The Manufacturing Executive

In today's conversation, we're talking about the Inflation Reduction Act. What it's all about? Why's it matter to manufacturing leaders? What impact will it continue to have on our economy, regardless of whether we see a Kamala Harris or a Donald Trump administration take the reins in 2025? More broadly, we'll discuss why paying attention to (and understanding the potential impact of) key legislat...

It's gonna cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's gonna require a whole team to maintain it. And MAYBE we'll see some benefit by year three. This isn't exactly a compelling value proposition for making a major technology investment in your manufacturing business. Yet it's the overwhelming feeling the manufacturing leaders often feel when contemplating whether or not to do so. Jared Knecht,...

Engineers and marketers may come from different planets. But in manufacturing environments that involve selling technical, complex products, marketers NEED the knowledge of those engineers to drive messaging strategy. So how do you make that happen? How do you get the engineer to understand why their expertise and participation in marketing matters? And how do you get the marketer to understand ho...

"The power and strength of our country is this next generation." These are the words of my guest today, Dave Hataj. Dave is a 35-year veteran of the manufacturing sector and founder of Craftsman with Character – a pre-apprenticeship program that focuses on character development and career guidance through mentoring relationships in industrial facilities. Dave will tell you that we have an entire g...

Warehouse management systems. What exactly are they? What's different from the features in your ERP? Or your MES? Who truly needs a warehouse management system? When do you know you'll be ready for one? And how do you choose the right one for you? CEO of Fullstride, Casey Winans, is here to answer all of these questions and more.

In most companies, experts are hired to do a specific job. Engineering does engineering. Marketing does marketing. Sales does sales. And so on. But what happens when each of those departments does their respective jobs in silos, without a common mission, and in the absence of collaboration? In today's conversation, Jeffrey Abell (engineer) and Adam Beck (industrial marketer) of Cadenas PARTsolutio...

If you were out at a nice dinner with your significant other and you had the choice to be served by whichever waitress or waiter usually services your table OR the owner of the restaurant, who would you choose? In today's conversation, CEO and President of Sentry Equipment Brian Baker talks about the benefits of an employee-ownership culture. As a 28-year leader of an employee-owned manufacturing...

In this conversation, Vice President of Product Management and co-founder of Configit, Henrik Hulgaard, talks about moving from a custom-engineered to configuration-based product offering. Specifically, he unpacks the benefits both to the customer AND the manufacturer of making this shift.

Following a few decades of sending manufacturing across seas to drive down costs, big reshoring movements are in full force throughout the American manufacturing sector. But meanwhile in Germany, much of that manufacturing never left in the first place. Through strategies that have included embracing automation, localizing manufacturing operations and focusing on quality, German manufacturing has...

We all know that we need to find ways to engage the next generation so we can build the manufacturing workforce of the future. And it's no secret to anyone listening that this next generation uses technology differently, interacts with people differently and collects information differently. But they also have different core values and care about different things. In today's conversation, Meaghan...

For many B2B manufacturing organizations, what got them where they are today won’t get them where they want to go in the years ahead. In this concise solo episode, The Manufacturing Executive's host Joe Sullivan draws on over a decade of experience advising manufacturing leaders to share his own perspective about how the buying landscape has changed, and what actions need to be taken from a market...

For years, product development has meant designing a few things, and then manufacturing them in the thousands or millions. But CEO of Nullpace, Dr. Masha Petrova, will tell you, we're quickly moving in a direction where we can design thousands of things and then manufacture just a few of them. She'll dive into the ways design engineering technology is enabling manufacturers to replace time and mon...

Quite a few manufacturing leaders that I talk to – whether through interviews on this show or in marketing consultations that I conduct – are leading second or third-generation family-owned businesses. They've built successful companies, but have struggled to let go of responsibilities, to delegate and to empower their people to play a role in shaping the company's future success. As lean manufact...

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....

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-Fou...

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 l...

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, c...

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 possibl...

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 R...

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: – Letti...

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"...

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...

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...