The manufacturing industry has arrived at a crossroads. Down one path is a long decline: stagnating productivity due to waves of retirement, labor shortages, and external pressures, each compounding on each other until reversing the trend is impossible. Unfortunately, many American manufacturers seem resigned to this path, seeing the golden age in the rearview and feeling that the only hope for the future is to stem the bleeding. Fortunately, there’s another path from these crossroads: new heights of production and profit, powered by a back-office revolution.
We at CADDi believe that the golden age of manufacturing still lies in the future, that a boom as significant as the industrial and information revolutions is still to come. As unintuitive as it may seem, we believe that manufacturing is still massively under-delivering on worldwide demand for industrial products. Think about the automotive industry: sure, there’s already 850 cars per 1000 people in the US. Does that mean the market is saturated and tapped? Or should you focus instead on this fact? In India, for every 1000 people, they have only 158 cars.
With this perspective, it becomes clear that there’s still massive untapped markets around the world for industries stagnating in the West. As global quality of life and spending capability grows, the demand for these products will only accelerate. It will be a veritable gold rush for the manufacturers prepared to meet this emerging demand.
It’s something we all can understand as possible, even likely, but many manufacturers write themselves off from this vision. Rather than plunge ahead on this path to the markets of the future, they’d rather shuffle slowly down the first path, relying on their own dwindling markets. It may seem conservative or more assured to stick with what “works” rather than take a risk, but what “works” isn’t going to work for much longer. Economic and labor market pressures are hitting everyone, and those who adapt and evolve will quickly squeeze out those who don’t.
So how do you get yourself on that other path, the one where you become a frontrunner to seize the opportunities of a new manufacturing era? Having the courage to go for it is necessary, but it’s just the first step. You need to empower yourself to outcompete your peers, to offer products faster and more reliably, flexibly meeting emerging demands and adapting to shifting market conditions. It’s not easy, but the cutting edge of technology offers brand new routes to the agility you need.
This is actually the other major reason manufacturing shops get tripped up by their own conservative pessimism: a lack of confidence in being able to truly innovate. When you look at state-of-the-art machinery, it represents a major financial investment, and likely forces your shop to become more specialized, more committed to a single choice in turbulent times. But we believe that there’s a more important place to look for improvement than on the production line: the back office.
The back office of manufacturing shops has been woefully underdeveloped compared to the production line. It makes sense: manufacturers are experts in manufacturing, and know where innovations and optimizations can be made. However, there are just as many opportunities for innovation and optimization in data management, crossfunctional collaboration, design, review, procurement, sales, forecasting, and dozens of other essential functions of every shop. Not only are improvements in these areas impactful, they’re universal: speedups and savings that apply to every single project.
This has been the realization that guided us to building CADDi. Manufacturing has relied for far too long on a digital backend that’s stuck in the 1980s: spreadsheets, emails, scanned images; scattered files, unconnected information, knowledge contained only in people’s brains. It’s a system a world away from what the next generation has come to expect. Is it any wonder young people aren’t thriving in the industry?
With CADDi, we’re offering another path. We link all of your data in intuitive ways, allowing even new hires to make strategic connections and insights. Our AI-empowered search and analysis surfaces what you need the instant you need it, letting you pivot at the speed of the rapidly-changing world. It’s the type of tool that’s built for the new era, ready to align you with the needs and opportunities of a planet full of demand.
We’re not denying that American manufacturing is in pretty bad shape. But stand now not at a cliff’s edge, but at a crossroads. We need to recognize the opportunity that rises in crisis, and seize it.