Manufacturing is our business, so we’re constantly trying to better ourselves—especially as the industry responds to unprecedented changes.
Try checking out these 10 books to grow your manufacturing and engineering skills sets. Many of them are Amazon best-sellers, and they cover everything from mastering Six Sigma to streamlining your home office for video conferencing.
Here are few highlights to get you started:
- Skill: Boosting your problem-solving
- Book: Creating Great Choices: A Leader’s Guide to Integrative Thinking
- Lowdown: Making good choices is key to any business. Yet 52 percent of manufacturers report that the skill most lacking in their teams is problem-solving. This book helps you apply integrative thinking to generate breakthrough solutions instead of just choosing between two bad options. It also includes exercises to test your critical thinking.
- Skill: How to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to innovate
- Book: Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI
- Lowdown: The book answers the fundamental question: How do we help our workforce transition into the age of A.I? Read if it your business is serious about understanding how AI can drive your growth. With practical and valuable examples.
- Skill: Keep your Six Sigma tools sharp (Lean is our jam)
- Book: The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook
- Lowdown: As the name implies, this book is a reference guide to nearly 100 tools for improving quality, speed and complexity in manufacturing processes. Packed with detailed examples and step-by-step instructions, it’s the only guide that groups tools by purpose and use.
- Skill: Understanding force from a scientific and engineering perspective
- Book: Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down
- Lowdown: It covers basic forces and design for everything from eggshells, skyscrapers, bridges, ancient coliseums, trees, boats and human biology. And bonus: It’s one of the 14 books that inspired Elon Musk, according to Business Insider—probably for its witty and straightforward prose designed for laymen, engineers and architects alike.
We feel smarter already.