If workforce is manufacturing’s certain and persistent challenge, the vagaries of industry supply chains and uncertainty they’re causing is today the sector’s biggest headache.

As we noted in the first part of this analysis, 170 CompanyWeek interviews in 2022 found supply-chain woes have overtaken workforce as the top challenge cited by manufacturers:

2022 Q1 + Q2 | Top 5 Challenges

1. Supply Chain 45%
2. Workforce 26%
3. Managing Growth 15%
4. Market Uncertainty 9%
5. Pricing 9%

One narrative suggests relief may be just around the corner, that interest rate hikes are having the intended effect of lessening demand and already are removing some of the “scarcity and urgency” that has plagued supply chains in recent years.

Manufacturers in our community aren’t so sure.

Voices

Uncertainty about the future is still a prevalent sentiment. “Just trying to predict what’s coming” is Dave Staheli’s biggest challenge. “With all of the supply chain issues, it’s so hard to ramp production up in a short amount of time, so we’ve just had to do what we can do,” says the CEO of Staheli West, a Cedar City, Utah-based manufacturer of haybaling equipment. “It’s kind of like sticking your neck out. You’re waiting for it to get chopped off or you might do really well. With inventory costs and all those kinds of things, you do have to be a little wise in the world we’re living in right now.

“Things that were a few weeks lead time are now six or eight months,” he continues, “things that were three months are a year out now, and things that were six months are two years out now. So we are just really having to look way ahead on our purchasing — which we’re doing. We’re actually getting along very well compared to some of the other manufacturers. We’ve been able to deliver machines in a pretty timely way, a little bit of delay but not too bad.”

Tracy Latham, CEO of Phoenix-based Latham Industries, is also taking chances with her namesake printed circuit board manufacturer. “I have customers that we’ve done business with for a long time. I know what they order, so I will take risks,” she says. “I’ll watch what items are becoming scarce, and I will buy extra material for them. Or we’ll have a conversation and work on alternatives together.”

Companies often have to think outside the box to get customers what they need. “I have a smaller customer with a wonderful product,” Latham recounts. “I’ve got components that I ordered for him over a year ago that still haven’t been delivered. To keep his business up and running, we’ve salvaged parts off of old boards he had that never worked. And then we had another customer who needed a microchip part that kept getting delayed. I was looking at another product of his and realized we could take chips off of that board and put it on this one. So, we did it.”

In Payson, Utah, Sunstone Welders CEO Jonathan Young echoes the need for agile product development of its mico-welding solutions. “Trying to grow while having a global supply chain crisis is difficult. We’ve had to redesign some of our boards because of the chip supply,” says Young. “Our current chip was running out, so we’ve had to redesign our boards with newer chips that are more readily available.”

More of the same from Ben Ashe, VP of Colorado Springs-based pump manufacturer MDM: “We’re seeing materials just completely disappear out of the supply chain,” he says. “Pretty unique products disappear out of the supply chain with no information about when they’ll come back in. That’s a challenge. We’ve had to bring chemists in and plastic formulators in to try and figure out how to solve this one process with this one material that we’ve normally used — which is a good thing. If you can respond well to those things, you give yourself a buffer and you’re not reliant on any one thing.”

In Fort Worth, Texas, Renfro Foods’ co-manufacturing business has enjoyed a steady stream of new customers as food brands adapt to supply-chain disruptions fueled initially by a pandemic. “People have been changing co-packers for one reason or another — and without being mean-spirited, we’ve benefitted from that,” says CEO Doug Renfro. “We’re very honest, we’re transparent, we try to avoid surprises, and if we screw up, we’ll tell you. Nobody saw the pandemic and supply chain issues coming. With the new machinery that has allowed us to produce faster, I’d love to say that we were brilliant to set ourselves up for these opportunities, but we were just lucky.”

Is food a potential bright spot? Naturally Boulder Executive Director Bill Capsalis sees a glimmer of hope. “Sourcing and supply chain are the most pressing challenges facing food manufacturers,” says Capsalis. “This has been easing up lately, but it still presents problems. Between the war in Ukraine and fuel costs, brands have to make some difficult choices right now.”

Including, says Capsalis, how to navigate inflation-fueled ingredient prices. “It’s a related challenge for all the companies — increasing costs which may necessitate raising prices at a wholesale level, and accordingly at retail. Everything is costing more at the grocery store: Brands are increasing their prices, and so are retailers — it flows downhill.”

