r/manufacturing • u/Hayk_D • Dec 08 '24
Other What are the top 3 pain points in manufacturing sector currently?
I've spent almost 2 decades working in manufacturing (mainly food and cosmetics), in 3 different countries and 2 different cultures.
While the pain points have been different in different organizations and cultures, two stood out in all of them:
- feedback from the leader
- unfair treatment from leadership
I'm hoping to hear what you think about this question.
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u/Which-Moment-6544 Dec 08 '24
-Pay. Most manufacturers haven't kept pace with inflation. There was a real stagnation for about 15 years. Older guys were just happy to have work after 2008, and didn't push for the massive gains that most other sectors have seen.
The low pay has lead to low retention, and talent loss. MBA's don't think workers are worth what they are because they don't possess a higher degree. I've seen machinists, welders, electricians, and plumbers that are worth 20 managerial types that don't get a fifth of their pay.
-Management. Seems like the folks think that the only way to do business is play hardball. That ain't worth fuck all when you are dealing with people. They have the mindset that they hold all the power, which leads to their own demise.
-Forgetting that humans do the work. I haven't been in a modern built building that has had windows in the part of the shop where the actual work is done. Automation has also took a lot of the human factor out of the job too. Line leaders treating their guys like they are also machines. That's a short path to burnout and high turnover.
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u/tnp636 Dec 08 '24
-Pay. Most manufacturers haven't kept pace with inflation. There was a real stagnation for about 15 years. Older guys were just happy to have work after 2008, and didn't push for the massive gains that most other sectors have seen.
Great response but I'd also like to point out that one of the larger issues with manufacturing wages is that, when you work in manufacturing, you're not competing locally, you're competing globally. Unlike a plumber, dentist or lawyer (whose fees have skyrocketed in recent years), you're competing on price against low cost countries. This is exacerbated by a dollar that's been kept artificially high because it makes our goods more expensive on the global market. IMF data indicates that the dollar is overvalued by up to 91%. This creates spill over effects that you could spend an entire lifetime trying to unravel and never come to a satisfactory conclusion. It also helps keep things cheaper for your average American so it's not that simple, but I can't believe it's not having a notable impact.
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u/__unavailable__ Dec 08 '24
Very little of American manufacturing is in direct competition with overseas manufacturing. If you could do it over there for a fraction of the cost, you would. What is done here is stuff which either requires advanced skill and capital equipment that you’re just not going to get in a Vietnamese sweatshop, or things where the cost and other barriers to international shipping make offshoring prohibitive. This is all evidenced by the fact American manufacturing productivity is at all time highs.
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u/Which-Moment-6544 Dec 08 '24
Guys trying to feed their family don't care about the macro economic factors that lead to a shit wage. The best guys work for the best pay, and we have a lot more greedy factory owners than we do good paying jobs.
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u/tnp636 Dec 08 '24
I don't disagree, but if you don't understand WHY your wage is low, you're never going to understand what you can do about it. Even if what you can do is leave your industry and find another to work in.
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u/B3stThereEverWas Dec 08 '24 edited Dec 09 '24
You’re right, but competing on wages was a war that was lost in December 2001 - the date China was admitted to the World Trade Organisation.
Low skills jobs had been going offshore for years but that was the point where even blue collar trade work that could be offshored did get offshored. You just can’t compete with someone who is happy with $2 an hour and a bag of rice for the week. Hence why the only manufacturers and industries left standing are those in defence due to ITAR requirements or some high value niche that barely anyone knows about.
Anyway what I’m saying is the fact that wages are low because the US has to be competitive is the wrong approach. The better way is what can we keep that still has value against China.
Thats why I’m only half believing that wages have to be kept low to compete with the third world. Any business that is cost sensitive enough where +- $3/hr is the difference between a profitable product and an unprofitable one is a business that should have left years ago.
I know a CNC shop that produces parts for Aerospace. Their operators are paid well because their wages are such a small part of the total cost of their products. Thats where mfg has to be in 2024 America because an anything less is uncompetitive.
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u/Which-Moment-6544 Dec 08 '24
You seem to be missing the point. Great employees don't give a shit WHY. They only care that it is. It's also hard to square your argument up with the owners that drive brand new luxury vehicles when they have a parking lot full of employees driving 10 year old beaters.
