I have a bunch of things.

Systems Thinking. It helps you understand how components interact to form a system, and how to change it. Books:

- The Goal: https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0...

- Thinking in Systems: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H-Meadows/dp...

Pertinent for 2023, learn about costs. If you're an engineer, understand how much the services you're responsible for are costing. How can you reduce that cost? Can you optimize costs enough to save your monthly salary?

There are aspects of this[1] book that I really enjoyed. I have no hardware/factory experience either but I had taken some operations research courses in college. In general, holding onto inventory more than you need is a waste of time, space, cost and introduces other complexities as well - like a defect identified even a little bit later in the process could lead to huge waste if you’re holding on to too much. But of course not having any sort of reserve also leads to issues.

During the pandemic one of the only car companies that didn’t have major disruption was Toyota and they were the pioneers of this model of operating but they also understood the need to keep reserves of critical components.

In the case of Apple, they do have a backup plan - the lower end models were already being manufactured outside China and they could scale that up while they scramble to fix the Pro lines.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1031937.Quality_Is_Free

https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0...

Personally I think KPIs (particularly when you are asking the question "how do I adopt KPIs") are toxic.

In a non-startup company there is generally one bottleneck that holds the organization back and has to be controlled

https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0...

In a startup company or if you are trying to develop a "revolutionary" product there are usual several bottlenecks that need to be attacked. For instance going to the moon you have to solve problems from a list such as

  * propulsion
  * navigation
  * life support

if you are looking at a 10% improvement you need to find the one bottleneck (e.g. "The Goal") if you need to get a 10x improvement you will hit several bottlenecks on the way there and the writings of W.L. Livingston apply

https://www.amazon.com/Have-Fun-at-Work-Livingston/dp/093706...

When you use goals to "destroy the competition" or "change the world", goals are a powerful technique. If you are setting goals because somebody told you to set goals or somebody else sets goals you are going to drive yourself to distraction.