Plant: Realizing the potential of transformative change
by Jayson Myers
Manufacturing in Canada must become a solutions-based business focused on customized value, not just volume and cost reductions alone. The future lies in advanced manufacturing.
Photo: Mick Koulavong /iStock / Getty Images Plus/Getty Images
Manufacturing is critical to the economic prosperity of all Canadians. It’s more important than ever in a world of escalating geopolitical risk, where we are faced with many global challenges. These include climate change, food and water shortages, and health crises. However, the future for manufacturing in Canada will be brutish, nasty, and short, if manufacturers themselves are unable to take advantage of the transformational challenges that lie ahead.
Manufacturing is the business of making things. However, if that’s all companies do – get more and more product out the door at lower and lower costs – manufacturing will not survive in Canada. That’s a commodity game in which companies are being rapidly driven out of business.
Manufacturing in Canada must become a solutions-based business focused on customized value, not just volume and cost reductions alone. The future lies in advanced manufacturing.
Advanced manufacturing entails the use of leading-edge technologies and techniques to grow the business by solving problems and making things – often new things – for customers, in significantly better ways. How companies make the transition to advanced manufacturing will determine their ability to sustain customer demand, compete, and grow.
This article originally featured in Plant. Read the full version here.
