The 2024 Wisconsin Manufacturing Report Recommends Automated Manufacturing

If you are unsure about the state of manufacturing in the United States, the Wisconsin Manufacturing Report is one of the best researched and current resources you can find to take the temperature on manufacturing market trends, manufacturing concerns, and data interpretations to pivot your manufacturing business. Released yearly by the Wisconsin Center for Manufacturing (WCMP), the report is compiled from over 400 manufacturers and 5 focus groups across manufacturing businesses of all sizes and economic leanings. The 2024 retrospective just dropped on October 2nd of this year. If you have the time and you want to parse through the 58-page document yourself, go ahead and take a look. 

But if you are looking for the meaning of the facts and figures, DEVELOP LLC would like to summarize the 2024 Wisconsin Manufacturing Report and show you not only what this year’s biggest takeaways for Wisconsin manufacturers are towards automation, but compare them to previous years’ reports. These years of data paint a clear line to the conclusion that turnkey automation, robotic solutions, and IIOT technology are the only sure solution for manufacturing job shortages, manufacturing revenue concerns, and manufacturing growth bottlenecks. 

The Manufacturing Labor Shortage is Here to Stay, Recover with Automation

Wisconsin manufacturers were asked once again about whether or not they were finding skilled labor, a direct question with complex meaning. 79% of all Wisconsin manufacturers reported a struggle to fill positions for skilled labor. These important Wisconsin manufacturing tasks lay empty, underutilized, and bottleneck the ability of our manufacturers to produce. But with the Wisconsin Manufacturing Report in its fourth year, 79% is more than a record, it’s a warning: 

• At the height of the pandemic, the 2021Wisconsin Manufacturing Report showed 83% of executives reported struggles finding skilled workers for open manufacturing jobs. 

• With a difference of 4%, a negligible crawl of 1% per year, a 79% struggle against a manufacturing labor shortage disputes the real meaning behind the question; will Wisconsin manufacturers ever be able to go back to relying solely on manufacturing labor?  

• The restrictions of the pandemic (port closings, shuttered businesses, economic depression, etc.) used to justify a wait and see attitude for companies deflecting when to automate their high turnover tasks and vacancies have turned into flimsy rationalizations four years later. 

With manual labor consistently remaining scarce, costly, and inconsistent over a four-year period, those trying to preserve the “status quo” of manual labor dependent manufacturing are only preserving uncertainty, liability, and high operating costs. 

Learn more about how robotics and turnkey automated machines support your labor force.

The Cost Arguments for Turnkey Automation Are Getting Easier Versus Labor 

Budget and Financing Obstacles, the most cited statistic for not implementing automation, makes less sense every year. 32% of manufacturers cited capital investment funds as the top reason for not pursuing turnkey automation to address the labor shortage. These companies continue to use short term operating cost increases to attract labor like higher wages, increased benefits, and flexible shifts. Here’s why the Wisconsin Manufacturing Report 2024 shows these operating cost labor attracting strategies are draining the bank accounts of Wisconsin manufacturers without solving the labor shortage problem. 

• Increasing Labor Wages is a Cost Without Growth: Every year increasing salary and wages has been the top reported strategy for attracting skilled labor according to the Wisconsin Manufacturing Report. The labor shortage problem as of 2024 is still affecting 79% of manufacturing businesses with no end in sight. That means the businesses that threw their resources into paying higher and higher wages kept the same problems but at a higher cost. 

• Employee Insurance Costs are Rising- Insurance costs to manufacturers continue to rise with 85% of insurance providing manufacturers anticipating higher insurance benefit costs in 2024. This represents a staggering 12% increase over last year’s Wisconsin Manufacturing Report. As benefit costs increase, the cost of operating with a labor attracting strategy increases as well. 

• Inflation on the Rise- While employment concerns took the top spot for overall perceived important issues manufacturers face, inflation was a close second with 46% of manufacturing businesses rating inflation as a top concern. Inflation affects labor operating costs like salary and benefits more acutely than equipment. If inflation continues to rise, operating costs will continue to push closer to the capital investment money required to invest in turnkey automated manufacturing. 

As these labor related costs mount, it’s no surprise that 64% of Wisconsin Manufacturing Report respondents declared investment in turnkey automation as important to their future plans: 

• Capital Investment Growth- Turnkey automation has become the clear differentiator between small and large businesses. 56% of businesses with 1-49 employees declared the importance of automated machines for their manufacturing while businesses with 50+ employees put that number at a towering 87%. The prerequisite to jump to a higher level of competition, support a larger number of employees, and attain higher levels of revenue appears to involve more adoption for turnkey automation. 

