MFGx Blog

The Role of the Internet in Developing Your Business

aj — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:25:44 GMT

The Web has become the preferred channel where manufacturers, prospects and purchasers go to research sources and partners to build and develop their products. But many manufacturers miss opportunities for new business because they're presenting incomplete or insufficient information online.

Prospective customers use the Internet to research potential solutions. They have specific purposes, and they collect information on plastics processors that can provide those solutions based on their specific, technical specifications and business needs.

Today's prospect is a stealth prospect: in control and anonymous throughout the research cycle until they chose to reveal themselves. Their online behaviors aren’t very different from yours when researching a capital equipment purchase. What they find online about your company – or don’t find there – can strongly influence who they'll engage or investigate further, and who they won't. If you’re deemed worthy, they’ll engage you.

To attract, influence and motivate prospects to add you to their short lists of potential suppliers or partners, an online strategy to maximize exposure AND effectively capitalize on prospects’ behaviors must include:

Present Your Core Strengths – Your equipment and facilities are important. So are the industries and companies you’ve served. But the primary purpose to any successful Web presence for plastics processors is to differentiate you from your competition. And there’s nothing that differentiates you like describing the details of projects you’ve worked and parts/products you’ve made. Present the technical features of each part, the materials and equipment used, the improvements made to the part/product during the life of the project, and any problems encountered and how you solved them.
Start A Blog – They’re inexpensive (many are free), they’re relatively easy to set up and you don’t have to know code to update them. And best of all, a Blog (short for “Web Log”) is an effective means of communicating what your company is doing, what projects you’re working on, company news and anything the market may find interesting. Easy, inexpensive and effective. And here’s a tip: post to your Blog regularly, but you don’t have to post frequently.
Participate On The Web – Find related forums for plastics professionals – like those on Plastics.com – and answer questions, offer suggestions and contribute to the dialogue. Each post acts as an organic reference for you and your company. And remember that once the discussion has faded into the background, your posts will remain in perpetuity – legacy posts are often found by prospects searching for suppliers, and these “breadcrumbs” can be very effective at putting your company in a prospect’s view.

Collaborate - And More - With Zapproved

aj — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 20:37:54 GMT

Here's an interesting online collaboration tool that can help manufacturing SMBs, workgroups and displaced teams come to consensus around elements of a project.

Zapproved allows anyone - at no cost - to submit a proposal or proposed project/product to any person or group with an email address. Of course, attachments can be added to any proposal. The proposal package can then be sent within the email with two buttons - one to approve, one to deny. All votes, their sources and any comments from the group are tracked and shared, allowing for strong record keeping and approval cycle management.

Since Zapproved is a SaaS (software as a service, and Web-based), there's no software to install. And your projects and proposals - along with all data around the approval cycle - are maintained and retrievable for later review.

This simple tool can help technical groups build consensus, keep projects moving, and it brings transparency to all team members involved in a decision process.

It's not too hard to imagine how Zapproved can assist manufacturers manage their supply chains by gaining documented approval and consensus on design or process changes, as well.

A unique approach to collaboration, Zapproved is worth a visit if your team could use a little control.

Your MFG.com Profile, The Web, And Your Prospects

aj — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:07:12 GMT

Recently over at MFG.com, a buyer in the manufacturing marketplace sent an interesting piece of feedback that all manufacturers should consider sage advice. The buyer - a prospect that uses MFG.com supplier profiles to conduct research to select suppliers - provided a list of "must haves" for their MFG.com profiles. He writes:

"... It would really behoove (you) to work very close with these new suppliers to make sure that the profile entered is as complete and detailed of as possible. I would think with the money that suppliers spend to participate in this fantastic program it would make them wise to the extreme benefits of having a detailed and complete profile. It should be (your) number one goal ... to help these suppliers develop there profiles."

The buyer's list shows what he looks for when comparing suppliers and choosing to initiate contact. It is based on deficiencies he's found with several profiles in the past:

Pictures of their shop, both inside and outside (if they are proud and it is presentable, common sense would apply).
Pictures of parts previously made that show their full capabilities.
Detailed equipment lists of everything in their shop, all the way down to overhead cranes and forklifts.
Links to their company’s website (if they have one, which they should invest in anyway).
Any ISO 9001 or other certifications they may have from distinguished buyers.
References from buyer

Not only does this list describe in detail what an active buying prospect looks for in an MFG.com profile, it also rings true for your own Web site. Your Web presence - all mentions of your company online - serve one primary purpose: to differentiate you from your competition. Thoroughness, accuracy and relevance are key to influencing these potential customers and partners that you are worth the time to investigate further.

