MT Magazine May/June 2022

MANUFACTURING MATTERS

MAY/JUNE 2022

9

Manufacturing Matters Check in for the highlights, headlines, and hijinks that matter to manufacturing. These lean news items keep you updated on the latest developments.

TECHNOLOGY

Did Someone Say Data-Driven Decision-Making? The manufacturing industry is exploding with technology growth. The connected factory has created significant leverage for adjacent technologies to permeate the industry. The continued need by enterprises to seek value from data will create a vacuum for machine learning, cybersecurity, data infrastructure, and edge computing. And that is just the digital side. Additive, automation, and metrology are continuing advancements that directly connect with better products for the end user. This rapid pace of change may be alarming to some, but there are ways to tame this beast and get past the hype cycle. Understanding and assessing the value of new technologies and constant research on available and mature technologies will drive enterprises to make robust decisions.

INTELLIGENCE

‘Traditional B2B Sales and Marketing Are Becoming Obsolete’ “Most B2B sales and marketing teams typically function in a ‘serial’ or linear manner,” says Brent Adamson, Gartner LLC, in his February 2022 Harvard Business Review article, “Traditional B2B Sales and Marketing Are Becoming Obsolete.” The traditional sales process can be characterized as having two phases – marketing and sales – with a clear “handoff” between them. Adamson suggests that today’s digitally dominant buying behavior has rendered this linear approach obsolete. Alternatively, companies are addressing these shifting buyer behaviors with structural organizational changes, such as the Unified Commercial Engine (UCE). “Unlike traditional silos, mapped to internal processes, the UCE is built through careful mapping of customers’ buying journeys across a range of predictable jobs to be done.”

SMARTFORCE

BILT for Education and Workforce Development Programs A new working model for industry advisory councils has been developed in the IT industry that can easily be adopted to the manufacturing industry as well. The Business and Industry Leadership Teams (BILT) initiative prescribes seven common-sense tactics for success, including: focusing on single educational program disciplines; convening more frequent meetings; focusing on discussing industry trends, especially in technology advancements; assuring that post-secondary faculty attend all frequent meetings; conducting jobs skills validation and assessing required knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) on an annual basis; conducting faculty crosswalks of KSAs to the curriculum being taught; and two-way communication to provide frequent feedback.

For more information, visit AMTonline.org/article/BILT.