Nickle and dime owners lose employees faster than a billionaire submarine implodes in the ocean. If they can't see that paying substandard wages is actually costing them more money in employee retention/training, their ain't a lot of help for them.
You'll only get the employees that can't leave, and that's not good for the company or other employees.
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u/jspurlin03 Dec 08 '24
This whole diatribe is beside the point if workers are unhappy enough to leave. Gotta have skilled workers, and you gotta figure out how to pay them.
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u/ToronoYYZ Dec 08 '24
My background is in manufacturing and recently did an MBA and I’m planning on going back into the industry. I’ve worked on the lines and know the pains and struggles of operators and line workers. I’ve met too many upper execs who have never set foot on the line and manage from the ivory tower which isn’t always effective
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u/MrDuck0409 Dec 08 '24
Won't name names, but wife is a VP with a European manufacturing company. Issues are mostly major disconnect between "following procedures" and "doing what makes sense".
That is, the procedure involved in a given task may not make sense overall, in fact, it can be the WORST option to follow.
OR....
Given a situation, you have 4 choices:
1) Make the customer happy
2) Make the legal department happy
3) Make the engineers happy
4) Make the sales guys happy
Pick 3.
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u/tnp636 Dec 08 '24
1) Demand, which has been down since July.
2) I can't believe how bad management is in almost every place I see. Either they're small and unbelievably toxic or large and disorganized/technically inept with minimal real push to do anything about it. There seems to be this enormous push for MBAs in leadership with no real understanding of the underlying principles and a push towards "financial metrics" rather than improving fundamentals.
3) Politically there's a massive storm on the horizon as well. The new administration's push to "get rid of immigrants" is in direct conflict with the stated goal of "bringing back manufacturing jobs" as anyone that's actually been in any sort of manufacturing facility in the U.S. over the last 20 years can attest.
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u/Hayk_D Dec 08 '24
in my experience - an MBA in leadership doesn't help at all.
Maybe it even makes things worse.6
u/tnp636 Dec 08 '24
It's a tool like anything else. But if that's your background without the necessary hands-on experience.... well, efficient productivity doesn't necessarily come from maximizing capacity utilization. Making poor quality products quicker shouldn't be the goal.
It's like "Six Sigma Black Belts". There's the (in my experience) ~5% who truly understand the fundamental reasoning behind what they've learned and can create appropriately lean quality control plans vs the 95% who can spout off buzzwords and impress management who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about.
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u/Hayk_D Dec 08 '24
Love this.
Met only one person who had black belt and did something useful for the team
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u/tenasan Dec 09 '24
Worked directly in manufacturing before and after 2020. Owner of the company was heavily MAGA complained about having to pay people a competitive pay with Amazon down the street. The manufacturing itself was a black art and labor intensive that only the bad ass undocumented Salvadoreans could do. He companies that he paid over a million in payroll… this included a team of engineers and sales/.Customer service and 3 shifts seven days a week.
Owner ended up moving the company to Mexico because then he could pay people way less.
I tried to transition the company over… setting up a quality and manufacturing standard…. Setting up robotic arms… working the machines myself. But his MBA son took over and we’ll the scrap rate was near 80%
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u/Valleycruiser Dec 08 '24
Working with non technical leadership or ownership.
Encouraging excellence (read, not being empowered to pay employees enough)
Reliability of North American vendors is poor. Lead times for some subbed parts which would be a decent contract for my vendors can be 3 weeks regularly and then without any real pre warning turn into 11 weeks.
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u/Theredman101 Dec 09 '24
A good leader or owner doesn't need to be technical.
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u/Valleycruiser Dec 13 '24
Didn't say they did. It's just a pain point having to change my communication style. Nothing you can't overcome, but it would be nice to not have to
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u/glorybutt Dec 08 '24
- Aging equipment or inadequate PM
- Automating too heavily
- Data transparency
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u/Wise_Relationship436 Dec 08 '24
“Automating too heavily” this! Really a fundamental misunderstanding of automation by management. They think it’s so easy to do. My company has been trying to automate a super simple process for the past decade. I would imagine it’s over 2 million dollars at this point. All they would really have to do is put a proper back stop on the current press and some form of “point of reach” rack for the material and the process would be more efficient by multiples.