If your MFG.com profile is incomplete, update it. If your Web site is incomplete, update it. If you don't, you're likely leaving money on the table and you won't even know it.

Another Online Collaboration Tool For Manufacturers - Clavardon

aj — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:07:06 GMT

Clavardon (www.clavardon.com) is an online tool that allows you to invite others to co-browse any Web site with you and chat live with everyone in the process. As you surf a site, others can see what you're looking at, what you're pointing at and any text or item you want to highlight.

According to Clavardon, the utility was created to help e-commerce businesses and sales staffs to demo their sites to prospects. It certainly does that.

But SMB manufacturers can use it to their advantage as well. For example:

Review your own Web site with offsite resources to develop or refine.
Review and collaborate on any item - drawings, plans, or projects - that you've uploaded to the Web beforehand.
Review documentation and information with customers or prospects.

Clavardon is free for up to 100 sessions per month, and requires no setup or registration.

One downside that I noticed is that the chat window is pretty large, which limits the size of the window that displays the site being shared.

But for the convenience and usability, this is a hard utility to beat - especially for the cost.

Hat Tip: Robin Good

New Online Forum For Machinists

aj — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:15:01 GMT

American Machinist magazine's Web site has just launched a new collection of forums. Titles of the new forums include Machine Shop Management, Machining and Shop operations. The new forums were launched this week, after a long relationship between AM and Practical Machinist forums.

How NOT To Blog

aj — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:36:20 GMT

I recently wrote about why manufacturers (and businesses, for the most part) don't blog.

I stumbled on and article this morning titled "12 Common Blogging Mistakes To Avoid" that gives some pretty good advice on do's and don'ts for the beginning bloggist.

Of course, that's you - if you want to be. Just register on MFGx, and you get your own blog for the manufacturing world to see.

The list of 12 mistakes deserves a read. Here are the titles of each item (with my comments in parenthesis):

Thinking (more) people will actually read (a) post [they won't)
Using full paragraph format (be brief)
Not using or numbering lists (see previous)
Trying to sell something in a blog post (the more commercial you are, the less credibility you earn)
Not including facts (support your findings)
Using improper titles (don't get cute - say what it's about)
Writing for pHds (keep it simple, when you can ... tough for manufacturers sometimes - it's the nature of the beast)
Making the post too long (again, be brief)
Repackaging existing information (and be sure to give proper credit)
No use of headings and subheadings
Highlight or bold important terms and concepts (helps readers scan - perfect for the Web)
Not using supporting images (a picture's worth a 1000 posts)

One other point from me: find your own voice. Following these nuggets of advice can get you started blogging on the right foot.

Teamness - Online Project Collaboration

aj — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:26:31 GMT

In the MFGx tradition of bringing you only the best in online, affordable collaboration tools that make sense for manufacturing SMBs, check this bad boy out:

Teamness is a free collaboration suite with a surprising number of features.

According to the Teamness site, it provides:

"... tasks, milestones, messages, file sharing, whiteboards with versions, overview of all recent activity, a powerfull search engine, groups to keep your data organized, notifications and RSS to help you stay up to date with any changes ..."

If you’re company is looking for a utility that allows for strong collaboration, this is something you may want to investigate.

Autodesk - The Community

aj — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:48:36 GMT

Regardless of your relationship with Autodesk, you should give their online community a bookmark.

If you're into design, grab a belt loop and hang on.

The Autodesk Manufacturing Community isn't JUST about Autodesk product (although you'll certainly get that in spades). You'll find a remarkable collection of manufacturing resources there. To whit:

3D Content Sharing - Download 3D models from supplier partners and peers in the community - why reinvent the well, no?
Forums - Sure, they're related specifically to Autodesk product, but we're talking a collection of experts that can crowdsource many design issues - this is a great resource and worth the time to join.
Blogs - Again, while these are Autodesk-focused, they provide an extraordinary wellspring of manufacturing mojo and insight to any engineering or manufacturing design professional.

Communities, when done right, are tools to members and even visitors. The Autodesk community is another resource for manufacturers seeking advice, enlightenment, or solutions to design issues that cover the entire machining and manufacturing design landscape.

Heap strong manufacturing medicine.

Military Portal Serves Up Important Web Lessons For Manufacturers

aj — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:39:49 GMT

The National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) is a technology provider to the U.S. military and its contractor and supplier base. Its list of Alliance (technology) Partners and Board of Directors reads like a who's who of the machining universe - technology providers, academia and corporate leadership.

