Back in early 2020, I published a couple articles aimed at encouraging US Manufacturers to stay the course and go on the offensive while global supply chains hemorrhaged amidst geopolitical turmoil. Now is the Time to Take it Back and Manufacturing Companies, Keep the Faith and Soldier On were calls to action during a time of great confusion and chaos – periods which have consistently proven to be the right time to rise above the noise and come out on the winning side.

Two weeks ago we published a blog called Now is the Time to Take it Back which serves as our overall call to action for manufacturers in 2020.  We exposed that the over-rotation on outsourcing to China over the last 40 years – particularly over the last 17 years – is responsible for the lack of supply chain resiliency we’re experiencing right now as well as the hollowing out of US manufacturing workers.  Automation is not the culprit and never will be.  The real culprit is bureaucratic complacency (and complicity) influenced by the invisible hand of central banks.  Neither of which is the fault of the American Company or the American Worker.

Supply Chain Resilience amidst the Coronavirus

Now is the time for US manufacturers to take back what’s been given away.  The current Coronavirus related global supply chain disruptions are exposing what we all already knew: we have drastically over-rotated on Chinese buy and left our supply chains vulnerable and unstable.  Every company I have spoken to in the last month is feeling the impact and currently scrambling to rebalance their spend – this is the time to reclaim volume and US manufacturers must rise to the occasion.  Put yourself out there and get that volume back.  Get aggressive and reassert yourself as the top supplier again.  You can do it.  A lot has changed in the last 20 years and now is the time to usher in that previously elusive US manufacturing renaissance.

“If you try to be everything to everyone, you’ll be nothing to no one.” – Unknown, perhaps the author?

Forecasts, by definition, will always be wrong. The degree to which they are wrong varies widely – the magnitude of the gap is often a factor of demand planning techniques and tools, market factors, changing customer preferences, and operational strategy. In terms of strategy, many businesses seek to find the "sweet spot" between forecasting and operational flexibility; they ebb and flow across the forecasting-flexibility spectrum with changes in leadership preferences, business models, and enabling technology.

THE NEW MANUFACTURING ENVIRONMENT 

At Veryable, we refer to it as "The Amazon Effect."  If you own or operate a manufacturing business today, you may not be familiar with this phrase but you are most likely experiencing its impact.  The Amazon Effect alludes to the rapid increase in customer expectations across all industries and sectors: short lead times, high on-time delivery, customized products and services, shorter product life cycles, and personalized customer service.  In short, having a custom product on your doorstep within days is the new bar for customer expectations.

The Internet of Things is coming to a theatre near you.  Some of the early developments will be subtle, e.g., new apps popping up for your phone, new technologies arriving in your grocery store, new services springing up in your neighborhood, etc.  However, expect to turn back 10-15 years from now and find the 2017 landscape as unrecognizable as you might view 2002, before smart phones and social media became such permanent and essential fixtures in your life.  What you will be observing are the gradual effects of what Steve Case refers to as the “Third Wave of the Internet.”

The workforce has a once in a lifetime opportunity on its hands as the adoption of IoT and digital operations capabilities accelerates and becomes more widespread among producers and distributors.  Digital is the driver that ultimately divorces most the workforce from specialized and company-specific operational knowledge.  The result is an environment where any able-bodied worker should be able to step into most operational environments and be immediately productive due to the operator enablement resources deployed by a company sitting on vast amounts of new operational intelligence.  Not only do we think this is nothing for the worker to fear, we believe this is a massive opportunity and the on-demand marketplace is the ideal vehicle by which to form the new labor paradigm.

On-demand labor gives small and medium sized businesses the flexibility needed to grow and manage costs.  No one feels the effects of capacity constraints more than small businesses.  Orders are often turned down or missed, costs are often inflated during lulls in demand, and administrative costs around hiring/firing put unnecessary burdens on an already challenging cost structure.  Veryable’s on-demand marketplace aims to address these core challenges for businesses.

We’ve all been there before – experiencing the twists, turns, and dead ends of job seeking.  You post your resume on countless job boards and you apply to all the jobs you can find.  Most of the time you don’t hear a single word back.  Other times, you’re invited for interviews only to show up and find out that the job has been filled.  All that time wasted with nothing to show for it.