Episode 10 - U.S. Manufacturing Today

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In this episode of U.S. Manufacturing Today, sponsored by Veryable, host Matt Horine welcomes Jim Vinoski, a business strategy advisor, author, and Forbes journalist with extensive experience in the industrial sector. Jim discusses the current state of American manufacturing, highlighting the positive trends of reshoring and reindustrialization. He emphasizes the importance of strategic planning, technological adoption, and maintaining a strong connection with the manufacturing floor to ensure long-term success. Jim also shares insights from his work profiling over 300 companies, underscoring the resilience and optimism that drive successful manufacturing operations. Listeners are encouraged to explore Jim’s content on various platforms and learn more about strategies to navigate the evolving manufacturing landscape.

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Timestamps

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:56 The State of American Manufacturing
01:58 Reshoring and Policy Impacts
04:07 Lessons from 300+ Companies
06:15 Challenges and Opportunities in Manufacturing
16:13 Technology and Workforce Development
19:10 Advice for Mid-size Manufacturers
21:07 Conclusion and Where to Find More

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Episode Transcript

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Matt Horine: [00:00:00] Welcome back to U.S. Manufacturing Today, sponsored by Veryable where we talk with the leaders, innovators, and change makers, shaping the future of American industry, along with providing regular updates on the state of the industry, the changing landscape policy and more.

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Today we're joined by someone who brings a unique 360 degree view of manufacturing in the US. He's an author, a business strategy advisor, and a prolific content creator for the industrial world. Jim Vinoski has studied hundreds of companies through his work at Forbes and his own substack columns, he's seen what works and what doesn't across a wide swath of us industry. Most importantly, his work tells the story of so many companies, industries, and organizations that make up the backbone of the U.S. economy and manufacturing. He's also the host of manufacturing web show and talks via YouTube and Rumble, where I had the opportunity to join him for his show, and now he is welcome on ours.

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Jim, welcome to the show.

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Jim Vinoski: Thank you, Matt. Good to be here.

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Matt Horine: We're glad to have you, and I think we'll just jump right into it. One of the big things that we've talked about, I know on your show and what I've seen a lot of [00:01:00] your content is this macro view of manufacturing. Right now what we're experiencing is some call a renaissance, some call reindustrialization, but you've had a front row seat to the highs and lows across the industry for many years and generated a lot of content on it. What's your take on where American manufacturing stands today and where it's headed?

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Jim Vinoski: I like to say we're having a manufacturing moment right now. It's just like all the stars are aligned all of a sudden, and we've talked about a lot of things for a number of years that are finally coming together, coming to fruition, but it's still a place where we've gotta play our cards right to really maximize the effect and make it a lasting thing beyond the moment. And I think that's where we need to focus.

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Matt Horine: Absolutely, and you see a lot of the change happening in real time where we say we provide an update and by the time we record and go to publish, this environment can change pretty dramatically. What are some of the most dynamic things that you're seeing right now in some of those trends where you say, Hey, over the past few years, we've talked a lot about it, but now we're seeing it in action.

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Jim Vinoski: Reshoring is a big [00:02:00] one. A number of people have been talking about that and doing a lot of great advocacy. Harry Moser at the Reshoring Initiative, for example. I know you just did a show as well with the Reshoring Institute, and those folks should be rightly proud of what they've delivered because it's happening as we speak right now.And so a lot of policy things and industry activities that they were proponents for have taken place and driven us the right direction. There's still a lot that needs to happen though. What I was really pushing last year was the challenge we have with electricity with power generation, and I was saying we're in an existential risk moment here as we headed into the election, that if that had gone the other way, we'd be looking at a future like the UK and Germany are. The industrialization because energy was gonna get much more expensive and much less reliable. We've dodged the bullet nationally, but there's still half the states that are chasing that same direction, and we've gotta fix that in as many places as we [00:03:00] can. But I think. All in all things are looking much more positive to me than they have in a number of years, and I've never seen, and I've had a multi-decade career, I've never seen a time like this where we've just got so many proponents and people in general realizing that, yeah, what we did was not the smartest thing in the world, and we need to go back to making stuff for ourselves and being a little more self-sufficient.

