What are the Top Challenges Facing Manufacturing Companies & What Issues are Most Interesting to You?
We were extremely impressed by the thoughtful responses to our March poll questions – and we extend our thanks and appreciation to all who participated.
Although the respondent group was small (preventing us from claiming anything statistically definitive), we gained much insight about the challenges our readership is facing, as well as about which manufacturing-related issues we want to explore further.
As promised, here is a summary of the results from last month’s 5-question poll:
Responses to our first question, What is the most critical issue(s) and/or challenges(s) your organization faces?, implied that the down economy is still very much influencing business strategy, or, at the least, still has our attention on whole in a major way.
Top challenges listed were related to:
- Customers focused on price only
- Customer expectations related to scope of work
- Where to make capital investments
- Satisfying demand while avoiding risk
- Materials costs generally and, specifically, difficulty qualifying for discounts from suppliers
- Staffing issues, including challenges related to finding talent
When asked which challenges had the most impact on profitability, the top responses were clear: costs and talent.
We then asked about the potential gain that might be realized if these challenges were solved. All of our poll participants indicated a potential cost benefit of over $1K, but less than $1M.
The final poll question was: What topics and issues are you most interested in? We enabled respondents to select from a list of 16 topics, plus fill in their own, original responses. Our list included:
- Operational Efficiency
- Process Improvement
- Performance Improvement
- Decreasing Costs
- Increasing Profitability
- Minimizing Risk
- Safety
- Expansion Strategy
- Equipment (design, repair, replacement, upgrades, reliability, etc.)
- Project Planning
- Skills Gap (workforce development, education, training, etc.)
- Manufacturing in the U.S., vs. Overseas
- Innovation in Manufacturing
- Energy
- Facility Management (facility development, utilization, plant layout, etc.)
- Waste
Responses to this question (including responses to the fill-in-the-blank question) were as follows:
- Operational Efficiency
- Process Improvement
- Decreasing Costs
- Project Planning
- Minimizing Risk
- Skills Gap
- Manufacturing in the U.S., vs. Overseas
- Energy
While the choice of topics of interest certainly might be inspired by the current economic situation in the U.S., and globally (notice the number of topics related to efficiency/improvement, rather than, perhaps, expansion/innovation – options that we could assume may have been selected during an economic upturn), it’s also clear that our poll participants are most interested in those topics which have been the major points of discussion, concern and focus not only in manufacturing, but also in business generally. Specifically, topics related to the bottom line and creating a sustainable organization.
Would you have responded to our poll questions similarly or differently? We’d be very interested in hearing from you, and you can still participate in one of two ways:
- Add a comment below – add your responses to the poll questions, or your own analysis of our conclusions, in a comment to this blog post.
- Take the poll – we’d enjoy hearing what you think, and your answers will, of course, recalibrate the results. In which case, we will be happy to report any new insights.
Our thanks to everyone who participated in our Top Challenges Poll – we greatly appreciate your input and insight.
