The great re-make: Manufacturing for modern times

New markets will drive growth in demand for manufactured goods in coming decades. To meet it, companies must innovate at the local level.

Will the inundation of digital data power your business, or wash it away?

Transformation isn’t new to manufacturers—but sustained transformation is rare. It’s even harder at today’s fast pace, which calls for a different transformation approach. 

A best-seller from two decades ago proves surprisingly relevant for today’s manufacturing-footprint questions.

Rich data, ubiquitous connectivity, and real-time communication are changing the way companies work. For leaders, that transformation will extend much further than the machines on the factory floor.

As machines play an ever more important role in production, companies need smarter and more holistic ways to optimize performance.

Quality manufacturing doesn’t have to mean higher costs—in fact, it often means lower recall and warranty costs as a culture of quality takes hold.

While IoT-enabled advanced analytics could be worth trillions to manufacturers, turning insights into outcomes requires more than just the right technology.

To get the most out of additive manufacturing, companies need to think beyond prototyping and understand what the technology means for production.

Cheaper, more capable, and more flexible technologies are accelerating the growth of fully automated production facilities. The key challenge for companies will be deciding how best to harness their power.

As businesses face evolving challenges, four aspects of leadership will become dramatically more important: insight, integrity, courage, and agility.

New technologies are opening a new era in automation for manufacturers—one in which humans and machines will increasingly work side by side.

The right way to deploy a transformation depends on the nature of its goals, and on the structure, resources, and capabilities of the organization.

Before setting out toward operational excellence, companies must see where they stand. A good maturity assessment provides more than a set of coordinates: it also maps out the first steps.

What do successful implementers of change initiatives do differently from other companies? Our survey of more than 2,000 executives yields actionable answers.

Transforming a manufacturer’s performance usually means changing its culture—and that means its leaders must change how they lead.

The elements of a good performance-management system are simple, but integrating them into a business’s fundamental operating system is more difficult than it seems.

Companies can vastly raise the odds of success if they take the time to build the needed capabilities.

Technology is on manufacturers’ side, but their next challenge is to create tools, infrastructure, and processes that turn rich data into real performance improvement.