Send us Fan Mail What helps you compete in the market? Is it your unique product? Is it your operational efficiency? Is it your market segment? Or is it the alignment of your manufacturing and operational strategies with market needs and business goals? Since most manufacturers are part of a large process for their customers, simply thinking about your product's value prop may not be enough. You need to think about the entire value chain, how your products fit in that, and the implications and b...
Jun 09, 2021•46 min•Ep. 86
Send us Fan Mail If you are involved in vendor negotiations or expense management, it's hard to know if you may be overpaying for services or goods. What if there was a way to benchmark your expenses against other companies. Enter big data for expense management. These data lakes have amassed trillions of data points in the last ten years through several data sources. They have the capabilities to benchmark your expenses for the majority of your categories. In today's episode, we have our guest ...
Jun 08, 2021•32 min•Ep. 85
Send us Fan Mail Warehouses have been using automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS) for a long time. While they have come a long way in their capabilities and along with their interactions with other newer technologies such as robotic arms or cobots, their adoption is still very low. Although ASRS systems provide excellent capabilities, the key is to deeply understand your specific needs and measure your current KPIs for their successful implementation and reap financial benefits from the...
Jun 07, 2021•37 min•Ep. 84
Send us Fan Mail How would you feel if you had a handful of customers with huge leverage decided to consolidate their vendors and put pressure to cut the prices further that you might not be able to afford? No one wants to be in this situation. What would you do if you faced this situation? Would you expand your operations to explore further cost reduction opportunities? Would you rather shut down your operations? Would you try to sell hard and not take no for an answer? Or Would you start looki...
Jun 02, 2021•40 min•Ep. 83
Send us Fan Mail Whether you are releasing new parts or making changes to existing parts, you will likely go through the engineering change process (ECN). More often than not, engineering organizations are siloed from the downstream organizations and don't understand how their engineering decisions will impact the production floor. As you add more engineers to the department, the more opportunity, you might find to have tighter engineering change control processes and reuse the existing CAD mode...
Jun 01, 2021•36 min•Ep. 82
Send us Fan Mail SMB manufacturers and distributors in the personal care industry face unique challenges. These difficulties could be even more for organic products or the items that need to comply with FDA., such as sunscreens. They need to ensure enough demand for new products or struggle to find contract manufacturers and labs that will accept the lower batches of order. Also, since credibility is vital for brands in this industry, the source of ingredients and the ability to have end-to-end ...
May 31, 2021•36 min•Ep. 81
Send us Fan Mail As procurement departments and buyers become more sophisticated, manufacturers and distributors will see more scrutiny from their customers, especially if they might be selling high-value and complex items. They have already been facing cost pressures from their customers, but now they might see an elongated sales cycle with RFPs to compete. The RFP process might increase your costs if you don't have experience responding to them. Winning RFPs and working with procurement requir...
May 26, 2021•40 min•Ep. 80
Send us Fan Mail Your CRM system is key to managing your customer relationships and providing the customer experience to help you stand out among your competitors. While most organizations may use some form of CRM system, the adoption rate is low. Most CRM systems are either over-engineered, making them difficult to use and maintain, or under-engineered with data quality issues, a roadblock to CRM system adoption. In today's episode, we have our guest Seamus Ruiz-Earle, who discusses the core re...
May 25, 2021•43 min•Ep. 79
Send us Fan Mail When you grow in transactions and have many low-dollar transactions, the cost of processing transactions could be higher than the expense being paid. You might also face this when you may be purchasing cheaper consumable items from one-time vendors. Understanding the cost of processing is critical as that allows you to introduce different strategies for such transactions. One such strategy is to introduce a P-card for your low dollar volume transactions, which enables companies ...
May 24, 2021•45 min•Ep. 78
Send us Fan Mail Remember walking around a gym to find the weight you wanted for your next set of exercises? It could be even more frustrating and inefficient to locate a tool or asset in a large manufacturing facility or a warehouse. What if you had real-time tracking of your tools and assets that you could locate by tracking their real-time locations. The RTLS technology is powerful and helps manufacturers in tracking critical resources on the shop floor. In today's episode, we have our guest ...