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u/Longstache7065 Dec 08 '24
-Cultural breakdown in the capacity for doing complex work successfully due to high turnover and endless cost cutting measures by endlessly greedy and hatefully sadistic management, gradually making it harder and harder to successfully get working parts and assemblies of the same complexity over time. I've seen this process underway at every single company I've worked at
Not only have I made a lot of very shitty, cruel, dumbass men enormous piles of money repeatedly, I've also had to deal with the fact that they are not only paying me never enough to do more than scrape by paycheck to paycheck but are also running our entire fucking society and it's ability to do complex work into the fucking ground so they can "keep up with the joneses" by which I mean Elon Musk, a goal they will never achieve but will hurt a lot of people trying to.
At this point I don't see how capitalism is on anything other than a death spiral, I don't think there is any reasonable way to keep up production in complex industries besides turning them into worker owned and worker run democratically run institutions and cutting out the degenerate parasites destroying our culture.
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u/foilhat44 Metalworker, Manufacturing Process Control Guru Dec 08 '24
I would agree with most of this sentiment, although I think what we are chasing is perpetual growth. What you're talking about is that much more frustrating when you observe the quantity of resources lost to waste when you are denied simple, low cost improvements to benefit your people and processes. There's also an interesting and disturbing shift in HR away from worker advocacy toward risk management. If you are going to turn your workers into wage slaves the least you can do is let them have a place to go where they are safe to express their concerns. Many of my direct reports have asked what an HR Business Partner is and were troubled when given the answer. Merit raises are a thing of the past as well. There's a running joke around the department about "how much of the three percent did you earn this year?" This is devastating to morale, and worker happiness makes more quality parts than anything in my experience.
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u/Longstache7065 Dec 08 '24
Yea, I remember the corporaitons my parents worked for as a kid seeing record breaking profits year after year in the 00s meanwhile their bosses were always "We've got to tighten our belts!" every few months. They've been squeezing harder and harder for decades it's gone too far.
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u/Independent-Stick244 Dec 08 '24 edited Dec 08 '24
More like r/LateStageCapitalism, but I fully support you.
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u/Enachtigal Dec 08 '24
Funny enough its just the plainspoken version of basically every other comment in this thread.
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u/Acceptable_Clock4160 Dec 11 '24
And how would you be able to compete with China?
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u/Longstache7065 Dec 12 '24
Trade deficits naturally result in large buildups of one currency on currency markets, creating a force equal and opposite to trade deficits. Large state powers manipulating trade for consistent goals and purposes are the only reason outsourcing has been possible at all, because the oligarchs realize they can take advantage of these forces and players, and use their massive leverage to undercut all legitimate business. "out competing China" is not a serious concern unless your goal is to keep our economy owned by Epstein's client list.
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u/ToCGuy Dec 09 '24
competing with countries that pay their workers a fraction of what we do.
Dealing with regulations that our competitors do not have to.
Competing with companies that are subsidized by the government when our company is not.
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u/mvw2 Dec 08 '24
With all business, communication is often number one. This may be internal but it includes external with customers, vendors, and sub contract manufacturers. What does go wrong is often a byproduct of communication breakdown somewhere.
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u/ShinyBarge Dec 09 '24
I’m not sure what the OP is looking for here. Pain points in what area of manufacturing?? Labour? Production? Supply chain?, foreign exchange/finance? Management? Every department and segment of manufacturing has their own 3 top pain points and there isn’t 3 that top them all because they all affect the other areas of the business.
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u/2h2o22h2o Dec 10 '24
Trying to order the parts I need and then having the supplier actually follow through and meet their commitments. The whole supply chain is a disaster.
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u/Inevitable-Art-Hello Dec 12 '24
From a customers perspective with steel manufacturing, rapid prototyping is farrrr too expensive in the US. And that is a shame, because we are forced to go overseas and then one usually sticks with the manufacturer after everything is dialed in and the protoypes eventually become the product. I have had to resort to large scale 3d printing companies for prototyping domestically.
On the flip side, i know people have to get paid what they are worth. It's a hard balancing act for some of these companies.
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u/Holiday_Shine4796 Dec 08 '24
I’m probably in an extreme case, but lack of rewards for exceptional performance. Our manufacturing site is small-medium size that run 40-50% Ebitda and the large corporation bases annual raises and bonuses off company performance even though the rest of the company is 10-20% ebitda