To get a strong flavor of the types of support the NCDMM offers the U.S. military supply chain, check out their Manufacturing Solutions page and select from the menu titled "Our Success Stories."

Now, certainly the NCDMM offers great value through driving efficiencies into the intricate manufacturing and machining processes required to build such sophisticated products. Rifling through those Solutions will give you a strong sense of what they've done and how they've done it. And they're actually much more effective at explaining what NCDMM does than the tired prose you find throughout the primary pages of the site. For example:

Over a very short period of time, NCDMM activities evolved from quick response support to participation in a full range of initiatives to resolve production issues that challenge the manufacturing and machining efforts of defense organizations and their contractor communities. This participation addresses currently deployed weapon systems as well as future systems. The impact of the Center's participation is quantifiable and significant.

Ugh.

Now, check out this one example from their repository of Solutions (in PDF format, unfortunately):

Now which of these best portray for you the NCDMM's competence as a potential partner?

(If you said the text, please contact me through this site with the name of your doctor. You obviously get better drugs than Elvis.)

The project sheet does several things that your Web site should do in spades:

Create Brief Vignettes of Your Competence - The PDF is brief. It's easy to read. It states the challenge and the solution and explains how it was done.
What Was The Payoff? - Show directly how your professional competence resulted in real benefits to a past customer through manufacturing excellence.
What Were The Time Benefits? - Time is important to your prospects. Maybe you improved the cycle time of a part or product. But maybe it was improved delivery time. Maybe it was better logistics. Whatever you did to get parts to a customer quicker and cheaper - list it.
Who Was Involved? - What partners did you use? What divisions or groups in your shop or plant or company? Show your versatility.
Put These Examples Front and Center on Your SIte - With apologies to NCDMM, don't bury your vignettes like they have. Make them the centerpiece of your site - you're talking to people that are looking for competent partners, not loquacious wordsmiths.

And another benefit of following this advice: the search engines LOVE this stuff, because you're naturally adding the keywords and phrases that your prospects are actually searching for.

Look, people don't go to the Web to read - they go to the Web to work. To be specific, the folks that you should care most about - prospects looking for manufacturers to make them look good - are.

The NCDMM - a great organization - got their Web site backwards. Push the words to the back, and what you do that makes you great to the front.

Yes, Your Web Site Can Get You More Business

aj — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:29:22 GMT

No one that I know of has done more over the years to help define what a Web site should say than Jakob Nielsen of www.useit.com.

He is direct, knowledgeable, and almost always right. His message for Web site language and content has been consistent, and extraordinarily useful for manufacturers.

The latest post on the subject comes from his Alertbox newsletter. Writing Style for Print vs. Web follows Jakob's mantra that prospects are in a different condition when they visit your Web site, compared to when they encounter a brochure or other printed media.

I've always described the distinction like this:

Printed media introduces prospects to things they didn't know they needed. The Web introduces prospects to things they already know they need, but aren't sure where to find them.

For anyone interested in maximizing their manufacturing Web site, you'd do well to read through Jakob's legacy work at UseIt.com. Here are some other related pieces on his site that can help you improve your site's effectiveness at gaining new work and prospects:

Spreed

aj — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:40:31 GMT

Here at MFGx, we’re all about the collaboration (for proof, look here and here). And now is a great time for manufacturing SMBs without the resources to build their own network to find inexpensive solutions to collaborate online with customers and prospects.

Here’s another one: Spreed.

Spreed allows you to conference online with up to 3 colleagues for free (with registration) – and you can share files, video chat, share power point presentations, whiteboard and even screen share. If you want more than 3 others, you can step up for as little as $20 U.S. per month.

Spreed is based in Europe, and is available in English, German, and Russian.

Google Pages - More Web Goodness For Manufacturers

aj — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:32:45 GMT

Awhile back, we wrote about Google Sites, a platform from the Googleplex that allows manufacturers to create whole Web sites with social/2.0 features easily.

Here's another toolkit from Google Labs that manufacturing SMBs will want to watch: Google Pages.

Like Google Sites, Google Pages is a WYSIWYG html editor. Here's what we get:

No technical knowledge required. Build high-quality web pages without having to learn HTML or use complex software.
What you see is what you'll get. Edit your pages right in your browser, seeing exactly how your finished product will look every step along the way.
Don't worry about hosting. Your web pages will live on your own site at http://yoursitename.googlepages.com.