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Matt Horine: That's a big component of a lot of the conversations that we have and what is going on is not only is manufacturing vital economically, it's a national security issue on multiple levels, and one of those is being able to produce your own energy, which we're seeing a great regulatory reform on that front and.It's so interesting that you mention that because I've talked to multiple businesses who have told me that power is actually an issue at the even local level. Spoke with a business owner who moved facilities and he said his number one problem was getting his machines up and running because they didn't have the right type of power facilitated to the building.So it's interesting to see [00:04:00] that from the macro scale all the way down to I moved facilities and now I have an issue. So a really great one to highlight. Let's take a quick pivot to your lessons from the 300 plus companies that you've profiled. You've done that in Forbes, you did it in Substack. I know you've profiled Veryable before.I've had the honor of you profiling another company that I previously worked at Victaulic, and I remember reading it and thinking, I'm at two companies where Jim Vinoski has profiled our company and I've really made it. But I love reading the stories and what you love to do is tell that story and you've had a front row seat to the highs and lows across the industry.What's your take on. Those companies stand today and where it's headed.

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Jim Vinoski: A lot of that goes back to my start with Forbes. Seven years ago when that opportunity came my way, I was talking to the woman who came, my first editor. I was that initial interview and she wanted to know what I wanted to write about, and I said, the main thing I wanna write about is what Americans make because there's so many people out there who think we just don't make anything anymore, and it couldn't be further [00:05:00] from the truth.Yeah, we've had a lot of stuff that's gone overseas. We've had full swaths of industry that have been hollowed out almost to the point of non-existence textiles in the U.S. is now we make 3% of what we wear ship building. We're 0.1% of global. Ship building output and just absolute insanity for, like you said, national security in that regard.But that being said, we're still number two worldwide as a manufacturing nation and industrial nation, and I think we ought to regain number one. The beauty of having that opportunity now with Forbes to dive into those hundreds of companies is to see every single one of them has been through the ups and downs and. Pretty much all of them have been on the ropes pretty close to shutting down at some time or other, and they've made it. They were able to survive where other companies weren't. And so being able to talk to the people who've fought those battles and understand how they made it, it's a lot of different [00:06:00] things for the different.Kinds of businesses they are, but just having that resilience and that never say die attitude to do what it takes to survive and get to where that next upswing comes, so your business recovers. That's to me, really the number one message.

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Matt Horine: Absolutely. I think the overwhelming sense is that you get a profound level of optimism from people who make and build things.Like you said, they're, they're on the ropes and that fighting spirit in manufacturing is something that always seems to persist and people look at it at the daily and weekly and annual level of coming back and doing what they do best. And I think one of the things that you mentioned there was so interesting when you dive into specific segments of industry like textiles or ship building. A lot of the discourse we see in media today says there are some things that we don't want back, or there are some things that are better left in a sweatshop somewhere, or there are things that are maybe we don't want to do that in just advanced manufacturing. My experience has been a little different and I imagine yours is as well, where anything that we [00:07:00] make is a produce as a producing country and as people who make and build things, it's all on the table. And I'm curious about your take on that.

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Jim Vinoski: Yeah, it's funny you bring that up. I had a comment on one of my Substack articles, this guy who was neck deep in the economic theory thing, and I'm a big fan of economics and right there with the ideas, if you're parroting the, the quotes of the Austrian economists to people who've lost their jobs to unfair overseas competition, you're not gaining ground. And this guy would not let go of it. And he said that exact thing. He said, I've been. In a garment factory, and that's just not a job. I think we should have here talk about the arrogance of, I find this work distasteful, so no one in my country should be able to even access it to be able to have that job.It's just insanity and it's really been a driver of what we've seen is that the urban people who get away from how we grow things, how we mine things, how we make things are the ones who pass these crazy layers of [00:08:00] regulation that then. Force people not to be able to make it here and move it overseas. And meanwhile, our fellow citizens have their jobs disappear, have their communities crater. You have knock on effects like the drug and alcohol problems and civil unrest and violence. All of that stuff can be traced back to not having that future. And the fact is, in America. I'm not gonna say never, because you can hide some things that are probably be pretty distasteful. But again, I've got a multi-decade career. I've never worked in a sweat shop. It's all been in manufacturing. For the most part, it doesn't exist because to be able to compete in the U.S. you have to be more highly automated. You have to be less loaded up with manual labor because our labor costs are so much higher by virtue of being a richer country. And so that's what we as a nation have as a strength is being able to produce. Without larding it up on, on this physical backbreaking labor, we've gotten away from that, and that's one of the big advantages we have today and one of the ways we're leading the world in the right [00:09:00] direction in manufacturing. So I don't think any segment of industry should be off limits. That to me is just utter nonsense.