Materials costs are up 30 percent since early 2021 for chairlift maker Leitner-Poma of America in Grand Junction, Colorado, and the company is also passing some of that onto customers. “That’s a big, big cost to pass on, but I think it’s just the way of the world right now,” says President Daren Cole. “Even with those cost increases, we’re seeing substantial growth in our marketplace. This year, the market will be well over $300 million.”

Yet disruptions are still limiting capacity. “We hit a point where we stopped taking orders,” says Cole. “It was really just to stay ahead of the supply chain and make sure we could deliver on what we sold.”

Rising costs also bedevil Windsor, California-based Solectrace, where CEO Mani Iyer is also dealing with rising costs. “The costs have gone through the roof at about ten times. I used to pay between $2,000 and $3,400 for a container. Now you’re talking about $25,000. Labor is also a constraint. It’s not easy to recruit people, but we’re doing our best. We have gone from two [employees] in July 2021 to 50 as of last month. Our plan is to take it to 100 by the end of the year. So, we are certainly recruiting much faster as there is passion for joining Solectrac.”

Demand is also still sky-high for outdoor industry standout Yeti Cycles of Golden, Colorado, even if a normalized supply chain remains wishful thinking. “I think supply chain is going to continue for a couple years being a challenge, whether it’s working with manufacturers overseas or it’s trying to get the steamship lines to get your stuff to your door at a decent time with a decent rate,” says CTO Steve Hoogendoorn. “Currently at the factory in Golden here, it’s really tough to find employees. Finding people who can do the job is not that easy right now.”

It’s fitting that any analysis of supply woes concludes with mentions of its most elusive component.

More soon on both challenges.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Email him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

Across CompanyWeek‘s network of manufacturing reports, writers fanned out in the first two quarters of 2022 to interview 170 manufacturers in multiple industries.

Executives paint a picture of high demand for products and services with operations challenged by supply chains and workforce. The net positive sentiment corroborates the June 2022 Purchasing Managers Index of 52.7 that placed the sector in expansion mode (a score of 50 and over). In the same Institute for Supply Management survey, an “overwhelming majority” of manufacturing companies also said they were hiring.

But the search is tough: The U.S. Department of Labor counted 797,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs in May 2022. Posting a job and finding a qualified employee are two different things.

Here’s data summarizing the top challenges and needs gleaned from CompanyWeek reporting – along with voices from featured companies.

The workforce barrier — and opportunity

Here’s a snapshot of manufacturing sentiment relating to challenges:

2022 Q1 | Top 5 Challenges

1. Supply Chain 39%
2. Workforce 29%
3. Managing Growth 18%
4. Pricing 11%
5. Market Uncertainty 10%

2022 Q2 | Top 5 Challenges

1. Supply Chain 50%
2. Workforce 24%
3. Managing Growth 11%
4. Market Uncertainty 8%
5. Pricing 8%
6. Shipping/Transport 8%

2022 Q1 + Q2 | Top 5 Challenges

1. Supply Chain 45%
2. Workforce 26%
3. Managing Growth 15%
4. Market Uncertainty 9%
5. Pricing 9%

As pressing as the supply chain challenge is today, workforce is manufacturing’s sustained and stubborn need.

2022 Q1 | Overall Top 5 Needs

1. Workforce 49%
2. Finance/Funding 22%
3. Real Estate/Space 20%
4. New Customers 12%
5. New Suppliers 9%

2022 Q2 | Overall Top 5 Needs

1. Workforce 50%
2. Finance/Funding 20%
3. Real Estate/Space 20%
4. Marketing 16%
5. Equipment 13%

2022 Q1 + Q2 | Overall Top 5 Needs

1. Workforce 49%
2. Finance/Funding 21%
3. Real Estate/Space 20%
4. Marketing 12%
5. New Customers 11%

One in four companies cite workforce as their top challenge — and fully half cite it as their top need.

Voices

“We’ve been working hard to try and build our staff,” says Hunt Dabney, CEO of HDA Technology in Lake Forest, California. “That will be a limiting factor if we don’t see some improvement. But I’ve talked to a lot of other guys with businesses, and I think an awful lot of engineering and software development people with high levels of expertise are in their forties and fifties. And I think a very large number of them have discovered that they could rearrange their lives, simplify them, and not go to work anymore, but just retire early or freelance remotely from somewhere else. A whole lot of the labor pool that we would normally draw from seems to have gone off the market.”

