Manufacturing Insights

Manufacturers today who want to decrease their carbon footprint and build sustainable products face dual challenges. Not only do they need to revamp their factories and set up a sustainable supply chain, but they need to keep costs low to sell on price as well as on values. It's margin before mission if you want to really win in the competitive marketplace. So says Plantd co-founder and host of the SuperCool podcast Josh Dorfman, who is the guest on this episode of Manufacturing Insights.

For many manufacturing companies, the twin goals of improving profit margins and increasing sustainability have been at odds. But could AI technology change all that? Berk Birand is the CEO of Fero Labs, which focuses on achieving profitable sustainability with the help of AI.

Should-cost models are only powerful if they're credible, actionable, and collaborative. In this expert panel, learn how to turn cost data into real negotiation outcomes.

Manufacturing operations create massive amounts of data. To use that data to improve financial KPIs it takes a single verifiable version of truth that every person can access and understand.

Given the tariffs announced last week, it’s unlikely that any supply chain moving forward in 2025 will look like it did in 2024. The question is: how will tariffs impact your supply chain? To help us make sense of this information, today’s podcast features an expert who has his ear to the ground when it comes to supply chain challenges and what smart leaders are saying we should do in this changing climate. Ron Crabtree is the host of the MetaPod podcast where he talks with supply chain experts from around the world about the challenges of building a modern, resilient supply chain. He’s also the CEO of MetaOps, helping organizations clear operational challenges like the one facing all of manufacturing today. Questions to Ask Your Procurement Team: Do we have the data to model the impact of tariffs?Do we have the technology to help us quickly make changes?

Everyone in sourcing, procurement, and manufacturing has questions about tariffs. Not only will they impact my bottom line, but how do I know which of my products are impacted? And how do I make the right decisions about my supply chain with the minimum amount of disruption and the best chance of resilience in the future? Today, two experts will discuss how they obtain these insights using aPriori. Originally recorded as a live webinar, this presentation walks through how to use aProri to see the impact of tariffs on your bottom line, make trade-offs between sourcing strategies, and analyze your entire product profile for hidden cost drivers, manufacturability challenges, and speed to market. At the end of the presentation, live audience members will raise their questions and get answers.

Procurement teams can't solve today's challenges of changing tariffs, rising materials prices, and shrinking time windows, if their best tool is email and excel. In this third conversation between LightSource CEO Spencer Penn and aPriori’s director of product Marketing, Chris Jeznach, we hear what’s missing from the current procurement model in most manufacturing companies today. And we’ll learn how new software technology can help bridge that gap. Spencer Penn draws from his vast experience working at Tesla and then founding LightSource, where he aims to revolutionize direct procurement in manufacturing today. From this frontline perspective, he explains the gaps he’s seen in procurement and what’s possible for teams that adopt new technology to bring the procurement process into the modern AI era.

For manufacturers who want to reduce cost, improve performance, and bring innovative products to market, sourcing and engineering teams should be a match made in heaven. Sourcing can help engineering avoid costly redesigns by sharing what’s possible to make in today’s market, while engineering can help sourcing get a head start in finding the suppliers with the right capabilities to make products at cost and at scale. But it often doesn’t happen that way. Today we’re discussing what holds back procurement and engineering teams from reaching their full potential together. It’s all about communication in the second of our series of conversations between Spencer Penn, the CEO of LightSource, and aPriori’s Director of Product Marketing, Chris Jeznach.

Procurement teams can learn from early successes and failures at Tesla, especially when it comes to trade-off analysis and early collaboration between design, sourcing, and suppliers. In this podcast, LightSource CEO Spencer Penn talks about trade-offs at Tesla between cost, performance, and risk.

To solve the labor shortage, manufacturing companies must re-brand as great places to work for a diverse group of workers including women and GenZ. What does it really take to attract, train, and grow a workforce that includes workers from a diversity of backgrounds? And what can manufacturers do today to make sure we’re ready for that labor market of tomorrow? Mariana Cogan is a former SVP at PTC and the current head of Marketing at Hexagon America. From her vantage point as a winner of Forrester’s Program of the Year and Full Circle Insights Greatest Overhaul Award, Mariana Cogan is ready to tell us passionately about how we can engage a new, diverse generation of workers in manufacturing and technology.