While Google Sites is a one-stop shop for complete Web site creation and hosting, Google Pages looks like it'll help those of us with an existing site to create pages to upload to them without having html or technical chops.

Right now, Google Pages is still in "an early testing phase" (is that pre-beta?) but it's accessible and looks pretty good.

For manufacturing SMBs looking to broaden their Web development options, you oughtta slap a bookmark on Google Pages.

Google Sites - New Web Site Options For All Manufacturers

aj — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:43:45 GMT

Google has just announced a new Web service called Google Sites, and it offers manufacturing professionals large and small several options to promote and serve their businesses, and collaborate with others simply and effectively.

In essence, Google Sites is about building a Web site without needing to know how to build a Web site. No coding, design or advanced computer skills are needed.

Check out these features and descriptions:

Single-click page creation - Creating a new page for your Google Site just takes the click of a button.

No HTML required - Creating a Google Site is as easy as editing a document, which means there's no markup language for you to learn - just get started.

Make it your own - (Google's) customization options let you give your Google Site your own look and feel.

Get started with templates - (Google) offer(s) a growing list of page types -- web page, announcements, file cabinet, dashboard and list -- to help you get started with your Google Sites pages.

Upload files and attachments - Use the file cabinet to upload files up to 10MB in size. Each Google Apps account receives at least 10GB of storage in Google Sites. Google Apps Premier and Education editions get an additional 500MB for each user account.

Embed rich content - Google Sites is integrated with other Google products, so you can insert videos, docs, spreadsheets, presentations, photo slide shows, and calendars directly onto your Google Sites pages.

Work together and share - (Google's) permission settings let you designate owners, viewers and collaborators (meaning they can edit pages) for your site. And you can make your Google Sites available to just a few people, your entire organization, or the world.

Search with Google - You can search across Google Sites pages and content using powerful Google search technology. You'll find specific pages and documents instantly, the same way you would on Google.com.

What does all this mean for manufacturers? You can create a useful Web site for your company. You can create an Intranet (internal site) to serve you company, employees, sales force, etc. You can create private sites to serve a project and only invite the project members. You can create training sites for your employees.

The point is that you can create a Web site - without knowing how.

Academia & The Supply Chain

aj — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:17:15 GMT

Finding information about supply chain management isn't a big deal these days. And although finding information about how to function within or around any supply chain is a little more difficult, it's a whole lot better than it used to be.

But finding the right supply chain info at the time you need it is still a daunting task. I mean, every business by its own nature brings unique requirements to a supply chain party. Add to that regional/global, industry, technical and specific customer requirements, and answers become more complex and hard to find.

There are universities that have taken the initiative to develop supply chain programs and networks in conjunction with government and industry. These resources can help greatly with establishing processes and efficiencies for your business, and redefining its place in supply chains.

The MIT Global SCALE Network - You may have heard of MIT's Center for Transportation and Logistics - it's one of the most prestigious think tanks for supply chain in the world. MIT's recently established SCALE (Supply Chain and Logistics Excellence) Network is part of the CTL and it intends to connect companies, academia and governments from around the world to "pool their expertise and collaborate on projects that will create supply chain and logistics innovations with global applications." The network currently has partnerships in the U.S., Europe and South America. They are in the process of launching partners in Asia and Africa. Think of the network as "crowdsourcing" for the supply chain.
Georgia Tech's Supply Chain and Logistics Institute - The SCLI has been around for over 60 years. It has developed an impressive global network of industry and academic partners serving several supply chain verticals - overall strategies, manufacturing logistics, warehousing & distribution, and more.

These institutions offer strong resources for small and medium sized manufacturing businesses that are either firmly entrenched within a supply chain or are on a high growth rate and motivated to break into others.

More Collaborative Tools For SMBs

aj — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:08:44 GMT

Here are a couple of online, low-cost collaborative tools for you to use with clients or colleagues. These may not be the most secure or elegant solutions, but for personal use to support your work, you may want to check these out:

ADrive - ADrive offers up to 50GB of storage space for your documents and files. While it's touted as an online backup for your hard drive, you can share your files with anyone. Adrive is free after you create an account.
Tweetcube - Do you Twitter? Many are flocking to the real time networking site. Tweetcube allows you to share files of up to 10MB in size through your Twitter account, and deletes them after 30 days. Tweetcube is also free with registration.
SnapYap - OK, the name may sound odd, but Yahoo was already taken, OK? SnapYap is simple: plug in the e-mail address of anyone you want to video conference with, they're notified to meet you online, and you're squawking together in no time. Absolutely free.

Shout out: Robin Good.