The global Supply chain provides goods faster and more efficiently than ever before. Here are the top supply chain skills for one of the most important industries: manufacturing.
Highlights:
Sitting at the intersection of raw materials acquisition and distribution of finished goods, manufacturing is one of the most crucial functions within the global Supply Chain.
If you’re in Manufacturing purchasing, think closely about what sort of buying you’re doing, how to diversify that experience, and deepen your understanding of the market you’re buying in – there are big dividends for those who do.
Boosting your skills with continuous improvement, just-in-time manufacturing, and Six Sigma are some of the best ways to distinguish yourself in the field.
This guest post comes to us from Argentus Supply Chain Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in Supply Chain Management and Procurement.
The global Supply Chain provides goods to consumers faster and more efficiently than ever before, and there’s a staggering diversity of Supply Chain professionals making that happen. Today, we want to take a moment to highlight the skills profile for one of Supply Chain’s most important industries – which also happens to contain one of its hottest job markets: Manufacturing.
Sitting at the intersection of raw materials acquisition and distribution of finished goods, manufacturing is one of the most crucial functions within the global Supply Chain. Despite perennial political statements around the “demise of manufacturing,” the sector is quite strong in Canada, especially in the Supply Chain, Purchasing and Logistics functions.
At Argentus, we’ve always worked in manufacturing recruitment, but we’ve been making a big push into this area recently, including in the areas of Aerospace, Consumer Electronics, Automotive, Electrical Manufacturing, Manufacturing Automation, and Food Production. We’ve seen what’s happening in the industry firsthand: dynamic companies are redefining the space, using a strong Supply Chain to scale up quickly while controlling costs.
In the past few months, we’ve helped a Food Production company with an innovative approach to product development scale up their Procurement and Plant bench strength. We’ve bolstered a fast-growing Aerospace company looking for highly-technical technical buyers to boost their new product introductions. We’ve helped a startup manufacturer seeking their first Supply Chain Manager to implement a sourcing, distribution and logistics strategy for the first time.
And these are just a few. These experiences, combined with our intelligence in the marketplace, have given us a good understanding of the hottest skills in Manufacturing Supply Chain jobs in the market as of right now.
A couple caveats: this reflects manufacturing positions at the corporate Supply Chain Management level and not the shop floor / distribution centre level. It also isn’t exhaustive of all required skills, just those that we’ve noticed being in high demand recently.
So without further ado, here are some of the hottest skills:
“Direct” Purchasing: Raw Materials, Packaging, Food
Buying raw materials has always been a vital part of manufacturing – after all, what can you produce without raw materials? – but clients’ demand for specific raw materials purchasing experience is rising. Whether it’s food ingredients or building materials, companies are looking for individuals who can think strategically about raw materials to find better suppliers and processes. For certain raw materials, they want individuals who have a deep understanding of particular commodities markets. If you’re in Manufacturing purchasing, think closely about what sort of buying you’re doing, how to diversify that experience, and deepen your understanding of the market you’re buying in – there are big dividends for those who do.
ERP Skills:
It probably goes without saying at this point, but a high degree of competency with ERP systems is a must-have in today’s manufacturing Supply Chain. Many of the vital Supply Chain planning functions for most manufacturing processes (production planning, supply network planning, etc.) run through ERP systems like SAP, Oracle or Microsoft NAV, so it’s no wonder that most front line workers distinguish themselves with excellent command of these systems.
Buying “build to spec” for highly engineered components:
If you’re working in a highly technical subsection of manufacturing (electrical, aerospace, etc.), more companies are seeking Procurement people with the technical background to source components at a very early stage of new product development. We’ve worked on a number of searches recently where our client is looking for new product buyers who can source based on technical specs, as opposed to drawings. People with mechanical engineering backgrounds are excellent for these roles. But even if you don’t have that background, an understanding of detailed technical specifications can give your career a boost over more transactional buyers.
