Stagnation is a devastating condition for any business. No enterprise chooses to be stagnant, and rarely does anyone within notice when inertia begins. Still, the effect can launch a downward spiral that can cripple companies, even in the most dynamic industries.
Stagnation has many causes, which can take a long time to do damage. Most common are simple things, such as when a company slows or stops development of new products or capabilities, or when it takes existing customers for granted while not working to develop new ones. Most common is when management stops investing in needed equipment or workers to make the bottom line look better, quarter after quarter. Each of these decisions are made, consciously or not, by management. And while the intentions may have been good, over time they become the root cause of stagnation and can bring a vibrant company to its knees.
Yet stagnation can occur despite management’s best efforts to maintain a focused, engaged and vibrant business. Sometimes external events create an environment that must be dealt with. In the meantime, corporate progress falls by the wayside. Covid-19 is just such an event.
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Read more: Is Covid Stagnating Your Workplace? Here’s What to Do
Now, just how many people can we move off the floor?
This past year was most unusual, distracting and challenging, and many of those distractions and challenges appear they will remain with us well into the first half of the year. As industry begins to focus on post-pandemic planning, however, much has been learned over the past year that can and is being applied to planning for the future.
Possibly the most significant thing learned is technology can – and does – work! A generation of manufacturing and technology leaders knew little of platforms such as Zoom, WebEx, etc. Through baptism by fire, we have become believers in virtual interaction, its effectiveness and value. Equally significant is the realization that for many business functions, including those in manufacturing, remote working – aka working from home – works and offers much more flexibility than the traditional structured workplace.
Manufacturers have by necessity reconfigured shop floors to accommodate social distancing, cleaning protocols, and all that has gone with the Covid pandemic. Adding space between production lines can accommodate social distancing. But while effective, it has proven costly. Splitting shifts is another tactic. Employees may be willing today to change schedules to keep a job; however, it is not ideal in the long term. Meanwhile, in the office environment social distancing is accomplished via interactive technology. Further, many claim the efficiency and flexibility from employees working remotely and communicating virtually has been significantly better than they imagined. The office environment success and flexibility from harnessing virtual communication technology has not gone unnoticed by the manufacturing manager.
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Businesses can’t plan for everything, but with the right prep they can adapt.
December is finally here. Mercy knows it seems to have taken forever to bring this most unusual year to a close. I keep pondering the question customers inevitably ask during a supplier audit: What contingencies are in place for “unforeseen and unthinkable” disasters and events? If anyone had asked me a couple years ago to come up with a plan to deal with a global pandemic I would have thought them to be crazy for asking. And yet, that was 2020!
The one takeaway from this crazy year is you can never plan for everything. Paradoxically, good planning makes it easier to deal with the unimaginable.
Business planning takes numerous forms. Most people think first of the financial budget planning, usually led by finance and account staffs. Visions of building a budget, whether bottom-up or top-down, as a tool to measure specific activities against comes to mind. This type of planning revolves around predicting core operating activities that are repeatable, predictable and highly measureable. While important, if not essential, for the operations folk to run the “business as usual,” that budget is only one aspect of planning.
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The pandemic created a unique environment for finding talented employees.
Looking back about a year ago, the challenge that kept you awake at night was people. More precisely, where and how to find people to hire – people with talent, a work ethic and interest in a long-term career manufacturing electronics. 2020, of course, has brought a slew of new concerns, and made us adaptable to what is described as the "new normal." But surprise! Right up there with how many face masks, hand sanitizer and Plexiglas partitions are available in the stockroom, staffing remains the major concern for business leaders.
The focus on people certainly has taken some twists and turns through this year. During the first six months, many were focused on how to retain the workforce they had. To be sure, potential health issues, social distancing, work-from-home protocols and other necessary obstacles displaced new talent acquisition, and jolting headlines on unemployment claims, especially in the hospitality and retail sectors, forced business leaders to consider when the next shoe would drop and the order board would dry up. Thankfully – or maybe luckily – most manufacturing, and especially electronics manufacturing, has remained surprisingly “normal,” and customers, employees and suppliers have recalibrated as necessary.
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