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Matt Horine: No, I absolutely spot on with where my thinking was and it's so interesting that you mention. That cosmopolitan worldview that kind of steps away from where do the things that I use on a daily basis come from? That goes beyond manufacturing. Where does my food come from? Where does the clothes that I'm wearing today come from? It really is a level of societal preservation. When you take a step back and think about without the electricity or without the means to make and build for ourselves, produce our own medicine, produce our own food, you're about 48 hours away from a societal collapse.In that event, if something were to happen, and I've always heard that estimate and thought that's. Crazy, but you've seen how it plays out when there's national emergencies and things begin to teeter a little bit and not being able to actually answer the call to a true national emergency because we don't have the shipbuilding capacity or we're unable to produce. If you look back, and this is always a funny anecdote 'cause I don't know how real it was, but the [00:10:00] ventilator production during the pandemic era where we certainly didn't need as many ventilators, but you saw manufacturers pivot and stand up and say, we could do it if we needed to, and that certainly played out as a great story. I think one of the other things that comes to mind, and especially through your work and your deep dive into hundreds of companies, what patterns have emerged around success or failure in those companies and where do you see the greatest success stories? Just not only the Made in America approach, but how they go about and do this type of work. Is it the optimism or what is the key driver that you see that BRI makes these manufacturers successful?

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Jim Vinoski: That's multi-pronged. Number one is absolutely that optimism and that can-do spirit. I always say manufacturing is the crucible of the business world because you can't hide you. You have to make what you intend to make.You have to make it at a quality that is gonna sell at a price that's gonna make you profitable. If you're not doing those things, you disappear. And so many of the companies that I have dug into and that are my favorite stories are [00:11:00] ones that have lasted years and decades and generations. I've got companies and I'm working on a book to sing the praises of the unsung Heroes of American Manufacturing. Shooting to get that out here at the end of the summer this year, featuring 21 companies, and most of them are. Multi-generation companies. The longest tenured one, sixth generation family leadership right now. And so it's that consistency of optimism and ability to deliver the goods despite the challenges.The other thing I see again and again are the lasting companies and the ones that have, not just the leaders who fight that battle, but everyone aligned in that battle. And that's what you have to survive the really tough times. They're the ones who not gonna say they treat their people like family. Family is. A special thing. It's a bit of a stretch, but it's one remove from that. It's treating people like where you are personally involved in every single person that's in the organization. And, and it's not like the CEO is gonna be going to dinner with [00:12:00] every single team member out there on the floor, but it's that structuring the organization so that every single person is taken care of on that personal level.I think my kinda golden example for that is a company called the Monte Group that's up north in Michigan, Northern Northern Michigan, in the lower peninsula in Resort Central. You wouldn't think there's manufacturing at all in this place. It's beautiful beaches and just a gorgeous area. It's this family that started manufacturing.They're on their fifth generation. It's truly a multinational conglomerate of a number of different businesses and branched out even into real estate and things like that. The things they do for their people are just exemplary. I was up there in January learning about how they're taking a motel they owned and turning it into what they call the three quarter house so that the people they hire out of halfway houses who are in recovery have a place to go and they can't stay in the halfway house anymore.They need to move on. They're not out on the streets. They're [00:13:00] not. Renting someplace where they're back with the bad crowd. They're in a supportive environment. And then on the other end of it, one business they're in is sand and gravel. They had a plate out sand and gravel pit. What do they do with it?They build a low cost housing development for people because it's a resort community who can't afford to live in the normal houses that they use. The latest in modular construction. Structured it where it's very affordable for people to get into these houses and start living their lives. It's just that, to me is what sets these companies apart, is that optimism. Coupled with that true tie to the people who do the job every day,