Colorado Tech Shop’s Heidi Hostetter echoes the sentiment. “Employees want flex time, they want to program machines remotely, they want us to accommodate things that we’ve not had to in the manufacturing realm,” she says. “Unless we diversity into that space, automation and tech won’t matter, to be honest with you.”

“Supply chain and labor — that’s really stunted our comeback,” says Ryan Christensen, CEO of Christensen Industries in Salt Lake City. “We’d like to be bigger. I think our customers have more volume for us, but we have to turn certain things away because I can’t support it with the current labor force that I have. And material lead times are pushing things so far out that sometimes those projects just get put on hold — not because we can’t do it, but because our customer says, ‘Well, we’re going to go focus on something else.'”

Christensen’s needs are straightforward: personnel. “Quality management folks, fabricators, assemblers — A to Z,” he says, noting that he could use 10 new hires immediately and “another 20 or 30” in the second half of 2022.

If quality is the calling card for most manufacturers, companies are also concerned how labor is impacting their ability to maintain it.

Cabinet-making is a labor-intensive process, and for co-owners Gabe Powers and Stephanie Lemon of Abacus Cabinetry in Denver, finding the right employees to do the job has been challenging. “We can cut as many parts as required on the machines, but at the end of the day, we need people with experience to make sure the quality stays at the highest level,” says Powers. “Keeping good people around is one of the biggest challenges I see.”

In a tight labor market, retaining talent is as important as new hires.

“In our company, we train our own people and have very low turnover,” says Maya Royberg, co-founder of Precision Group in San Antonio, Texas. “Some of them came to work for us at the beginning when we opened our doors, and they’re still here.”

That said, recruitment and hiring has proven increasingly difficult for the company in recent years, she adds. “For the longest time, it was: Find a toolmaker. Training a toolmaker is a tedious process, so we decided to go more with sophisticated, computerized equipment. Machines are so powerful that I don’t need many employees.”

Professional development is top of mind for VB Cosmetics founder Vivian Valenty in Chandler, Arizona. “With COVID, the difficulty of finding skilled workers is tougher,” she says. “Some of the staff that we hired do not have experience in our industry or the tasks we have available. We need to train them, and we’re getting help from the Arizona MEP — that’s the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.”

“I think the focus for us is willingness to train now,” says Dalyon Ruesch, CEO of La Verkin, Utah-based Vitalpax. “We’ll find folks with aptitude, whether they’re coming out of technical schools, even high school graduates, people that are interested in this type of work, we bring them in and say, ‘We’ll train you on the job.’ We’ve had to offer better benefit packages, better salaries, things like that to try and lure folks in here. It’s good for the workforce and the guy looking for work.”

“Finding talent to run equipment is challenging, primarily because there’s not as many guys who are supplement manufacturers here in southwest Utah as there might be in New Jersey,” says Ruesch. “A lot of this technology is not just open to the public — you can’t just go find a class on it. You have to have connections and you need to have a teacher, a master, someone you can be an apprentice to.”

Technology as a catalyst for employment

Automation, long viewed as a threat to manufacturing employment, may be emerging as a catalyst. Companies investing in new equipment to automate operations are getting ahead in the workforce competition.

San Leandro, California-based Scandic operates in the Tesla supply chain, and president Hale Foote describes a scenario playing out across the sector. “Scandic started 53 years ago with mechanical spring coiling machines,” he says. “The technology is based on cams and gears, and adjustments require a technician to stick their hands into a dark greasy gearbox. The number of younger employees who are willing — or even want to learn — to do that is limited. Fortunately, the very same equipment manufacturer now makes CNC machines that use identical end-point tooling but most adjustments are made via computer with a screen showing the parameters. We have installed this technology, and this will be a much easier position to hire for.”

In Orem, Utah, laser-cutting pro OSH Cut may be a case study of the positive effects of Industry 4.0 on workforce prospects. “We combine high automation with high pay so we can get great people,” says co-founder Caleb Chamberlain. “We’ve had zero problems attracting the best of the best to run the operations on the floor.”

A higher level of acumen means higher wages, but it’s a price Chamberlain is willing to pay. “We’re paying our people often as much as two or three times more than what the median pay is in this industry for the job they’re doing,” he says, a bonus given the fact the company will be hiring about 12 more employees in the coming months.

John Cornell, founder of Surprise, Arizona-based Atec Engineering, sees other advantages. The company just purchased a new Hyundai CNC lathe with a sub-spindle and bar feed, which should improve overall efficiency. Cornell says, “We got every bell and whistle we could get with the machine, and that’s a huge addition for us. We’re still installing it right now, and I’m hoping it’s going to increase our capabilities and take a step toward a certain amount of automation, because it can be very hard to find people when you need them. I think that’s part of the answer going forward.”

