Where do new product ideas come from? Do they stem from the needs of your customers and prospects? Or do they come from what you THINK your prospects and customers might need? In today's conversation, Founder of AIM Institute, Dan Adams, will talk about how to drive new product blueprinting through real customer insights.
When I think about sustainability, MY mind goes straight to the environment. But when Managing Partner of Community Solar Authority, Dakota Malone, thinks about sustainability, the environment is one of four pillars that all work together. In this conversation, Dakota breaks them down for you and explains why today's manufacturing leaders should care.
All the interactions that happen from first touch with a prospect through the signed purchase order, and in the future as your customer buys from you again and again, are part of the buyer experience. And making every one of those touch points as painless and rewarding as possible should be all of our goals. CEO and Co-Founder of GenAlpha Technologies, Kris Harrington, is digital commerce expert. And in this conversation, she'll share 10 ways to eliminate buyer friction (while simultaneously unb...
When you make the investment in a sturdy digital backbone for running your manufacturing operation – your ERP, your QMS, your MES.... – You protect yourself from loss of tribal knowledge – You create efficiencies through process documentation – You set yourself up for smoother compliance audits – And ultimately, you create an environment that can foster scalable growth In this conversation, Co-Founder of ProShop ERP, Paul Van Metre, breaks it down.
For 200 consecutive weeks without missing a single Tuesday morning, I've published interviews with manufacturing leaders (and professionals influencing manufacturing leaders) about the things that matter most to them. In this milestone episode, I've compiled sound bites from 21 of those 200 episodes (and referenced many others as well), and I've organized what I've heard and summarized what I've learned around seven central themes. They are: 1. Supply chain 2. Labor 3. The next generation 4. Aut...
When I hear the word "service" in a business setting, my mind goes straight to CUSTOMER service. But the concept of serving becomes so much more powerful when it finds its way into all the other aspects of running a business. In this episode, business coach Fred Reggie talks about about building what he calls a service culture. Specifically, he touches on the importance of two-way communication, clearly articulating your organization's mission and achieving universal buy-in throughout your organ...
If you sell big-ticket, heavily-engineered, CapEx equipment through a long, consultative sales processes, e-commerce couldn't possibly be for you. Right? If you're a contract manufacturer custom designing products for your customers, e-commerce couldn't possibly be for you. Right? If you're a manufacturer selling anything other than a low-price point, commodity product, e-commerce couldn't possibly be for you. Right? Well, if you stick around for this conversation, my guess is that 40 minutes fr...
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 differe...
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 diff...
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 ener...
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 in...
New product development today is more complex than ever before. With teams spread out across the country (or the globe), decentralized product data, supply chain challenges and more demanding customers, design engineering is just plain hard. Adam Keating, Co-Founder and CEO of CoLab, has been building the software and the company that's working to solve these problems. In this conversation, he'll dive into the challenge and hand and how they're addressing it.
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 inv...
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...
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 ...
It's hard enough to get a business of the ground and sustain it across one generation. But it's another to grow and evolve a business across three generations. Market needs change. Technology changes. The people inside of your organization (and your customers's organizations) change. There's so much to balance between staying true to what got you where you are today and being willing to evolve and adapt. In today's conversation, Greg Hartwig, a third-generation manufacturing business owner, will...
In this episode, CEO of Encube, Hugo Nordell, will tell you that it's a labor of love to go from design intent to what the actual manufactured outcome will be, without breaking the bank. And one of the things standing in the way today is the decades-old technology that much of the design engineering community is still running on. As he'll tell you, especially in light of the labor crisis, a rapidly changing supply chain and sustainability requirements that manufacturers are facing today, the ind...
I've consulted well over 200 B2B manufacturing organizations throughout my career on marketing strategy. And without question, one of the biggest problems I've observed time and time again is a lack of alignment between sales and marketing. In today's conversation, Founder of Brjr.io John Joyce will talk about why these silos emerge, what dangers and missed opportunities they create, and the role your marketing and sales technology stack can play in tearing them down.
