10 Manufacturing industry challenges

In today’s fast-paced environment, addressing manufacturing industry challenges is more crucial than ever. Tackling these issues can significantly enhance your productivity and profitability, ultimately boosting competitiveness.

Here, we’ll explore the manufacturing issues that your organization must prioritize. We’ll discuss the causes of these difficulties and offer insights on how to resolve them. Let’s get started on fostering a stronger production process.

What are manufacturing challenges?

Manufacturing industry challenges are issues that significantly impact the efficiency and effectiveness of operations. These difficulties come from various parts of the organization, compromising the business’s competitiveness and profitability.

Manufacturing challenges can affect your company’s standards, including consistency, productivity, quality, and compliance. Whether they result from flaws in the system or risk limitations, these issues block your ability to satisfy customer demands.

Top 10 manufacturing industry challenges

Now, let’s explore and understand the fundamental issues that challenge manufacturing businesses today:

1. Rising operational costs

Operational costs have always been a concern in the industry. However, rising expenses have recently placed businesses in a tight spot, creating an urgent need for solutions to remain competitive.

A diversity of factors contribute to expensive operational costs. Some of them can be traced back to poor procedures and processes. These include mismanaging equipment, overconsuming resources, and misallocating capital.

Other factors are price-based, driven by inflation, supply chain disruptions, or economic pressures. Steep pricing can be found in raw materials, utilities, energy, and logistics. Overall, these factors force many organizations to spend beyond acceptable levels.

What can you do to solve this? 

• Apply Lean manufacturing principles which are guidelines that aim to minimize excess in all parts of production
• Be strategic with your sources and suppliers
• Make informed decisions using cost analyses and cost accounting systems
• Track resource consumption
• Use predictive maintenance algorithms
• Automate and improve processes

2. Skilled labor shortage

A 2024 report from Deloitte claims that the United States manufacturing industry may face 1.9 million unfilled jobs by 2033. This data highlights the continuously declining interest in labor positions and emphasizes the need for new employee strategies.

Several reasons explain one of today's major manufacturing trends. The retirement of baby boomer workers has left many open jobs, with only a small pool of replacements. Younger generations tend to prefer other occupations that offer more flexibility, lower educational requirements, and better reputations.

Meanwhile, those remaining in technical manufacturing positions have a significant skills gap compared to those before them. This is why investing in a learning management system, like SC Training, is crucial these days. It’s your adaptive tool for managing and delivering effective training in an increasingly demanding environment.

How can you manage labor shortages?

• Invest in employee training 
• Offer career growth opportunities
• Implement new recruitment strategies that reach out to younger generations
• Improve working conditions
• Create better employee benefits and perks
• Maintain skill continuity using knowledge management software

Minimize manufacturing industry challenges by developing top-notch workers. Sign up for SC Training!

3. Compliance management

Your organization’s compliance with regulations and standards significantly enhances your trustworthiness with customers, government agencies, and partners. Their support for your business is crucial to the company’s success, sustainability, and longevity.

However, compliance in the manufacturing industry can present challenges. Complex requirements, variations across locations, and strict enforcement can burden the management of site standards. Plus, a single violation can result in expensive penalties and additional restrictions.

Because of this, your organization needs comprehensive compliance management systems and strategies to govern operations effectively. These methods should be scalable and flexible to maintain visibility throughout the production cycle. This way, you can correct improper practices, outdated procedures, and substandard assets.

How can your organization promote compliance?

• Conduct regular audits and Gemba walks where managers review processes on the floor
• Implement complete compliance frameworks 
• Establish clear documentation procedures and requirements
• Track compliance validity using a comprehensive dashboard like SC Training’s Training Matrix
• Encourage continuous improvements 

4. Supply chain disruptions

Production, sales, and distribution interferences continue to top manufacturing industry trends. These issues, ranging from low to high levels, delay or even halt the production cycle, resulting in increased costs and reduced productivity.

Supply disruptions push your business to be adaptable. These challenges can come from various operational interruptions, including shutdowns, shortages, and logistical problems. Disturbances can also be due to trade restrictions, tariffs, and civil unrest, which compromise processes.

What are strategies to manage supply chain problems?

• Develop contingency plans
• Improve supply chain management systems and visibility 
• Strengthen relationships with suppliers 
• Train teams in change management and manufacturing agility
• Review response protocols and inventory buffers

5. Technological adoption

The advancement of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) has simplified manufacturing operations. However, organizations struggle to gain these technological benefits without the proper resources, knowledge, and commitment.

This reflects the challenges businesses face in keeping up with new technologies. Your organization may be experiencing the effects of overreliance on legacy systems or skill gaps in tech expertise. This can also be because of complicated implementation plans or workers resisting changes.

What can you do to push technological adoption in the organization?

• Train your teams on tech courses, like SC Training’s Automation Safety or Computer Numerical Control (CNC) Machining for example 
• Divide your tech implementation plans into phases for a more seamless transition
• Replace legacy systems gradually with updated tools
• Combine manual tasks and tech assistance effectively to reduce job insecurity

6. Poor inventory

Failing to maintain the right inventory levels can lead to financial losses due to the inefficiencies caused by overstocking or understocking. Redundant stocks make for unnecessary costs, while material shortages result in operational disruptions.