May 19, 2021•42 min•Ep. 77
Send us Fan Mail If you are building or upgrading your e-commerce capabilities, you are likely to evaluate several platforms. This evaluation needs to be comprehensive, covering factors ranging from legal contracts, deployment issues, customer experience needs, product model complexities, and your teams' skillset. If you chose a platform without performing due diligence, you might experience cost overruns with your ecommerce budget. In today's episode, we have our guest Erin Courtnay and Eric La...
May 18, 2021•41 min•Ep. 76
Send us Fan Mail Cash is the lifeblood of a company. Cash forecasting is the discovery process to predict your future cash needs. How would you feel if you discovered that you had four months of cash left to operate? I am sure you will lose your sleep. Thus, cash forecasting and understanding your balance sheet are essential. It is especially vital for cash-intensive companies such as manufacturers. In today's episode, we have our guest Alok Ajmera, who discusses the corporate performance manage...
May 17, 2021•32 min•Ep. 75
Send us Fan Mail If you focused on the metrics for each employee where they contributed to the organization's overall improvement, it could result in millions of dollars of savings. But finding the areas of improvement is easier said than done. It requires you to perform gap analysis and trace the Gemba. It requires you to perform a deeper study of data, identify appropriate KPIs, and continuously measure to become operationally resilient. In today's episode, we have our guest Tamar Nelson, who ...
May 12, 2021•38 min•Ep. 74
Send us Fan Mail RFID technology has been available for a long time, but its adoption has been limited to high-value assets. Most manufacturers might not believe that RFID technologies can track commodities and be an excellent replacement for barcode labels. Unlike barcode labels requiring warehouse and production workers to hold the pointed gun and scan each item, RFID tags could significantly save time while expediting the scanning process. They will also provide you real-time visibility and r...
May 11, 2021•38 min•Ep. 73
Send us Fan Mail Energy has always been one of the heaviest line items on a P&L for manufacturers. While manufacturing executives are acutely aware of the energy costs, they have struggled to enforce energy-saving procedures. In fact, the push for quality and productivity could have counterproductive effects on energy consumption. To find the cost-saving opportunities available through energy, the executives need to consider comprehensive approaches, including factoring energy costs into pro...
May 10, 2021•34 min•Ep. 72
Send us Fan Mail Material requirement planning helps in keeping the appropriate inventory levels that you need for manufacturing. If the MRP processes are not optimized, it could result in surplus inventory or component shortages that could halt your production. While several technologies are available to implement MRP, the biggest challenge is the cross-functional nature of the MRP processes as multiple business units and departments may be involved. This challenge makes the implementation diff...
May 05, 2021•35 min•Ep. 71
Send us Fan Mail With new trends and technologies such as additive manufacturing and experimental design, it's never been this easy to launch and disrupt a hardware product category. The traditional manufacturers that are slow in taking advantage of these trends run a risk of being disrupted and become irrelevant in their market. The new trends require manufacturers to get inspired by the newer disruptive companies from their markets and be corporate intrapreneurs by changing their internal R&am...
May 04, 2021•37 min•Ep. 70
Send us Fan Mail While other industries such as banking or logistics have successfully differentiated purely because of technology, manufacturers treat digital technologies as their stepchild, especially in the SMB space. SMB manufacturers and distributors rarely have internal IT or use external research to augment their business or digital transformation initiatives. What could manufacturers do to learn from other industries and create a compelling customer experience using technology? In today...
May 03, 2021•33 min•Ep. 69
Send us Fan Mail Running a machine shop is complicated with complex parts, heavy precision needs, and tricky materials handling requirements. With cost pressures from customers, rising material costs, and shrinking margins, one inaccurately estimated job could wipe out the profits for the whole month. Also, customers are savvy with their evaluation as they now want to vet your end-to-end business processes to validate the claims on your sales collateral. In today's episode, we have our guest Pau...
Apr 28, 2021•39 min•Ep. 68
Send us Fan Mail Cost accounting is a complex topic. You have so many different choices, and sometimes it's hard to decide which method may be appropriate for your business. If you choose an incorrect accounting method, you may get a significant variance and require more admin effort to discover the source of variance and tweak the processes to reduce it. The incorrect costing method could also mean that you don't have a true sense of profitability for your products. In today's episode, we have ...