In a post-COVID world, a few forces have been converging to set the stage for what Elias Stahl envisions as an on-demand supply chain, rooted in America's urban core. In this conversation, Elias, CEO & Co-Founder of HILOS, will talk about: - A new wave of advanced additive manufacturing technology - The struggling urban centers of America's big cites - The desire to create more control over the supply chain - And the opportunity all of this creates for American manufacturing in the years ahe...
More often than not, great leaders don't have all the answers. And in fact, a big part of what makes them great is their willingness to embrace that simple fact. Tom Brown is a manufacturing leader who was never the resident expert in his organization. But owning that is exactly what helped him drive the company's success. In this conversation, he'll tell you how he did it, though the lens of what he calls The Three Pillars of Impact for manufacturing leaders.
There's nothing worst than making a big investment in technology, just to learn that you're not sufficiently equipped to deploy it. From the many conversations I've had with leaders in the robotics space, this is one of the fears that seems to hold back manufacturers from getting started with automation. What if the robot crashes? What if the system gets stuck? Once my integrator walks out the door, will my people have the skills and documentation to run it? In this conversation, Malachi Greb, F...
It's no secret that the Boomer generation is pouring out of the manufacturing workforce. And as they go, we're not only losing their hands, but also the years of knowledge tied up in their brains. Pair that with an increasingly transient younger generation of workers and what you have is an institutional knowledge problem. In this episode, Yushiro Kato, Founder & CEO of CADDi, talks about the role of digitizing our data inside of manufacturing facilities – for accessibility, for security, an...
The past decade or so in the manufacturing sector has brought lots of hype about robotics along with it. But sometimes the flexible systems that many small and medium-sized business leaders were promised have been too complex to effectively deliver on the jobs to be done on the plant floor. Colin Riggs and Diane Abruzzini Riggs, Co-Founders of Rigorous, have set out to change that. They're passionate about local economies and helping smaller manufacturers access the robotics technologies that wi...
Lots of business like to talk about things like "work culture" and "core values". But for many of those businesses, these are just aspirational concepts. My guest today, Doug Eisenhart, is the President of a manufacturing organization that truly lives and breathes its core values, and has built a work culture second to none. Doug will talk about how creating this kind of strong organization health internally translates into customer success. Because when your people are all rowing in the same di...
To quote Dave Chrysler, Founder and Principal Consultant at The Crysler Club, "In the fast-paced world of operations, leaders are often looking for the silver bullet that can solve all their challenges." He'll tell you that although there may not be a one-size-fits-all solution, there are some fundamental tools that any manufacturing leader should consider putting in his or her tool belt. From SOPs to Kaizen Events to Strategic Planning, he'll break down some of these tools that together can put...
Large amounts of data are only helpful if you can make it all actionable. In today's conversation, Founder and CEO at IndustrialML, Arjun Chandar, will tell you that as IIoT technology continues to advance, so much of the data being pulled off manufacturing floors is being holed up in the back offices of factories. Arjun will share his perspective about how to harness this data and put to use in ways that address some of the biggest challenges facing manufacturers today – especially for workforc...
Customer research. Customer interviews. Voice of customer. Whatever you choose to call it, this is something that many companies THINK they're doing. But in reality, most are just trying to create a setting for hearing what they want to hear from their customers, for collecting testimonials and ultimately, for selling them more stuff. In this episode, I talk with author and President of Loomis Marketing, Dave Loomis. A deep expert in voice of customer with well over 10,000 hours of customer inte...
Imagine not having a home owner's insurance policy when you live in tornado alley. This is the analogy today's guest makes to a manufacturer without a strategic inventory plan. Harrison Wells, VP of Professional Services at LeanDNA, will tell you that in today's "Disruption Economy", supply chain management and specifically, inventory optimization, are more important than ever before. And in this conversation, he breaks it all down.