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Matt Horine: I. That's such a great story about how manufacturing orders of effects in small communities or in even midsize or large urban centers, where manufacturing really impacts the quality of life around everyone, and especially where it plays out and how they spend their dollars, how they spend their earnings.But when a company can really focus in on how do they provide for the community and custom [00:14:00] make it for their workforce, that's a really inspiring story from that company up in Michigan. If we've taken a look at the big kind of strategic change in the overall story on reshoring and what companies are doing today, and maybe we'll zero in on a little bit more of the tactical side.Tariffs is anybody's guess. I don't think anybody who tells you they know exactly what's gonna happen with tariffs, knows what they're talking about, because this is our first run at what we would consider a trade war because it is, and it's our first run at tariffs of this magnitude in at least a century.And so it's, it seems to be playing out on a daily, weekly basis. What are some of the tactical fixes? And you could probably provide some insight on that, that you would give manufacturers for quick wins in this type of environment.

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Jim Vinoski: The smart ones learned from covid and made adjustments before this hit, and I think that's the lesson to be learned is if you didn't catch on from the supply chain disruptions we had coming out of the pandemic, don't miss this moment. You better be out there beating the bushes for where can I get things when my [00:15:00] existing supply source breaks down? And I know it's oftentimes tough to pivot real quickly, but. As you work through the challenges day to day of what the disruptions are causing, you have to prioritize. Also doing the hard work of how do we make sure this doesn't happen again?

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Matt Horine: That's something we're seeing play out in real time. I've met with many manufacturers who I. I don't wanna say hedged, but bet that there was something that was going to change one way or the other. And this long end to what we would consider the world order or globalization where everything's outsourcing or moving to shifting to different types of countries.And it comes back to, to reshore in that real time transition back to reshoring. The ones who built that into their strategy seem to have a leg up and they're not scrambling as much, but they certainly have. Been at the front of the line in terms of taking on new orders and maybe expanding their business. I think that's part of the transformation story, and we've talked a lot about it through my work at Veryable and your interest in Veryable as a company. A lot of the [00:16:00] challenges that we hear, or some of the catch phrases that are used are, there aren't enough workers or there's a worker shortage, and our position on that is about labor access and people being able to find realtime work and match it with companies realtime demand. But from what you've seen, and I've, I have seen a couple of articles and your thoughts on this, but curious for the audience, what's the real story when it comes to tech adoption and workforce development and that type of operational transformation in U.S. plants on the ground level? What does that look like to you?

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Jim Vinoski: Let me echo your thought. There is really is not so much a worker shortage as a skills gap and something we certainly should have seen coming, but here it is and no matter how well you foresaw it, you're feeling it. It goes back to that automation piece we talked about earlier. It's one of the ways that we adjust here in the U.S. and in the western world, is by looking to technology to help us with these kinds of problems.And I look at you guys and some other companies I've covered that are bringing solutions to the floor to help people accomplish [00:17:00] their work. You think about the old ERPs, and it's so much beyond that. It's on the floor systems that will literally know the operator or the maintenance person because of ai, they'll have learned that person's way of doing things and will offer a real time. Here's the next step. If you're stuck, real time work guidance, whether it's clearing a jam or fixing a machine, having that kind of backup when you've got less skilled operators and maintenance techs is just, it's a game changer. And similarly, we look at things like Lean. I think when people have gotten very effective at employing Lean, it's at the floor level and it's reinforcing the behaviors that optimize how you run your operation.There's technology that will now automatically pull even the most inexperienced person into doing things that way. And so if you don't know about these technologies, go read my articles because there's a bunch of 'em out there, but go do your homework. I always couple it with this notion of people don't know how [00:18:00] to employ ai. You don't have to know because there's already so many people out there who are. Wrapping it into tools like this who all you do is bring them on to help you solve your problems and you're already using ai. You don't have to be an expert yourself. Go hire the experts.

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Matt Horine: Absolutely. And it's so interesting because I've had enough time in career at this point to see trends rise and fall.Where a couple of years ago, it would've been something like automation and robots and cobots are going to take over worker positions, or there was a stretch even where blockchain was a talking point about what does it do to displace workers, which I thought was easy at the time and even crazier now.And now it's ai. So you always see these trends pop up and I think that they compliment the American worker versus replace or take away some type of. Manufacturing labor because it's such the, it's a critical component to producing anything. You don't replace it. You just make sure that it's skilled to the right level and can work with those tools that empower [00:19:00] them.I think one of the biggest questions, or tying your consulting role in your consulting practice to what you've seen on the floor, the storytelling, all of those things. If you had five minutes with a mid-size manufacturer's leadership team, and you've probably iterated on a few of these points already.What are, what is the one thing you would tell them to focus on today to be successful?

