor, production, and supervisor time all at once. Learn how to calculate the full cost in manufacturing.

Manufacturing lines run as systems, not headcounts. See how one absence can shift bottlenecks, slow cycle time, disrupt quality, and create measurable productivity loss across the entire line.

Why staffing “by the numbers” fails in manufacturing, and a look at a framework for measuring and closing skill coverage gaps that create hidden staffing risk.

When attendance data is viewed monthly, operational risk gets buried. See how daily and shift-level reporting uncovers staffing gaps before they turn into missed production and overtime spikes.

Unplanned absences hurt production more than you think. Here’s how absenteeism affects OEE, how to measure lost productivity, and what manufacturing leaders can do about it.