Generally, inventory mismanagement can be traced back to poor planning and a lack of visibility. Common examples of these are inaccurate demand estimation, uncoordinated production schedules, incorrect records, and manual checking.

These may also indicate a larger problem with your organization’s data management system. This affects your tracking systems, counting processes, and historical numbers.

How can you maintain a good inventory?

• Use predictive analytics to forecast inventory
• Invest in the Internet of Things (IoT) such as bar codes, RFIDs, and cloud-based trackers
• Improve warehousing systems
• Implement just-in-time manufacturing principles
• Conduct consistent cycle counts

7. Capacity constraints

Capacity constraints are restrictions that prevent your production from achieving higher output. They can arise from any process, equipment, or labor that limits your organization’s maximum yield or use of resources.

To explain more, manufacturing limitations are the inadequate parts of your operation. These could be material shortages, low labor availability, overtedious workflows, quality control issues, or inappropriate equipment.

Since process constraints drag production down, they can result in major issues, including some of the challenges mentioned earlier. Slow, restricted operations can cascade into high costs, supply chain disruptions, and overstocked inventory. Overall, they minimize your ability to grow.

How to reduce capacity constraints?

• Conduct a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) 
• Invest in better equipment
• Deliver manufacturing upskilling courses, such as Quality Control from SC Training
• Adopt continuous improvement principles
• Improve floorspace planning
• Enhance logistics

8. Cybersecurity risks

Interconnected digital tools and systems have opened doors to greater operational growth. However, this reliance on IoTs and online platforms also exposes businesses to various potential cyberattacks. Data breaches can disrupt and constrain production on a significant scale, weakening workflows.

Remember, cyberattacks can affect not only information systems but also operational technologies. This includes CNCs, sensors, visualization tools, and ethernet networks. Altogether, digital infiltration can target your direct controllers and intellectual property, stemming from complex ransomware to simple accidental clicks.

What can prevent major cybersecurity threats?

• Increase cybersecurity awareness using learning resources like SC Training’s Cybersecurity and Internal Threats
• Apply cybersecurity frameworks such as IEC 62443 - the international standard for automation and control systems
• Implement multi-factor authentication access
• Audit digital security systems
• Monitor digital activities

9. Worker safety

The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal that organizations report 3.1 employee injuries for every 100 full-time workers. While occupational accidents are trending down, this statistic proves there’s still much to improve in workplace safety.

Manufacturing tasks are naturally hazardous, but that doesn’t excuse any lack of precaution and safety measures on the work floor. The same workplace safety statistics identify harmful substance exposure, falls, and strikes as the leading causes of injuries. These risks can be effectively addressed if you implement the proper safety systems.

Additionally, it’s important to note the potential health risks of defective personal protective equipment (PPE), poor lifting practices, and unmaintained equipment. Managing these safety hazards can minimize HR challenges in the manufacturing industry related to settling health claims and associated costs.

How can you promote workplace safety?

• Develop clear and practical protocols and working procedures 
• Promote regular equipment maintenance and service
• Conduct safety compliance checks with complete documentation and certificates
• Share safety data sheets
• Discuss and review manufacturing safety topics
• Evaluate risk and safety awareness using a comprehensive tool. For example, SC Training’s real-time reporting and analytics

10. Operational Inefficiency

The last item of these manufacturing industry challenges generally causes most, if not all, business problems. Operational inefficiencies can lead to supply chain disruptions, subpar technology use, and limited production capacity. Wasteful processes also increase the likelihood of workplace accidents and compromised inventory.

How so? Operational inefficiencies result from slow, overtedious, and unstructured tasks that consume excessive resources. Due to poor skills and low awareness, teams complete processes ineffectively, costing more than the output’s worth.

Outdated systems, a lack of standardization, and inept quality control measures are common signs of this issue. Your organization may also experience this through high overheads, uncoordinated planning, and low continuity.

What are efficient operational practices?

• Make sure workers attend the training they need. Try considering SC Training’s Group Training tracker.
• Regularly updated workflows and standard operating procedures 
• Allocate your resources properly
• Improve equipment and its usage
• Strengthen quality assurance measures 
• Implement performance metrics

Breakthrough manufacturing industry challenges with SC Training

Pursuing success as a manufacturing company requires continuous improvements to avoid being left behind. Standards, preferences, and markets will always evolve, so it's up to you to keep your teams ahead. 

Your employees will need to upskill regularly to stay updated, but delivering training isn’t always easy. Fortunately, there’s SC Training, the top platform for flexible and customizable manufacturing training.

Our tools and features allow you to manage training effortlessly at every step. For one, the platform’s User Management lets you assign, remind, and organize employees to the right courses in just a few clicks. This way, you won’t need to struggle with giving teams the training suited for their task’s requirements.

Next, you can say goodbye to piles of checklists and complicated spreadsheets for tracking worker skills. With SC Training’s Practical Assessments, you can digitally evaluate each team member’s performance from the comfort of your phone. As a result, compliance and quality checks become much easier.

And if you need more assurance that crews are learning to complete their work correctly, our File Briefcase is here to help. It offers built-in storage for saving technical documents and standard procedures, making them easily accessible to employees. This way, you can eliminate bulky folders and maximize your communal devices.

There’s an effective way to simplify manufacturing training. Sign up for SC Training today!