Continuous improvement:
Lean manufacturing, Kaizen and continuous improvement are decades old at this point, but manufacturers who fail to implement these models are still falling behind in the marketplace. The ability to constantly improve manufacturing processes is still one of the chief differentiators for Supply Chains, and companies are constantly on the lookout for people who can help transform and improve their operations. Boosting your skills with continuous improvement, just-in-time manufacturing, and Six Sigma are some of the best ways to distinguish yourself in the field.
So that’s some perspective from the front lines of Supply Chain recruitment in manufacturing. But what are you seeing in the marketplace, either as a Supply Chain professional or hiring manager?
Putting your audience’s informational needs first when publishing blog content is the only way to guarantee success in the modern marketing landscape.
Highlights:
Audiences are increasingly ignoring promotional messaging.
Buyers are seeking value from vendors outside the sales funnel.
Information is your best asset — publish what you know.
The latest industry research from the Content Marketing Institute indicates that nearly all (90%) of the most successful B2B content marketers have one thing in common: they prioritize their audience’s informational needs over their sales/promotional message. And that’s compared with only 56% of the least successful B2B content marketers.
Materials-handling marketers should take note when making decisions about publishing blog content. We see companies in this sector making this mistake all the time. They want to fill their blogs with information about their products. But to achieve success in today’s B2B purchasing landscape, you need to be prioritizing your audience’s needs over promotional messaging.
Sales pitches get ignored
A large reason for shifting focus is because audiences are increasingly tuning out sales pitches. This generation of buyers has been heavily marketed to their entire lives, and they don’t hesitate to swipe left at the slightest hint of someone trying to sell them something.
Think for a moment about your own personal experiences with email, social media, and even phone calls. The truth is, most of us tune out overt sales pitches, either hitting delete or scrolling past them. We’ve moved beyond a time when marketing is about pushing your products.
Your blog, therefore, should not be another channel for selling. But, what kinds of information should you publish?
Provide value by putting customer needs first
The answer is actually quite simple. What information or expertise do your buyers want? Your most valuable commodity is your unique understanding of the challenges your audience faces. If you begin publishing blog content that answers their questions, they’ll be more likely to find you, remember you, and become your customer.
As you think about publishing blog content, take a step back and think about the questions your buyers ask, either of you, on social media, or elsewhere. Examine industry publications to determine the challenges faced by your target buyer persona.
Does your content answer those questions? Does it offer value in and of itself? And does it inform your audience about how you are there to help them? If the answer to these questions is yes, then you’re taking the right steps toward materials-handling marketing with today’s B2B buyers.
Brand awareness is key in optimizing your content marketing efforts but can be challenging to quantify. Here are four metrics to help you measure brand awareness.
Highlights:
Use tools, like SharedCount, to track the number of times a piece of your content has been shared across different social media platforms.
Use the analytics from blog share bars to track the popularity of your posts and help shape content for your editorial calendar.
Taking the time to measure brand awareness will ultimately help you in optimizing your digital marketing efforts.
Video transcript:
I’m Katie Russell and I’m a marketing strategist here at Fronetics. Today I’m going to talk to you about four ways to measure brand awareness for your packaging company.
Brand awareness is the extent to which customers – both potential and current – are able to recognize your brand. It is key in optimizing your digital marketing efforts, but it can be hard to quantify. Here are four metrics to help you start measuring brand awareness for your packaging company.
1. Social media reach
Social media reach is the total number of people that your content can reach across social media platforms. Use tools like SharedCount to track the number of times a piece of your content has been shared across different social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn. This can help you figure out what platforms perform best for your content and can also help you shape the kind of content that you’re putting on social media platforms.
2. Brand mentions
How people talk about your packaging company online? If they are, you need to know about it. Try tracking tools like Google Alerts or Hootsuite to make sure that you know every single time someone talks about your packaging brand or any of your products or services.
3. Blog shares
Here are Fronetics, we talk a lot about the importance of having a blog that posts valuable and informative content to your readers. What’s also important is giving your readers the ability to share this content. It’s as easy as adding a share tool to the side of your blog posts. This helps you reach a larger audience and gain views from people that normally wouldn’t see your content. You can also use the analytics from these share bars to track the popularity of your posts and help shape content for your editorial calendar.
