Navigating the Challenges of Adopting Digital Manufacturing Video (Version 2.0)
A small or mid-size factory is already full. The owners, the operators, and the machinists have more work than they can finish. They know digital tools exist. They do not have a spare week to stop and decide which ones belong in the business. Beacon's video puts that problem in a plain voice, in about three and a half minutes.
The video is not a software tour. A speaker walks through why adoption stalls. The people in the shop understand the benefit. They do not have time to carry it out. Everyone wears more than one hat. The video then says what a Manufacturing Extension Partnership does about that. The work starts small. One project, one spreadsheet, one website. From that, the shop can see what it needs next. The speaker ties the tools to the profit and loss statement, to getting quality right the first time, and to a business the next generation can actually see.
Another company hiring Beacon for this kind of video is buying a way to talk to an owner who will not sit through a demo. The next customer may sell software, consulting, or a program like the MEP work this video describes. A feature list does not get past a front office that is already behind. This video starts with the busyness and stays there.
They did not need a longer white paper. They needed a short video a busy owner will actually finish. That is what this video is for.
Read transcript Video dialogue and narration
[00:00.000] I get asked a lot of questions about the small and medium manufacturing base. These business owners and the operators and technician, the machinists, they have more work than they know what to do with. They don't have the time to stop and think, how can I do this job necessarily better? They don't have the opportunity to go and look at a better purview. What is my business? Where do I want it to be?
[00:37.400] What technologies, now that I know that purpose, do I need to execute that strategy? The biggest challenge we have seen is that it's not competence. They understand technologies and how it might be used. These factory owners and most of the time family business owners, they understand the benefit. They don't have time to execute. Every single factory, I've had a chance to walk through. People wear multiple hats all the time. So how do we take the stuff that's distracting off of their plate?
[01:18.560] Digital manufacturing is really one of those key tools. The adoption has been very challenged by the busyness and the nature of the busyness inside these factories. That's where I see the manufacturing extension partnership, the MEP program, being so vital. Their job each day is to help you, the small and medium business, do better at what you do well already. And then take off of your plate those things that need to get done, but you don't have
[01:53.840] the time to go do it. And they started that with bite-sized projects. They didn't take a whole of nature approach to all this stuff, solving everything all at once. There was one project with one Excel and one website. And they started to understand with that visibility, what did they need next to make the whole productivity equation better? All of those go for naught if you don't take the technology through a business lens. This is where the profit and loss statement really does come into play.
[02:35.360] Show me how the technology gives me better visibility on my profit and loss. Show me with the technology how I ensure my quality is right the first time. Show me with the technology how this business secedes over generations because we have transparency, because we have accuracy, because you have profitability. How do you take technology like digital manufacturing tools and techniques and allow the business owners, operators and technicians and machinists to do what they excel at and offset the things
[03:11.440] that are distracting to them and allow the business owner to become a better business driver.
