How To Run A Manufacturing Business Smoothly While Ensuring A Healthy Online Presence

Sometimes, it can be difficult to juggle between your business’s production or manufacturing side and the online side, especially if you only have a small team supporting you, as both tend to require a lot of attention.

It is not always financially viable to have an inexhaustible supply of employees dealing with online matters, which can seem on the surface to be a non-profit-making role. However, if this is the case, it is a good idea to change how you think about the online side of your business.

The online side of your business can increase your profit margins exponentially if done correctly. However, it can leave you struggling if carried out poorly. It is well worth seeking professional help in all aspects to ensure the best is being done within your business.

There are a few things you can do to help your business run smoothly.

Never underestimate the importance of investing in your employees, regardless of what their role within your business happens to be.

#1 Training Programs

Introduce proper training programs for all members of staff, especially industry lead certification, is very important whether you are looking at your manufacturing staff, office staff, or top managers.

It is surprisingly helpful for all members of your office staff to understand what your manufacturing staff actually do and vice versa, as this can solve a lot of tensions and misguided information being passed on to customers, especially when it comes to pricing up projects and completion dates. It will also help when explaining any problems on the assembly lines.

There are many advantages to having all your employees fully trained and, where possible, by a fully qualified staff trainer. If the same person trains everyone, they should all be trained to the same standard without any information missed out or translated in a different way.

For production or manufacturing staff, it should cut down on the number of mistakes or errors performed due to lack of knowledge. This should cut down heavily on any rework required and increase productivity rate as well as overall quality.

For office staff, it will help with all areas of customer service as well as having the knowledge to be totally confident with the software programs they are using and the advice they are giving out.

If certificates are handed out for any training completed and passed, even if it is just an in-house certificate, it will increase employee’s morale and confidence within themselves. Having a workforce that is happy with high morale is well known to increase productivity and also improves staff retention numbers too.

#2 Encourage Information Flow

Having a good information flow throughout a business is paramount to keeping all members of staff happy and feeling secure. Sometimes it just is not enough to quietly place a note on the notice board and run away. Holding regular meetings with all members of staff where issues can be raised, questions answered and praise given is very important to morale.

These meetings do not have to be long drawn out affairs, just a quick couple of minutes on a Monday morning to let staff know what is ahead of them in the coming week and any issues to look out for, and maybe again on a Friday afternoon to say whether targets were reached, any issues found to be rectified or have been rectified and to give a thank you should there have been a job well done and a happy customer at the end.

These meetings could be held by managers or team leaders. It may also be helpful to include any additional information brought up at directors’ or managers’ meetings that all staff should hear about to keep them all in the loop.

This will benefit your business immensely as none of your employees will feel left out or that they are too low to know. If you do not encourage information flow into your business, you will find that the morale of your workforce drops, quality of their output also drops, as does their productivity. Negative rumors start to flow, and your staff retention rate will drop considerably.

#3 Communication Is Also Very Important To Your Customers

Communication within your customer service is extremely important, too, regardless of what kind of business you are running. This does not just mean telephone manner when answering the phone but in all areas where there is interaction with your customer.

Maybe it is a case that you simply do not give enough information over to your customers? There are many different examples of this, such as leaving your customer’s questions hanging far too long without sending some sort of reply or explanation of why it is taking so long for you to get back to them, or letting them know as soon as you know that there will be a delay on their order and leave it until the product is due to leave your building to tell the customer that it is going to be late.

As electronic message center manufacturers, it is really important to keep your customers well informed too. If you do not, you are risking your customer taking their trade elsewhere or very high late delivery penalties being introduced on all your orders from them. This will undoubtedly damage your business’s standing and give you a questionable reputation within your business sector.

#4 Having A Professional Scheduling Team Can Help

Having a professional scheduling team within your business dealing with all areas of planning and scheduling can help immensely.

Your team will have to know the ins and outs of what you do and how to correct any issues should things go astray or wrong. They will be aware of downtime as soon as it happens. Having some kind of software such as Gantt charts will help with this, though it will only be beneficial if all employees have access to it so they can update timelines and report any issues as and when they happen.

Your scheduling team will then be a point of contact for your customers and will be able to contact customers directly to let them know if their orders are on time or if there may be complications before delivery.