4. Search volume
Use tools like Google Adwords or Moz to track searches for your brand, products, even your blog and social media posts. It can help in refining your keywords that you use throughout your content to know specifically what people are searching for when they’re searching for your packaging brand.
Taking the time to measure brand awareness will ultimately help you in optimizing your digital marketing efforts and will also help increase leads. IF you need more information or need help getting started measuring your brand awareness, visit us at fronetics.com.
As automation technologies become increasingly sophisticated, companies throughout the supply chain are realizing the beneficial impact of automation on materials handling.
Highlights:
Manufacturers of automation technologies are predicted to grow significantly over the next 5 years.
Automating the “first mile” of the supply chain helps reduce labor challenges and leads to increased productivity.
Robotics technologies offer greater capacity for data collection, facilitating informed process decisions.
While the impact of automation on the “last mile” of the supply chain is often the subject of public interest, automation in the “first mile” deserves just as much attention. Advanced robotics are increasingly ensuring accuracy — while minimizing or even eliminating human involvement in various processes — at every stage of the supply chain. Industry experts are predicting an ever-growing impact of automation on materials handling, with companies reaping the benefits up and down the supply chain.
Particularly in the materials-handling sector, human capital is increasingly difficult to recruit and maintain. Additionally, labor costs in global markets such as India and China are rising. Naturally, companies are increasingly inclined to replace or redeploy human labor, with the help of automated material-handling systems.
Not to mention, the increasing sophistication of machine-learning capabilities or AI within available automation technologies allows for even greater productivity. And there’s strong reason to believe that we’re only seeing the beginning of what automation can do. Vendors who create these technologies are investing heavily in R&D, aggressively attempting to expand their product offerings to meet specific industry demands while complying with the complex standards and regulations in place.
Quantifying the costs and impact of automation on materials handling
The robust growth in the robotics-equipment-manufacturing sector demonstrates that the materials-handling industry is investing in automation. Thanks to the demand for high-performance robotics systems, New Equipment Digest (NED) predicts that within the materials-handling-equipment sector, the robotics segment will grow by over 8%, reaching $20 billion by the year 2024. The overall material-handling-equipment market is expected to surpass $190 billion by the same year, according to a growth forecast report by Global Market Insights, Inc.
“Growing automation capabilities in the manufacturing space coupled with increasing penetration of advanced technologies, such as IoT, RFID, and AI, are expected to drive the material-handling-equipment market growth,” predicts the NED. These technologies are already increasing productivity and throughput in the materials-handling sector and reducing the potential for human error. The predicted growth in the manufacturing of robotics equipment points to the increasingly positive impact of automation supply chain-wide.
Of course, automation is not without its challenges. Companies face technical issues involved in implementation, not to mention the large capital outlay required to invest in costly equipment and technologies. With increased technical sophistication and network utilization, there are threats to cybersecurity, requiring companies to invest in measures to protect their technology.
Robotics-equipment manufacturers recognize that while automation offers significant benefits for materials handling, companies need to study potential impact before making these costly investments.
Many manufacturers are offering tools for quantifying the impact of automation on materials handling. OTTO Motors, a manufacturer of self-driving-vehicles, offers an ROI calculator, allowing potential buyers the opportunity to receive an easy ROI estimate. Manufacturers are also increasingly offering simulations of materials-handling systems, allowing potential customers to determine efficacy, test designs, and study new procedures without disrupting operations.
Realizing the benefits of automation for materials handling
Beyond the well-known benefits, such as decreased costs and increased productivity, automating materials-handling processes can offer a variety of additional advantages to companies’ first-mile operations. In fact, streamlining these processes and reducing costs has its own positive repercussions throughout a company’s operations, as it allows for increased speed, productivity, and accuracy operation-wide.
Additional benefits of automating materials handling include:
The access to real-time data provided by automated technologies allows for more complete Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Labor shortages and high turnover are some of the primary challenges in materials handling – automation shields manufacturers from these challenges, while allowing human labor to be repurposed into more intricate tasks.
