Chuck Coxhead on winning in manufacturing - workforce, product, strategy, automation and more!

Today's manufacturers have to tackle a lot of challenges: lack of skilled labor (or any labor, for that matter!), product differentiation, business direction, where to invest capital, and on and on.

It's been a while since we had a thorough dive into all things manufacturing, so it was great fun to have Chuck Coxhead join us to offer his views. Chuck is General Manager at Koaxis, a maker of coaxial RF cable assemblies. Plus he has decades of frontline manufacturing experience, so he's just the guy to help folks navigate all those thorny industrial challenges. Here are the highlights:

Chapters
00:00 - Intro
04:30 - what manufacturing workers do is cool!
09:30 - the general state of manufacturing - it varies by sector
12:45 - the Boeing example
14:45 - Men in Black paraphrase: "A person is smart... but people are stupid, nervous, etc."
15:45 - Lucent - "too big to fail"
23:45 - how to differentiate
25:45 - advice for US manufacturers
21:30 - automation and robotics
30:30 - some things can't be automated
32:00 - autonomous mobile robots
32:45 - reshoring
34:45 - brainstorm with beer!

Tune in and check out the whole thing - it will be worth your while!