MMT Chats: MMT Advisory Board Wraps Up Year with Current Data Trends

The Editorial Advisory Board of MoldMaking Technology is made up of authorities with expertise within their respective business, industry, technology and profession. Their role is to advise on timely issues, trends, advances in the field, offer editorial thought and direction, review and comment on specific articles and generally act as a sounding board and a conscience for the publication. We've been virtually meeting this year due to the virus. Here is a peek at our last meeting of 2020 that involves a snapshot of some industry data and analysis about this pandemic recession shared by Gardner Intelligence Chief Economist Michael Guckes.

As business leaders, you need to have a little bit of a mind shift here and just remind yourself, in the back of your mind, that this is not a normal recession.

Here are a few key points from this presentation:

• We have this kind of perfect storm—strong seasonal shipping,  everyone's doing everything by e-commerce, vaccine distribution, and  the airlines.
• Everyone seems to be struggling to figure out what to do.
• When there's no plan in place, there's no capacity.
• I was really hopeful that we're going to see some continuation and the expansionary trend that we saw in that third quarter seems like that's probably not going to happen.
• Another way to think of the Supplier Deliveries component is orders to fulfillment. The longer it takes orders to be fulfilled, the higher the supplier deliveries.
• By size we are seeing smaller firms taking it on the chin quite a bit more than the larger firms. The larger firms may have better distribution and diversification. The larger firms also may have more negotiating power with either their suppliers or their customers.
• The one thing that you can see is volatility.
• Smaller companies are buying to maintain functionality. Maybe they don't have a growth plan in place, but they have a maintenance plan in place and that's why we're seeing so little volatility at those smaller sizes.
• A growing proportion of moldmakers and molders were seeing material prices increased, which comes out as a pressure on profit margins.
• There's not a single end market, but it is a diversification strategy. Diversification can be huge to maintain minimally, efficient and economical production levels.
• Medical has done really well here in the last six months. Second automotive. Third electronics.
• It's been interesting to see how this pandemic recession is different from more classic recessions.
• As business leaders, you need to have a little bit of a mind shift here and just remind yourself, in the back of your mind, that this is not a normal recession.
• The fact is that the government moved incredibly fast this year to make sure that financial markets stayed more or less stable.
• Without consumer sentiment, we would be in far worse state than we are now.
• A lot of firms manufacturers will deal with building a global supply chain and distribution network for either ultra cold vaccines or even just the normal refrigerated vaccines.
• There is going to be a lot of potential for manufacturing to figure out how they will fit into this opportunity.
• Medical devices or medical instruments is one of the fastest growing end markets.
• What does the practical supply chain look like from a regional perspective?
• There's going to be a localization-based knowledge imbalance in need for supply chain partners to be closer together in proximity to one another.

For the full conversation, click above, and for more archived MMT Chats, click here.