Skilled and unskilled labour shortages have been detrimental to the manufacturing industry and predicted only to worsen. Employees leave for more advanced businesses, offering streamlined work processes or career changes for easier work or higher pay.

The average Amazon delivery driver earns £26,500 per year.

Invest in tech solutions to streamline processes, making the job less manual. The increased organisation will allow employees to know what they should be doing and when. With time assigned to tasks/projects, employees will know when they are performing well, boosting a sense of achievement and job satisfaction.

NOTE* People will choose great working environments over minor financial gain.

Increased pay can only come from making more money unless your business can handle a net-profit deduction. To achieve this, improve marketing efforts. Even minor changes to your website performance, directory listings, and social media efforts can result in dramatic uptakes.

Bonus schemes, especially linked to productivity, are a great way to retain staff, increase job satisfaction and purpose whilst benefiting the business and increasing production capacity.

Regardless of business size, hiring is always a lengthy and costly task. You can use job boards, recruitment agencies and outreach to help attract new hires. Utilising software such as Zoho Recruit to manage recruitment needs, automate applicant flows to short-list, contact and hire. 

• Varied product margins
• Disruption to build process
• Increased quote time 

New business isn't a challenge unique to the manufacturing industry. Manufacturing services both to trade and the public require various marketing channels such as:

• Search engine traffic
• Directory sites
• Display advertising on trade sites 
• Sponsorship
• Social media
• Events & conferences 
• Job lead sites (such as Qimtek.co.uk)

If you don't have a marketing team, the time to do all this, or know where to start. We strongly suggest starting with the methods that can be outsourced and provide the most significant return on investment.

Having software can significantly benefit your business, but too many can hinder it. 

It can result in:

• High combined costs
• Several data sources 
• Poor internal team communication 
• Unreliable reporting 
  

When introducing new software, it's crucial to understand what software you already have. Understand its capabilities, cost and integration API. This way, you know which software will be replaced by the new and how the new software will link up with the existing solutions you must keep.

By creating a process flow, you will know what you want the software to do, the order, and the desired outcome. 

As a crucial part of your business, you need to know the supplier is capable of supplying and supporting for years to come. If it relies on someone internally, do you have records, training manuals and qualified cover? 

We've detailed six challenges we commonly see manufacturers face and help overcome. For steady and planned growth, it's not enough to overcome a challenge, you must prepare for them to return. We've detailed some of the preparations that owners and managers of manufacturing businesses can do to be ahead of competitors, as an industry or sector often simultaneously face most challenges together as a result of external economical factors.