Implementing technology in the materials-handling phase of the supply chain can connect to other automated processes within the factory.
The availability of data and the ability to leverage it allows adjustments to be made in real time, meaning more flexible manufacturing.
The bottom line is that, while it can be costly at the outset, automation at the front end of the supply chain, namely materials handling, offers rich and diverse benefits sector-wide.
We get many queries from manufacturers about social marketing — mostly, why and how should I use it — so here are our answers to the most-popular questions manufacturers ask about social media.
Highlights:
Facilitate networking opportunities, thought leadership, and prospect/client relationships.
Consider using popular platforms like YouTube and Instagram to engage users and drive website traffic.
B2B operations have increasingly embraced social media as a strategic marketing tool. In fact, 9 out of 10 companies are active on at least one platform. But manufacturers, in particular, have been reticent to jump on the social media bandwagon.
To help you launch or refine your efforts, we’ve put together the following answers to the most-popular questions manufacturers ask about social media.
Why should manufacturing companies be on social media?
There are three major reasons that manufacturing brands should be all over social media:
To make the most of social media as a marketing tool, abandon the idea that it’s about blatant sales pitches. Instead, approach it from the perspective that it’s an inherently social tool – that is, its value for manufacturers is in its potential to establish and expand thought leadership and to cultivate meaningful and fruitful relationships within your industry and among prospects and clients.
Which social media platforms should manufacturers be using?
Not all social media platforms are created equal. Each requires its own strategy, content format, and media. We recommend that manufacturers consider these five platforms:
1) Facebook
Facebook is an excellent place to share content with a wide segment of your audience, to promote engagement (through likes, comments, and shares), and to engage with peers and prospects. Not only that, the savviest marketers are using Facebook to understand their industry better – everything from strategies of peer brands to a fuller picture of your target buyer persona to the informational or product needs of your prospects.
2) Twitter
Twitter’s format is about brief, pithy content, used to engage with and inform your audience. This is an ideal place to let customers know what you’re planning next, to establish your corporate personality, and to let your audience in on a slice of your day-to-day operations and values.
3) YouTube
Video marketing for manufacturers is skyrocketing. With video being the most popular form of content online today, YouTube is an obvious choice for marketers. Whether it’s “how to” videos, footage of your operations, or interviews with subject-matter experts, your brand should be using YouTube to drive search traffic and educate prospects.
4) LinkedIn
B2B marketers unequivocally rank LinkedIn as the most effective network for lead generation, follower engagement, and traffic to their websites. An ideal place to engage with industry leaders, LinkedIn is also great for distributing content to a focused audience.
5) Instagram
The popularity of this highly visual platform has continued to skyrocket – it’s currently the second-most-used social media platform (up from fourth just two years ago). And believe it or not, this picture-based network is a powerhouse for B2B brands. We’ve written extensively about how brands can leverage Instagram and Instagram Stories. Suffice it to say, this is a perfect place to post your most engaging visual content and actively engage with followers.
How can manufacturers be effective on social media?
As with any content marketing effort, a well-thought-out social media strategy is a big part of success. As you create and begin to implement your strategy, start with these five tips.
1) Listen.
Before you post even a single piece of content, start by listening to your audience. In the days before social media, marketers had it much harder when it came to determining audience needs and preferences. Use these platforms to research your target prospects, as well as how competitors are engaging followers. Make note of the questions your target audience has, frustrations or challenges they express, and what types of content they engage with.
2) Focus on offering value.
You’d be surprised how many manufacturers neglect to place a premium on simply being useful with their social media content. It’s not complicated: If you post relevant, valuable content for your target audience, you’ll boost engagement, grow brand awareness, and generate and convert more leads.
3) You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you post.
One of the great things about social media is that it rewards not only content creation, but content curation. While you do want to be posting original content most of the time (experts recommend about 60%), a good chunk of your posting activity should include curating relevant content from third parties to share with your followers.
4) Be creative.
