Blog
Cybersecurity – Viruses, Ransomware, Phishing…Oh My! Let us help you fight back!
Small-to-mid-sized manufacturers face a long list of challenges. From supply chain snarls to the rising cost of raw materials, there is no shortage of things to keep business owners up at night. Perhaps the most worrisome, though, is the growing frequency of cyber attacks. The FBI’s latest Internet Crime Report puts the cost of domestic […]
Four Key Stages Business Leaders Must Overcome to Change Results
The following blog post is reprinted with permission from CONNSTEP, VMEC’s Connecticut sister MEP Center. Many small to mid-sized manufacturers, as well as other businesses, simply plod along from year to year. Revenues hover around the same level while wrestling with recurring operational challenges and not managing to “crack the code” for what it takes […]
Broken Supply Chains Call for New Strategies
When offshoring became a necessity a few decades ago, primarily as a way to achieve the cost reductions demanded by big box stores and others, few people considered how fragile the resulting supply chain might become. Now it’s on everyone’s lips. You might be able to Zoom in real time with your Asian supplier, but […]
TWI Explained
As Vermont manufacturers work to adjust to the new normal, business leaders are finding value in improved employee relationships as we return to work, along with the ever-present need for standardized training and instruction. VMEC’s Training Within Industry (TWI) programs offer opportunities to expand supervisor knowledge in the areas of Job Instruction (JI) and Job […]
Small Technical Assistance Grants Yield Big Impacts
In September 2020, the Vermont Legislature allocated $2.5 million of federal CARES Act funding for small business technical support in Act 137. Governor Scott and the Agency of Commerce and Community Development announced that the RDCs of Vermont (Regional Development Corporations) would be tasked with deploying $1,400,000 in technical assistance funding for small businesses across […]
Partnerships Create Rapid Innovation During COVID-19 Crisis
Like their counterparts around the country, Vermont manufacturers found themselves facing a long list of challenges as Coronavirus-related shutdowns pushed clients and suppliers into dramatically different new modes of operation last year. Many turned to new product and service offerings, leveraging their capabilities in creative ways to offset the many and varied challenges that presented […]
How Automation and AI May Help Level the Playing Field for Women in Manufacturing
Women make up about 29 percent of the manufacturing workforce despite filling 47 percent of the positions in the overall workforce, according to the Manufacturing Institute. While there have been periods of growth and decline, the dynamic is mostly unchanged since 1970, when women held 27 percent of the manufacturing jobs. But many experts say the growing […]
Lean Innovation: What Manufacturers Can Learn From the Tech Sector’s Appropriation of Lean Thinking
When most people think of lean processes, the prevailing attitude is that the goal is to optimize things in a step-by-step approach. The result that companies using lean methods can look forward to is incremental improvements brought about by the elimination of waste. Individuals who stick with this definition often assert that lean principles oppose […]
VMEC Strategy Plan
If You Fail to Plan… We’ve all heard the old maxim about the need to plan, and no one doubts the importance of having a well-formed Strategic Plan. The Harvard Business Review, however, finds that just 11% of executives are happy with their strategic planning process. And as with many other aspects of business, the […]
VMEC Innovation Engineering
What is Innovation Engineering? Businesses spend a tremendous amount of time and energy in pursuit of innovation—the transformative changes that enable growth through new products and ideas. The challenge, in many cases, is that like many creative endeavors, innovation can entail a bit of a “lightning in a bottle” unpredictability. We rarely know when innovative […]