Apr 27, 2021•39 min•Ep. 67
Send us Fan Mail New product development is complex. There are financial risks associated with research and development. The experience could be even more frightening if you are new to R&D, have a tight budget, or working with external or overseas partners. While you might perceive that the risk may be lower with internal initiatives, it may not be true as it's harder to track the internal opportunity costs and stay on track with other competing priorities. In today's episode, we have our gu...
Apr 26, 2021•34 min•Ep. 66
Send us Fan Mail The lines keep blurring between traditional retail supply chains with trends such as DTC and buy-online-pick-up-at-store. With large retailers offering such convenience, it's harder for smaller retailers to compete. These models require you to have your fulfillment centers within 20 miles of the customer location to match consumers' delivery time expectations. This need drives the business architecture complexity with cross interactions between hybrid systems ranging from POS, e...
Apr 21, 2021•32 min•Ep. 65
Send us Fan Mail The risk profile of manufacturers plays a critical role in how insurance companies and regulatory agencies perceive them, including their cybersecurity standard operating procedures, their ability to prevent injuries, and their consistency to hit their KPIs. All of these factors may have significant growth implications for manufacturers. In today's episode, we have our guest Michael Schlagenhaufer, who discusses how insurance companies evaluate manufacturers' risk profiles. He a...
Apr 20, 2021•41 min•Ep. 64
Send us Fan Mail There are a lot of definitions around LEAN. But implementing it right is easier said than done. Most companies fail to implement LEAN because they focus more on tools than focusing on strategy. It's a change in thinking, the way you do your business. It's the kind of SOPs you want to follow in your business and how flexible you want to be around those SOPs. The less variability and leaner operations you have, the more competitive you will be. If implemented right, Lean would be ...
Apr 19, 2021•29 min•Ep. 63
Send us Fan Mail There is always so much at stake with ERP implementations. One plus one is perhaps eleven when it comes to deploying ERP. They are never just technology deployment. The companies that promise the world to their teams based on the overstated claims from technology sales professionals might encounter varied emotional responses from their leaders, leading to a compliance culture. This culture often produces the exact opposite effect of what you intended to achieve with your technol...
Apr 14, 2021•36 min•Ep. 62
Send us Fan Mail Product pricing is more than just the dollar amount printed on the packaging or pricing labels. It drives consumer behavior, affects the customer experience, and impacts the bottom line. Right pricing strategies could catalyze your growth and provide a competitive advantage. On the other hand, overly promotional pricing strategies could be counterproductive and increase operational complexity. When it comes to pricing, it's the balance that matters. In today's episode, we have o...
Apr 13, 2021•43 min•Ep. 61
Send us Fan Mail ERP contracts are inherently crafty. If you don't have experience buying an ERP, you might want to get your contracts reviewed with a consultant who has several years of experience reviewing ERP contracts. You might think of purchasing an ERP as a subscription package, but an ERP system implementation has more nuances in the form of data ownership, ongoing support, bandwidth usage, etc. So you might want to understand these critical details before you are locked in a contract an...
Apr 12, 2021•35 min•Ep. 60
Send us Fan Mail Mobility can increase the efficiency significantly of your warehouses, from automating your data entry to voice-enabled picking. But how to plan for a mobility journey? Is it as simple as picking a bunch of bar code readers from the market and be mobile? Or do companies need to plan based on the size of the warehouse, ergonomics needs, and efficiency requirements? In today's episode, we have our guest Chuck Coxhead from Procensis, who discusses warehouse mobility trends in the e...
Apr 07, 2021•36 min•Ep. 59
Send us Fan Mail Have you had challenges engaging with your customers? Do you lose prospects just because you could not call them timely? Do you have challenges in finding net-new prospects? Do you have capacity issues in your sales department? How deeply do you understand how your prospects may be interacting with your website? These are the questions you will have if you are ready for marketing automation. In today's episode, we have our guest Dave Meyer from BizzyWeb, who describes how market...
Apr 06, 2021•41 min•Ep. 58
Send us Fan Mail Gears are among the most foundational parts of machines, ranging from food delivery equipment to medical devices. While we all may recognize the prevalence of gears, how many of us know that manufacturing gear is almost like surgery? Yes, that's the kind of precision and expertise required to manufacture gears. Manufacturing them could even be more difficult if you are dealing with a customer who doesn't fully understand the engineering behind them. In today's episode, we have o...
Apr 05, 2021•41 min•Ep. 57
