14
MiMfg Magazine
April 2019
No one knows your business better
than you so it’s extremely helpful to do
some self-reflection and really do the
work of visualizing the future state and
how it’s enabled by Industry 4.0 tech.
Then you can engage with clarity and
a sense of direction.
— Joe LaRussa, Brose North America
resources; you need help and getting help means
asking questions. During the MFG Forum, a panel
of industry leaders will share their views on how to
prepare for the unknown.
Phil Cunningham, senior vice president for
strategy and mergers & acquisitions at Varroc
Lighting Systems will be a panel participant and
shared with MMA a list of questions manufacturers
should be asking as they look to prepare for a
possible future downturn:*
• What would be the impact on your business
if you saw a significant reduction in volume
(i.e. >20 percent)?
• Have you identified areas of weakness?
• How strong is your balance sheet?
• Do you have enough liquidity?
• Are you doing everything possible to conserve cash?
• What controls do you have in place to control
expenditure and recruitment?
• Can you start reductions to overhead and employee
costs now without impacting the business?
• What exposure do you have regarding your
suppliers and supply contracts?
* Not all questions offered are listed...
Learn more at the MFG Forum!
Capitalize on New Technology
Today’s new technology is already almost
out-of-date, that’s how quickly things are changing.
With speed and agility as a top priority, and your
customer’s patience diminishing just as fast, your
business needs to understand and implement the
technologies best suited to your unique brand.
Industry 4.0 has been on the forefront of
manufacturing’s future plans for a few years already
and the technologies within that broad term — cloud
computing, big data, the Industrial Internet of Things,
automation, etc. — are becoming better known,
yet the implementation of these strategies remains
quite low. According to a study by BDO, 99 percent
of middle market manufacturing executives are
moderately familiar with Industry 4.0, only 5 percent
are currently implementing those strategies.
Register
Today!
2019 MFG Forum Agenda
Why the Digital Transformation Will
be a People Transformation
Joe LaRussa,Brose North America Inc.
PRIME® Success Story
Shape Corporation and Grand Haven High School
Leveraging Technology in Information
Systems for Organizational Development
George Singos and Chuck Werner, The Center
Middle Market Manufacturing:
How to Thrive in a Transforming Environment
Tom Stewart, National Center for the Middle Market
Prepare for the Unknown:
Structuring Agreements to Survive Market Changes
Manufacturing Panel
Empowering Mind & Machine:
How Industry 4.0 Is Reinventing Life As We Know It
Andy Storm, Eckhart Inc.
2019 MFG Forum Registration
Online: www.mimfg.org
Phone: 517-487-8521
E-mail: [email protected]
Pricing: $150/person for MMA Industry & Associate Members
$250/person for MMA Insurance and Future Members
Learn more at mimfg.org !
“[Industry 4.0] is a hot topic and all the solutions
providers and consultants are positioning themselves
to be part of that space. The benefit is you can
gather different pieces to construct a vision for your
own organization without needing to be too far in
the tech itself,” said Joe LaRussa, director of
industrialization engineering with Brose North
America and a keynote speaker at the 2019 MFG
Forum. “No one knows your business better than you
so it’s extremely helpful to do some self-reflection
and really do the work of visualizing the future state
and how it’s enabled by Industry 4.0 tech. Then you
can engage with clarity and a sense of direction.”
Regardless of what technology is right for
you, it’s becoming more and more imperative that
every manufacturer utilize some new technology to
further their progress. Even if you don’t, your
competitors probably are and the last thing a
manufacturer can do in this age of technological
advancement is fall behind.