For 200 consecutive weeks without missing a single Tuesday morning, I've published interviews with manufacturing leaders (and professionals influencing manufacturing leaders) about the things that matter most to them.

In this milestone episode, I've compiled sound bites from 21 of those 200 episodes (and referenced many others as well), and I've organized what I've heard and summarized what I've learned around seven central themes. They are:

1. Supply chain

2. Labor

3. The next generation

4. Automation

5. Digitization and industry 4.0

6. Sustainability

7. Leadership

When I hear the word "service" in a business setting, my mind goes straight to CUSTOMER service. But the concept of serving becomes so much more powerful when it finds its way into all the other aspects of running a business.

In this episode, business coach Fred Reggie talks about about building what he calls a service culture.

Specifically, he touches on the importance of two-way communication, clearly articulating your organization's mission and achieving universal buy-in throughout your organization around that mission.

If you sell big-ticket, heavily-engineered, CapEx equipment through a long, consultative sales processes, e-commerce couldn't possibly be for you. Right?

If you're a contract manufacturer custom designing products for your customers, e-commerce couldn't possibly be for you. Right?

If you're a manufacturer selling anything other than a low-price point, commodity product, e-commerce couldn't possibly be for you. Right?

Well, if you stick around for this conversation, my guess is that 40 minutes from now, you might feel differently about any of these three scenarios.

Curt Anderson, founder of B2BTail, is an e-commerce expert – specifically in the B2B manufacturing sector.

He's got a new definition of e-commerce for you, and a bunch of applications you might not have considered.

Managing fixed labor costs is hard enough in a complex manufacturing environment.

Then you throw a pandemic on top of it that only deepens an already problematic labor market, you sprinkle in some supply chain disruption and you add some economic uncertainty to the mix. What do you have left?

Lots of confusion and stress about how to plan for labor in your business.

In today's conversation, Adam Rubatt, Director, Operations Intelligence at Veryable, explains why we need to start thinking differently about staffing. More specifically, he'll introduce a concept that his company refers to as "on-demand labor planning".

There's nothing easy about being a leader, whether you're leading a marketing agency like me or a manufacturing organization like many of you.

Founder and CEO of Rafti Advisors, Jim Vaselopulos, is an advisor to business leaders and host of a leadership podcast that's been running since 2016.

In this episode, he'll draw on his experiences guiding B2B manufacturing leaders as we talk about:

– Letting curiosity drive smart business decisions

– Applying principles of root cause analysis across different parts of your business

– Changing your relationship with time

The more manufacturing leaders you talk to, the more opinions and perspectives you'll hear about why we're struggling to pull young Millennials and Gen Zers into the industrial sector workforce:

– General awareness issues

– A perception of dirty, dark and dangerous jobs

– Negative associations among youth (and their parents) with a career path other than "go to college and get a white-collar job"

In today's conversation, you'll hear directly from the source.

Jacob Sanchez is a Gen Zer whose energy and passion alone make this episode worth listening to.

He's been in the manufacturing workforce since he was fifteen years old and his perspective about why we're missing the boat with Gen Z will get you thinking.

If you were to interview a variety of successful manufacturing leaders and analyze their respective approaches to effective leadership, I think you'd find a lot less directing than you would enabling.

In this episode, Jason Riley, COO of the additive manufacturing company Fabrisonic, draws on his experience both as a military leader and a manufacturing leader to break down what he refers to as "5 Key Principles for Creating a Culture of Initiative".

We'll talk about what it means to lead with intention, delegate, empower decision making, maximize collaboration and create meaningful process documentation.

New product development today is more complex than ever before. With teams spread out across the country (or the globe), decentralized product data, supply chain challenges and more demanding customers, design engineering is just plain hard.

Adam Keating, Co-Founder and CEO of CoLab, has been building the software and the company that's working to solve these problems.

In this conversation, he'll dive into the challenge and hand and how they're addressing it.

When people talk about you years down the road, what will they say? "Oh yeah, he (or she) was a good manager or employee?"

Or will there be something more?

In this conversation, manufacturing leader and author, Mosongo Moukwa, talks about how to leave a meaningful and lasting mark on your organization. Or in his words, how become "a leader of significance."

From skills to work ethic to understanding chain of command, veterans bring so much potential to the manufacturing workforce.

In this episode, Lt Col Kathy Lowrey Gallowitz will talk about how manufacturing leaders can go from unaware how to tap into the veteran community to being veteran-friendly to being veteran-READY.