Separating yourself from your competitors can be a challenge, but it’s one worth striving toward. Start by asking yourself what makes your operation unique, what’s special about your process, what industry-leading expertise does your executive team have, what unusual perspective can you offer? Next, start breaking these four rules.
5) Learn from your successes and setbacks.
There are many tools out there to help you track the results of your social media efforts. Determine the right KPIs for your business and keep track of your results relentlessly. These metrics will allow you to study your impact and frequently tailor your strategy accordingly.
It’s time for manufacturers to fully embrace the marketing potential of social media. Whether you create and implement your own strategy, or decide to outsource your social media efforts, social media is a powerful set of tools that manufacturers should be harnessing.
Are there other questions manufactures ask about social media that we missed? Let me know in the comments.
A McKinsey & Company report studied the impact of automation in manufacturing driven by rapid advances in robotics, AI, and machine learning.
Highlights:
New robotics technologies are cheaper, faster, and smarter than before.
87% of hours workers spend in production could be automated with existing technologies.
Learn what four factors to consider when making decisions about automation.
Since the industrial revolution, automation has been a major disruptor in manufacturing. Once again, a new generation of robotics and related technologies is reshaping the face of the manufacturing and distribution industries. In fact, American manufacturing has made a recent comeback, thanks in large part to the widespread use of automation and robotics.
Automation technologies that were once cost-prohibitive are now more achievable — and the return on investment is greater than ever before. The new generation of robots are not only far less expensive than their ancestors, but they are also more versatile, flexible, and able to learn new tasks, even those that were far too difficult for machines just a few short years ago.
Robots are now capable of, for example, “picking and packing irregularly spaced objects, and resolving wiring conflicts in large-scale projects in, for example, the aerospace industry,” according to a recent report from McKinsey & Company. Not only that, artificial intelligence is leveling the playing field between human and machine, and “increasing the potential for automating work activities in many industries. In one recent test, for example, computers were able to read lips far more accurately than professionals.”
Quantifying the impact of automation on manufacturing
McKinsey’s study, which covered 46 countries and about 80% of the global workforce, determined that a tremendous amount of working hours could be eliminated or repurposed by automation with technology that is already here.
The study found that “87% of the hours spent on activities performed by workers in production occupations are automatable — the most of any manufacturing occupation.”
And it doesn’t stop there. “Even among other occupations in manufacturing (for example, engineering, maintenance, materials movement, management, and administration), however, there is still significant opportunity, with approximately 45 percent of these working hours automatable as well.”
The cost and logistics of automating
In general, the study found that automation allowed wages to increase globally and profits to grow. The authors emphasize the fact that in order to capture long-term value from automation, manufacturers’ best bet is to implement technologies in phases, capturing value at each phase, allowing for future investment.
Many complex factors come into play when it comes to meeting the challenges associated with automation, deciding what to automate, and when to implement technologies to best capture long-term value. Cost is just one element, albeit an important one.
McKinsey suggests considering the following four factors when making decisions about what to automate:
Technical feasibility
Cost associated with developing and deploying necessary hardware and software
Cost of labor and resultant “supply-and-demand dynamics”
Benefits beyond labor substitution, such as increased output and quality, and fewer errors
An American manufacturing renaissance
The Association for Advancing Automation has predicted that “American manufacturing’s embrace of robotics will ensure a new manufacturing renaissance in this country.” Already, we’re seeing a steady trickle of companies reversing outsourcing trends, as it’s becoming profitable again for manufacturing to take place in the United States, rather than relying on cheap labor abroad.
As more operations embrace automation — and as we continue to witness rapid advances in robotics, AI, and machine learning — American manufacturers won’t be the only ones to reap the benefits. Many experts are predicting that automation in manufacturing will create new, better paying jobs.
Optimists include our own CEO Frank Cavallaro, who recently wrote: “From what I see now … I still feel optimistic that AI and automation will create leaner, more efficient operations that will, in turn, create new (even if different) jobs. To me, it still looks like the ones winning from the increasing technological advances in the manufacturing industry are, in fact, we humans.”