In Frederick, Colorado, Xpect Solutions President Walt Papierski sees another upside to investing in automation — the lack of skilled labor across the industry is driving sales. “We have companies come to us and they say, ‘Well, we used to build all of our enclosures and panels here, but we don’t have the time or the labor to do it so we send it out.’ A lot of big companies are starting to look at that model.”

More on the challenges associated with snarled supply chains next time.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Email him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

As much as forecasts of an impending recession shape the business news today, manufacturing is in growth mode. Despite a gloomy macro-economic narrative, June’s Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) measured a solid 53, squarely in ‘expansion’ territory.

Moreover, against the backdrop of recession fears, manufacturers are increasing staff. In the same ISM survey, an “overwhelming majority” of companies said they were hiring.

In our ongoing series, we circled back with Jim Watson, CEO of California Manufacturing Technology Consulting (CMTC), to talk manufacturing and prospects for growth.

CompanyWeek: Jim, great to chat with you again. How do we parse the conflicting news? Is growth still on tap for manufacturing, or are we to interpret a slight downtick in the PMI as others have — a sign of contraction to come?

Jim Watson: No, growth is still on the minds of manufacturing leadership. However, while opportunities for growth exist, seizing new business is encountering some strong headwinds. The rise in inflation has increased materials cost, which is stressing margins and bottom lines. Supply chain issues continue to bring uncertainty in securing sufficient materials in time to meet demand. Also, finding skilled workers has inhibited many manufacturers from aggressively looking for new business. Today, growth is definitely an aspiration but proving to be elusive for many small- and mid-sized manufacturers (SMMs).

CW: We hear more and more about automation as a catalyst for growth. Can automation alleviate some of the pressure manufacturers are facing in trying to grow?

JW: Yes, manufacturers need to make automating a priority. In a manufacturing survey commissioned by CMTC last year, 61 percent of respondents said they will have a significant or moderate increase in automation in the next three to five years. However, because of the continuing need to increase productivity — that for the most part will be driven by automation — automation deployment timeframes will need to be expedited.

CW: I wrote last week that automation is becoming a magnet for attracting new workers. Are you seeing manufacturers improve workforce prospects via automation?

JW: Great question. The need for skilled workers is at an all-time high. In fact, California has a significant appetite for high and high-to-medium technology jobs — 51 percent of all manufacturing jobs in California fall into those two categories. In comparison, the nation has a lower level of tech employment at 43 percent of their manufacturing jobs. In addition, according to a CMTC-commissioned study by Beacon Economics, 63 percent of manufacturing jobs require a high school diploma (or equivalency) for an entry-level job.

The challenge is that, if you are not already automating, getting sufficient skilled workers to automate is a tall order. What comes first? The chicken or the egg? It’s estimated that there are presently more than 50,000 open manufacturing jobs in California. Upskilling existing workers could provide some relief in the tight labor market.

CW: Let’s switch gears. What role is the supply chain having with those manufacturers who want to grow?

JW: Those who want to grow will need to rethink their supply chains and look for ways to improve their own performance as a supplier to secure additional business. Effective supply chain management is becoming increasingly data driven. Today, close to 70 percent of supply chain functions are handled on spreadsheets; and, only 17 percent of manufacturers have extended visibility into their supply chains. Moreover, most manufacturers agree that they do not have the necessary digital skills to meet future goals. Without automating supply chain functions, increasing visibility to their supply chains, and reevaluating their suppliers, manufacturers will continue to struggle getting the right materials delivered at the right time to meet demand.

To grow as a supplier, internal processes need to be improved to eliminate waste then automated to expand production. Suppliers will need to focus on building operational efficiencies, managing costs, and enhancing their resiliency to increase the ability to overcome supply chain and environmental challenges.

CW: Has inflation impacted growth plans for manufacturers?

JW: Higher costs are lowering bottom line profits and reducing cash reserves. For many manufacturers, this has diminished financial resources that were going to be used to expand automation, sales, and marketing programs. This has greater implications in California due to already high costs associated with manufacturing. Cost control takes a front seat to reduce the impact of inflation. Also, the Great Resignation has significantly increased the cost of acquiring a skilled workforce, which is adding to the inflationary challenges for manufacturers.

CW: How would you sum up the outlook for growth?