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Jim Vinoski: I would couple what we just talked about. Those opportunities for bringing in technology fixes, technology, help with the various problems to getting out on the floor for yourself. I, I see this trend through my career where.It's like the people who have risen to the higher levels of leadership and manufacturing see that as their golden ticket to never have to worry about the floor again. And if you're in manufacturing and you're not on the floor, to me, you know you're not doing your job. I. Toyota gets all the press and yet people miss the highest levels of executives in Toyota are routinely on their auto assembly floors, [00:20:00] working with the workers, not just out there doing the standard executive tour where the plant's been all cleaned up and they don't see any of the problems.No, they're out there in the real world working with the people on the front line to understand, okay, what are the problems today and how do we fix 'em? So I don't care what level you're at in manufacturing, you need to be engaged in that work. And what you then bring is you should have also the time to study what those potential solutions are out in the technology world like Veryable, like these other companies I referred to, and, and be able to couple those up to. Truly solve the problems that your frontline workers are facing day to day?

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Matt Horine: Absolutely. We see it all the time on the shop floor where people, there might be that disconnect and it could be a disconnect over a technology, and in the worst case, it's a disconnect from what you're actually building on a daily basis where people get so far separated from that or a management class.That steps away from the actual work. And at a time like this, it's not, not great to be clo or not close to your workers because there should be spikes in [00:21:00] orders. There will be down cycle issues with different sourcing strategies. It's a, it's an important time for manufacturers. Also wanted to get a chance to talk about some of the work that you have coming up and where our listeners can follow along.I'd mentioned Substack, and you had mentioned your book. Where can our audience find out more about you and your work and your web show?

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Jim Vinoski: The web show's on YouTube, Rumble, and the various podcast outlets. It's both video and audio format manufacturing talks. You can go to manufacturingtalks.com and see it there. Forbes. Just search for my name on the Forbes site. You'll find my author page and all my articles listed there. And then the Substack is also manufacturing talks with Jim Vinoski. So just search by that name or my name and those will pop up. My company is called Cosgrove Content and Consulting, and you can find that both through my LinkedIn site and my own webpage of that name.I've made it public now. My, my goal is to be the micro of manufacturing, not that I wanna be famous. I have no desire to follow that direction. [00:22:00] To truly be making that kind of difference he's making with skilled trades in the manufacturing world. To me, the two marched in lockstep somewhat as the skilled trades gap is certainly hitting manufacturing, but it's beyond that.It's just also manufacturing work as a whole. And people who, for several generations now have been steered away from that Quite wrong headedly and. Obviously my biased view, it really is gonna take a wholesale effort on the part of people like us in manufacturing to help now change that perception. We're older, the jobs are, the sweat shop stuff, the dark, dirty, dangerous stuff we talked about, and we need to show them that it's completely different than that and it's high tech and it's exciting and rewarding.

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Matt Horine: Absolutely couldn't have said it better myself, and it's something that we see all the time where the access to the manufacturing world and understanding what's truly going on, it needs a champion.You're a great one. We appreciate you coming on and really enjoyed this. This was packed with insight and we really appreciate it.

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Jim Vinoski: Yeah, thanks for having me on that. It was good to chat with you. [00:23:00]

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Matt Horine: Be sure to check out Jim's show, where he mentioned on his links on YouTube and Rumble. If you can, feel free to follow along with us or subscribe on Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. And to stay ahead of the curve and to help plan your strategy, please check out our [00:26:00] website at www.veryableops.com and under the resources section titled Trump 2.0, where you can see the framework around upcoming policies and how it will impact you and your business. If you're on socials, give us a follow on LinkedIn, X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram. And if you're enjoying the podcast, please feel free to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and leave us a rating and don't forget to subscribe. Thank you again for joining us and learning more about how you can make your way.

Episode #10: Reshoring and Industrial Renaissance with Jim Vinoski, Manufacturing Talks

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