The Manufacturing Executive

Managing fixed labor costs is hard enough in a complex manufacturing environment. Then you throw a pandemic on top of it that only deepens an already problematic labor market, you sprinkle in some supply chain disruption and you add some economic uncertainty to the mix. What do you have left? Lots of confusion and stress about how to plan for labor in your business. In today's conversation, Adam Rubatt, Director, Operations Intelligence at Veryable, explains why we need to start thinking differently about staffing. More specifically, he'll introduce a concept that his company refers to as "on-demand labor planning".

There's nothing easy about being a leader, whether you're leading a marketing agency like me or a manufacturing organization like many of you. Founder and CEO of Rafti Advisors, Jim Vaselopulos, is an advisor to business leaders and host of a leadership podcast that's been running since 2016. In this episode, he'll draw on his experiences guiding B2B manufacturing leaders as we talk about: – Letting curiosity drive smart business decisions – Applying principles of root cause analysis across different parts of your business – Changing your relationship with time

The more manufacturing leaders you talk to, the more opinions and perspectives you'll hear about why we're struggling to pull young Millennials and Gen Zers into the industrial sector workforce: – General awareness issues – A perception of dirty, dark and dangerous jobs – Negative associations among youth (and their parents) with a career path other than "go to college and get a white-collar job" In today's conversation, you'll hear directly from the source. Jacob Sanchez is a Gen Zer whose energy and passion alone make this episode worth listening to. He's been in the manufacturing workforce since he was fifteen years old and his perspective about why we're missing the boat with Gen Z will get you thinking.

If you were to interview a variety of successful manufacturing leaders and analyze their respective approaches to effective leadership, I think you'd find a lot less directing than you would enabling. In this episode, Jason Riley, COO of the additive manufacturing company Fabrisonic, draws on his experience both as a military leader and a manufacturing leader to break down what he refers to as "5 Key Principles for Creating a Culture of Initiative". We'll talk about what it means to lead with intention, delegate, empower decision making, maximize collaboration and create meaningful process documentation.

Adam Keating, Co-Founder of CoLab, discusses tackling challenges in new product development. They explore the evolution of design reviews, the importance of customer needs for transformative solutions, and the impact of CoLab on customer success. The podcast also focuses on incremental change and cultural transformation in manufacturing.

When people talk about you years down the road, what will they say? "Oh yeah, he (or she) was a good manager or employee?" Or will there be something more? In this conversation, manufacturing leader and author, Mosongo Moukwa, talks about how to leave a meaningful and lasting mark on your organization. Or in his words, how become "a leader of significance."

From skills to work ethic to understanding chain of command, veterans bring so much potential to the manufacturing workforce. In this episode, Lt Col Kathy Lowrey Gallowitz will talk about how manufacturing leaders can go from unaware how to tap into the veteran community to being veteran-friendly to being veteran-READY.

Automation can be intimidating. What if the sizable CapEx investment we make doesn't generate the return we expected? What if our people struggle with operating the robots? And how will they deal with this kind of operational change in general? All fair questions and real concerns for manufacturing leaders today. In this episode, Saman Farid, CEO of automation provider Formic, will talk about how they're lowering the barrier to entry through outcome-based robotics solutions, and shifting the investment from CapEx to OpEx.

In this conversation, Gorilla 76 Content Director James Boeckmann and Gorilla 76 Senior Writer Rose Hansen go deep on content marketing for manufacturers. Collectively, these two journalists have interviewed hundreds of subject matter experts in the manufacturing sector – from owners to engineers to technical experts on the shop floor. Both have extracted vast amounts of knowledge from the brains of these experts, packaged it up as written content time and time again, and watched it drive growth for a wide variety of manufacturing organizations. In this discussion, they'll specifically dive into five things that are holding today's B2B manufacturers back from creating exceptional content. And they'll explain why now is the right time to change that.

When ChatGPT took the world by storm in 2022, terminology like "generative AI" became a regular part of our vocabulary overnight. Just a little more than a year later, it's hard to open your favorite news source without seeing headlines about generative AI, machine learning, deep learning and so on. But what does all of this terminology really mean? And for the manufacturing leaders listening right now, how does it all apply inside of your businesses? In this conversation, CEO and Co-Founder of Allie Systems, Alex Sandoval, will help you make sense of it all.