When you think about offshoring, restoring, or nearshoring, you’re probably thinking about cost. Certainly, the cost of labor and energy is a primary deciding factor when it comes to offshoring, restoring, or neashoring decisions. But what about the hidden costs of offshoring? This is a subject our guest knows a lot about. John Gardner writes about the hidden costs of offshoring and the increasingly apparent benefits of nearshoring. He is the author of Manufacture Local: How to Make America the Manufacturing Superpower of the World.

What does it take to balance high product development velocity with cost efficiency? In this Executive Talk podcast we hear from Hank Marcy, Former VP Global Product Technology, Whirlpool Corporation, about how he employed a modular strategy and smart tools like aPriori to keep costs down and velocity high.

In 2025 manufacturers are facing pressure from all sides: This is a perfect moment, in other words, to reconsider strategy and make sure you have the insights you need to make crucial strategic decisions about your manufacturing operations. To learn how today’s forward-thinking manufacturers are staying ahead with the information they need to mitigate risk and keep a lid on costs, we are hearing today from someone who spends her life talking to and helping top worldwide manufacturers — the CEO of aPriori Technologies, Stephanie Feraday. In this conversation we talk about cost, competition, and what the top manufacturers are doing to stay ahead in the economic climate of 2025.

When tech architecture is decades out of date, manufacturers end up with a tech stack that costs a lot and delivers little. All this can change with smart AI solutions. Mike Bowers is Chief Architect at FairCom where he helps companies reduce costs in their manufacturing processes by finding the right technological solutions to solve their biggest problems.

We talk about technology adoption within the manufacturing industry as if it's a magic elixir. With the right digitization effort and the right insights platform, we say that manufacturers can lower their cost, decrease design errors, speed time to market, maybe even get CO2 under control. But is that true? Or is it all too good to be true? My guest today helps manufacturers throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India through their digitization efforts and realizing the promise of Industry 4.o. Paul Haimes is the VP of EMEAI Solutions Consulting at PTC. And he's here today to talk to us about the promises of Industry 4.0 and whether or not they really are too good to be true.

If you want to make meaningful progress towards key targets, whether that's profit margins, production cycles, or sustainability goals, you need to be humble about where you went wrong in the past and find the right insights to bridge the information gap for your decisions moving forward. In this second installment of aPriori's executive talk series, Senior Director of Product Marketing Chris Jeznach talks to Peter Bilello is CEO of CIMdata, a global researcher and strategy consultancy focused on product lifecycle management and realizing the value of PLM for the entire organization.

In today's climate of increasing competition and decreasing time to hit an ever-shrinking target, the obsession of every executive must be: How can technology help me? How can the latest smart software and solutions help my company do more with less, reduce errors, and get more value from our data? Here on the Manufacturing Insights Podcast, we thought this would be a great time for a series of high-level discussions about these market-shaping questions and how executives today are thinking about them. For this series, we're bringing in a special guest host: Chris Jeznach is the Senior Director of Product Marketing at aPriori, and a strategic thinker about the ways that market dynamics in the software solutions and technology space really impact the productivity and ultimately the success of product manufacturers. In this first interview of the Exec Talk series, Chris Jeznach talks to Fielder Hiss, aPriori's Chief Product Officer, and an expert in the ways that the solutions manufacturers use to design, produce, and service their products work together to unlock value across the product lifecycle.

Time is money, but for manufacturers designing and releasing new products to the market, how much money is it really worth to be on time? Or put another way, what is the real cost of delays when it comes to design engineering? Matt Mullan is the Senior Director of Cost Model Development at aPriori. He comes from decades of experience in aerospace engineering and cost modeling, and he's brought to us today some sobering statistics on the cash value of time, as well as some concrete solutions on how to recoup both time and savings in the design process.

Get the update on the adoption of AI within the manufacturing industry, from an expert in Industrial AI. Bryan DeBois is the director of industrial AI at RoviSys, where he helps manufacturers realize the value from incorporating AI into their industrial processes.

Shifting left in product design empowers teams to make informed decisions early in the development process, significantly impacting cost, manufacturability, and sustainability. Using a digital copilot, designers can access expert insights and real-time data, enhancing their ability to create more efficient and effective products, thereby reducing downstream risks and accelerating time to market.