Develop your town’s manufacturing capability.

Continuous innovation has to be a priority for small manufacturing. More prominent companies can quickly copy products and encroach on other markets. Innovation comes in many forms, including technology, product development, management and marketing strategies, and greater use of design principles to enhance product value.

These activities are not always mutually exclusive. Introducing new manufacturing processes involving robots or 3D printing can require modifications to the business model and value chain.

What questions will you ask to stimulate small manufacturing in your community?

By avoiding such manufacturing pitfalls as overproduction and poor scheduling, smaller manufacturing businesses can better meet sales, growth and profit goals continuously. Small manufacturing businesses generally improve quality control standards, and fewer defects exist. This allows smaller manufacturers to meet their budgeting goals more accurately. This is achieved by avoiding costly production problems and the resulting customer dissatisfaction.

Being “investor-ready” can stop small manufacturing businesses’ struggle. Investor-Ready is about building a real business and getting it into the ‘fair dinkum’ department with real products and management in place, along with all the necessary facilities and equipment needed to get the job done.

Luck favours the prepared business, and this does not happen overnight. It will take many hours over many months. Of course, it will take longer if you don’t have access to expertise and your systems are not in place.  Become investor-ready and get lucky.

Organise the small manufacturing potential in your community.

Community leaders promote awareness of growth opportunities and help people go beyond their limiting beliefs. Training and encouragement can help people strive beyond their perceived limits and start down the manufacturing path. Community leaders who promote growth mindsets will find their community becoming more learning-oriented and adaptive, which is crucial to job creation in the 21st century.

Can your community learn the secrets of small manufacturing success? Can you generate ideas and help arrest the overall decline in manufacturing’s contribution to employment and the economy? You bet you can. However, it will take a team effort in local areas to identify and support initiatives.

Businesses meeting on purpose to do this will be the successful ones. Many need a catalyst and reassurance that they can be small manufacturers, making money and having fun. In a dying community, entrepreneurship needs to be stimulated with action. Rhetoric and talkfests are a thing of the past; local import replacement is a thing of the future.

Quotable Quotes.

“When you align manufacturing with the town or village’s wants and needs, you’ll see more positive outcomes and have a happier community”. Peter Sergeant

“Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No.1”. Warren Buffett