JW: Growth opportunities exist in many manufacturing sectors, but challenges remain in the form of rising costs, supply chain issues, material, and labor shortages. Manufacturers will be tasked with acquiring new talent, adding capabilities, and diversifying product portfolios to act as a foundation for growth. Manufacturers must remain agile and be prepared to take action to build resiliency in the short term to set up future successes. Technologies will create both a challenge and opportunity for manufacturers to seize the opportunity to grow.

Reach Jim Watson at watson@cmtc.com; or Bart Taylor at btaylor@companyweek.com

And suddenly, it’s gone.

After a feel-good decade when the prospects of a sustained American manufacturing renewal seemed tantalizingly close, the news this month of soaring U.S. trade deficits and declining manufacturing output and GDP is sobering.

David Goldman summed up the wreckage last week.

“U.S. real gross domestic product (GDP) shrank at a 1.5% annual rate during the first quarter, more than the preliminary estimate of -1.3%, the Commerce Department reported on May 26. The worst trade performance on record took 3.2% off GDP, more than accounting for the entire drop. Nothing like this has happened before.”

America’s trade deficit in goods spiked to $128 billion in March, or an annual rate of $1.54 trillion, while U.S. manufacturers’ sales plunged after adjustment for inflation. In real terms, U.S. factory sales have fallen by nearly 10% since 2018, and by nearly 20% since 2007.

Consumers spent the lion’s share of the $6 trillion Covid stimulus on imports. That’s another first: U.S. manufacturing never contracted in the past following a big increase in demand.”

At the same time, Goldman notes that, “The biggest increase in U.S. imports came from China, which shipped 55% more to the United States in April 2022 (in seasonally-adjusted dollar terms) than it did in August 2019, when then-president Trump slapped 25% tariffs on most Chinese imports.”

Tariffs are intact. So much for the notion that tariffs slow down imports.

Yet tariffs alone were never going to compel companies to move production onshore without a strategy to also increase domestic manufacturing options. As much as supply-chain disruptions are forcing U.S. companies to rethink where to make products, without stateside options, many will fall back on offshore supply chains.

If that doesn’t change, then the positive news released earlier this month by Harry Moser’s Reshoring Initiative may be all for naught. Moser tracks the stated intentions of companies to reshore manufacturing jobs or invest in U.S. factories (FDI, or Foreign Direct Investment), and the trend continues to be positive.

Moser reported last week that in 2021, “[T]he private and federal push for domestic supply of essential goods propelled reshoring and foreign direct investment (FDI) job announcements to a record 261,000,” adding, “[T]he number of companies reporting reshoring and FDI set a new record of over 1,800 companies.”

More than that, with “5 million manufacturing jobs still offshore, as measured by our $1.1 trillion/year goods trade deficit,” there’s room for more growth in the U.S. sector.

If, of course, we’re successful nurturing a more capable manufacturing ecosystem. Moser isn’t as sanguine as his data suggests: “We see the administration applying tourniquets rather than addressing the underlying issue of U.S. manufacturing cost being uncompetitive.”

Yet we’ve had bad news before, and as Moser also tells me, “There’s a lag from reshoring announcements until production, sometimes years for the megafactories,” meaning the 2021 announcements aren’t manifest on the ground, yet. We need to ensure these companies can follow through on their stated plans.

Here then, is our crossroads. Moser would reverse what he calls America’s “deindustrialization” policy. “If you want to destroy your manufacturing, you’d do what we do,” he says. “Every poor country you want to help, you’d give them favored-nation status to import products to the U.S. with lower duties than they give us; you’d spend billions protecting the rest of the world from pirates and terrorism; you’d allow your universities to flourish in liberal arts and your skilled workforce to decline; and you wouldn’t have a value-added tax to protect your key industries. If you want manufacturing to disappear, that’s what you’d do. And we’ve done that,” he told me last June. It’s worth reiterating.

We’d also focus the national discussion around improving U.S. supply chains on specific action, to the refitting of U.S. suppliers and transparent mapping of supplier networks, across multiple industries, so that buyers can find expertise stateside where it exists.

As Goldman concludes, “China’s strong supply chains and robust manufacturing ecosystem attracted more foreign investment than ever from US companies such as Tesla, accelerating the shift out of onshore manufacturing.”

We’ll revisit what’s happening to reengineer the U.S. supply chain next time, as we push to enable more U.S. companies to manufacture closer to home. Our economy depends on it.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Reach him at btaylor@companyweek.com.