Robot installations are estimated to increase an average of 12 percent per year from 2015 to 2017, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Those IFR statistics note that "human-machine collaboration will open up new applications and attract new customers."
In the "Benefits of Lean Accounting in a Lean Manufacturing Company," author Dan Anthony discusses the major differences between traditional and lean accounting, starting with a quote from Taiichi Ohno that says "costs do not exist to be calculated; costs exist to be reduced." This really gets to the core of the difference between traditional and lean accounting: traditional accounting focuses primarily on the cost of goods sold, whereas lean accounting focuses on the value stream from customers to suppliers.
Manufacturing worldwide is on the cusp of a revolution. New information technologies are suddenly offering not only to make the management of manufacturing more effective, as we saw with early versions of plant and enterprise software, but the work itself smarter.
Reshoring is delivering wide-ranging benefits for an increasing number of U.S. manufacturers, who see it as a way to maintain (or regain) global competitiveness. According to the Reshoring Initiative, in 2003 about 140,000 jobs were lost to offshoring. In 2014, for the first time in two decades, the U.S. realized a net gain of 10,000 reshored jobs.
Onshoring has become a major trend in the United States. U.S.-based companies are increasingly pulling their overseas manufacturing efforts and setting up shop in the States. How are they meeting their needs for heavy equipment?
New market opportunities are available to companies in almost every industry from the data that IoT delivers. These new opportunities could be as simple as getting information from sensors about what is happening on the manufacturing plant floor causing automatic manufacturing updates, potential adjustment to customer order delivery dates or even a maintenance work request to handle a detected equipment malfunction. All of these opportunities cause changes to be made to the supply chain.
Those of you grew up with Sesame Street may recall that each episode was brought to you by a different letter of the alphabet. I experienced my own version of this phenomenon three years ago, when much of my job suddenly became all about the letter "S" - or more accurately five of them.
There are many articles about the problem of America's "skilled worker shortage" and why we need advanced training; but most don't define or explain what they mean by "advanced training."
Balancing daily operations and long-term strategy is at the forefront of every chief financial officer's mind, and in a business environment that is often riddled with a multitude of daily challenges and high demands on time, a focus on long-term success is required to maintain a company's competitive edge.
