One unique opportunity for ERP consultants is to see how manufacturers operate. They can see how businesses adopt, stretch, patch, or replace systems to manage growth, customer requirements, inefficiency, or pressure on the bottom line. The insight is important to what business maturity looks like. ERP matters because it becomes the foundation for shared processes and data. It organizes how information moves, departments interact, work is measured, and how well an SMB manufacturer can scale.

I’m regularly on Capitol Hill, talking about the foundational importance of PCBs and other essential pieces of the electronics supply chain. I find that policymakers work hard to make informed decisions that affect our $6 trillion industry, yet they don’t always have a complete picture of how interconnected our industry has become. A component decision in Arizona can ripple through a PCB line in Guadalajara, a materials plant in Penang, and ultimately the manufacturers that depend on both. That’s why the global electronics industry needs a unified, coordinated voice to help policymakers understand those connections before decisions are made, so policies strengthen the entire electronics supply chain rather than one segment at the expense of another. 

Traditionally, EMS companies have focused their continuous improvement efforts on machine speeds, placement accuracy, yield enhancement, and labor productivity. Yet across much of the industry, one of the largest contributors to lost capacity remains largely hidden in plain sight. We’re talking, of course, about setup time optimization. High-mix production is increasing even as product lifecycles shrink, meaning changeovers occur more frequently than ever, resulting in a proportionally larger amount of time lost to setup activities. Inefficient setup processes cost hundreds of hours of annual production capacity, and this lost time can mean the difference between a modest profit and self-funded company expansion.

For years, I treated my health like a dashboard. I tracked my steps, calories, protein intake, sleep score, and resting heart rate. If a number could be attached to it, I wanted to optimize it, and I got pretty good at it. But the dashboard wasn't telling the whole story, and that was a problem. I could hit every target and still feel exhausted. I could achieve every metric while ignoring stress, recovery, and whether I actually felt healthy. Eventually, I realized I'd become less interested in my health than in producing good numbers. I had become a slave to the dashboard.