

Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast
Endeavor Business Media’s Manufacturing Group
Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast offers news and information for the people who make, store and move things and those who manage and maintain the facilities where that work gets done. Manufacturers can listen for critical insights into the technologies, economic conditions and best practices that can influence how to best run facilities to reach operational excellence.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Sep 10, 2024 • 31min
All About AI and Its Uses in Manufacturing It and OT [(R)Evolutionizing Manufacturing]
In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Industry 4.0 influencer Jeff Winter and Smart Industry's Scott Achelpohl take on an issue that has topped technology conversations all year: artificial intelligence.
AI: Is there any other topic, inside or outside of manufacturing, that is quite as hyped? A lot of technological people are confused about what their companies should be doing (or not doing) with AI. Some rely on their normal software vendors who provide ERPs or other systems for answers to their questions. Others seek answers on their own. Influencer Jeff Winter and Smart Industry Managing Editor Scott Achelpohl use their monthly chat to cut through some of the clutter and take listener questions about AI.

Sep 7, 2024 • 10min
Maintenance Micromanager — Are You a Hero or a Leader at Your Manufacturing Plant? [Ask a Plant Manager]
Joe Kuhn, CMRP, former plant manager, engineer, and global reliability consultant, is now president of Lean Driven Reliability LLC. He is the author of the book “Zero to Hero: How to Jumpstart Your Reliability Journey Given Today’s Business Challenges” and the creator of the Joe Kuhn YouTube Channel, which offers content on starting your reliability journey and achieving financial independence.
In our monthly podcast miniseries, Ask a Plant Manager, Joe considers a commonplace scenario facing the industry and offers his advice, as well as actions that you can take to get on track tomorrow. This episode offers insight into how maintenance micromanagers prevent workers from making decisions and learning from their mistakes.

Sep 5, 2024 • 21min
What to Expect at the International Manufacturing Technology Show [Production Pulse]
The International Manufacturing Technology Show starts up Monday, Sept. 9, bringing every type of machine and technology that might be useful in a plant to Chicago's McCormick Place.
The massive show always draws media coverage, especially from publications such as IndustryWeek and our partners within Endeavor Business Media. Discussing what we're looking forward to seeing at this year's show are:
Robert Brooks, editor-in-chief of American Machinist
Tom Wilk, editor-in-chief of Plant Services
Robert Schoenberger, editor-in-chief of IndustryWeek

Sep 3, 2024 • 17min
Reversing the Manufacturing “Brain Drain”
It's no secret there is a labor shortage problem in manufacturing, with many more jobs available today than people to fill those jobs, and a growing chasm between people entering the industry versus those leaving.
Lurking in that labor challenge is maybe the biggest threat - a "great retirement" where the biggest threat is older, more experienced workers retiring and taking with them a career's worth of skills, experience, and best practices. In the race to close that gap, technology can play a crucial role in mitigating the manufacturing "brain drain" by automating repetitive tasks, preserving institutional knowledge through digital documentation, enabling remote collaboration, and enhancing training with virtual simulations.
In this podcast, Anthony Offredi - director of Customer Advocacy at Quickbase and a veteran of the manufacturing world - will discuss this brand drain and highlight technology solutions that can help combat this growing challenge, helping to attract and retain talent by capturing that knowledge while making work more engaging, efficient, and adaptable to new challenges in the industry.

Aug 29, 2024 • 24min
How Compressed Air Innovations Over the Last 10 Years Have Shaped Industrial Maintenance
For a long time, compressed air systems were a massive time drain on stretched maintenance personnel, with plants reluctantly willing to make a tradeoff of continuous manual intervention in exchange for constant air delivery. However, things are different these days. In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Ron Marshall of Compressed Air Challenge reviews some of the key changes in the compressed air world over the past 10 years have dramatically improved things for compressed air users.
Read "Compressed air innovations in industry: A 10-year retrospective"

Aug 28, 2024 • 25min
People Before Technology: Digital, Connected Workers Require a Human-Centric Focus
At the IndustryWeek Operations Leadership Summit in June in Indianapolis, IT and OT experts discussed how to connect people with technology to make digital transformation work. In this frank panel discussion, manufacturing experts talked about why so many projects fail, how to justify spending more money on new tech after the old project failed and how to get the needed buy in to continually improve tech adoptions.
Speaking are:
Scott Achelpohl, managing editor of Smart Industry
Jerry Grunewald, Vice Presidnt R&D/Technology - Invista
Raj Polanki, U.S. Region Head of IT - Wacker Chemical Corp.
Ryan Kuhlenbeck, CEO - Pico MES
Greg Whitt, Process Improvement Engineer - MORryde

Aug 27, 2024 • 13min
Find the Right Person for You: Addressing the Manufacturing Talent Gap
There is a chronic problem limiting U.S. manufacturing productivity – and the growth potential for individual manufacturers. One study claims manufacturers may require as many as 3.8 million new employees by 2033. A new approach has been developed for manufacturers seeking to locate and hire, and retain, qualified workers for manufacturing jobs. Chad Schron, senior director of Tooling U-SME describes how it works.

Aug 24, 2024 • 21min
Achieving Automation With “Made in America”
In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Laura Davis, editor-in-chief of New Equipment Digest talks with Shalab “Shalli” Kumar, founder and chairman of EZAutomation on his success in the automation industry, his numerous patents, and his affordable, high-quality automation products that are all manufactured in the U.S.

Aug 23, 2024 • 23min
It's ALL about your data: How manufacturers can capture and extract value from data [(R)Evolutionizing Manufacturing]
Industry 4.0 enthusiast and thought leader Jeff Winter teamed up with Smart Industry's Scott Achelpohl for “the sequel” to their debut of SI's monthly manufacturing technology series, (R)Evolutionizing Manufacturing. While the premiere dealt with the ABCs of digital transformation, this episode covers an absolutely foundational concept that every company trying to transform must understand: It’s all about the data.
“All the cool new technologies and transformational initiatives you hear about revolve around properly capturing and extracting value from data,” as Jeff points out in this new episode.
And if a company doesn’t do this, it can cost millions a year; a lot of money is wasted on bad data. So much of it is being collected, so it’s critical to distinguish the good data from the bad.

Aug 22, 2024 • 27min
Why Bother Connecting Workers with Technology? [Production Pulse]
Connecting frontline workers with back-end manufacturing technology can give them the context and information to do their jobs better. But, how does it work, and what are the immediate goals? IW discusses the technology with Jerry Grunewald of INVISTA and Eric Whitley of L2L.
Topics discussed included:
Which technologies really make sense for companies?
How connected worker systems are like Twitter.
How to make sure that systems are useful, usable and used!