• Manufacturers and AI- AI wasn’t even a topic in the 2021 Wisconsin Manufacturing Report. Even as recently as 2023, the Wisconsin Manufacturing Report showed 50% of all polled manufacturers “Not embracing AI, not considering AI & don’t think it will impact their business” with an additional 27% unsure whether or not they will ever use AI technology. In 2024, the Wisconsin Manufacturing Report showed 36% of polled businesses either already using AI or at least planning to integrate AI into their manufacturing processes in the next 2-5 years. The undecided businesses have grown to 36% in 2024, trending the number of businesses refusing to adopt AI down even further. Integrating AI technology for data collection, analysis, and logistics is best done through the instrumentation of a turnkey machine or robotic solution. Getting an edge with AI means adopting turnkey automation. 

• Flexibility to Find New Customers and Markets Wanted- The number one driver of growth, Wisconsin manufacturers are placing their efforts into for the future is finding new customers and markets at 57%. These new markets and customers will drive more revenue for these companies, but these companies need to have the ability to seek, manage, and satisfy the needs of these new companies first: 

• • They need to have a greater manufacturing capacity if they are going to seek more customers. 

• • They need to move away from micromanaging workers and finding a turnkey solution. 

• • They need to have resources freed up away from managing labor to do the market research, R&D, and lead conversion work to attract those new customers. 

Automated manufacturing is the only real way to gain the freedom to pursue new customers and new markets. 

Looking for ways to stretch your automation budget? Check out tips for getting tax credits and grants for manufacturing automation.

How to Choose Effective Changes Based on the 2024 Wisconsin Manufacturing Report

Amazingly, Wisconsin manufacturers in 2021 considered themselves more confident than today that the economy was growing. 40% of Wisconsin manufacturers reported confidence in the growth of the economy while only 23% reported that confidence in 2024. A third expects their profitability and gross revenues to drop if they do nothing. Wisconsin manufacturers need to not just identify their problems they need to direct their energy toward the right solutions. In The Bottom Line of the 2024 Wisconsin Manufacturing Report, the report sums up the biggest issue in one sentence: 

“Wisconsin manufacturers are less confident and increasingly uncertain about the state’s business climate, with many believing the economy is stuck in neutral.” 

Wisconsin manufacturers are uncertain. After four years of trying, even the successful Wisconsin manufacturing business aren’t sure why some choices are working and surrendering to the possibility that their best and most expensive efforts can be undone by events completely outside of their control. 

When you see a study like the Wisconsin Manufacturing Report filled with data points, opinions, and an all-encompassing examination of every challenge facing industrial manufacturers in 2024, it’s important to resist promising yourself to solve every problem. Your energy and attention need to be as focused and productive as your manufacturing. You need to target changes that maximize your potential to grow, to weather change, and to put dollars back on your bottom line. 

We would like to divide this dilemma into two easy categories: Time Machine Problems, problems that one company can’t do anything about without a time machine, and Turnkey Solutions, problems that one company can do something about with turnkey automation. 

Time Machine Problems

You should direct your energy away from tackling Time Machine Problems. It’s not that you shouldn’t acknowledge them, an individual manufacturer just has no control over changing these problems and needs to focus on problems they can change. You can waste a lot of time, effort, and money trying to solve problems that require a time machine. 

• The Manual Labor Shortage: There has been a manual labor shortage for years. Manufacturers need to consider that there is no longer enough manual labor left for manufacturing jobs. If there’s not, and the 2024 Wisconsin Manufacturing Report does suggest this, no number of incentives will change that. You burn money with every attempt to attract labor that doesn’t exist. 

• Inflation: No single company can make inflation slow down, and eventually no number of clever strategies can drop your costs. If the economy has become unpredictable, you can waste a lot of money stretching dollars of uncertain value. 

• Black Swan Events: Wars, political unrest, climate disasters, and other international catastrophes are impossible to predict on a case-by-case basis. Manufacturers that try to anticipate every unlikely scenario bankrupt themselves on bad bets, when they could have spent their money on solutions that make their business overall more resilient.  

Learn more about how pick and place automation can stop you from bargaining your business to death.

Turnkey Solutions

A business needs to be aggressive. A business that focuses on what they lose will always lose the least, but they will still lose. A business that focuses on what they can gain will always gain the most. These are the gains you can make on the biggest problems discovered in the 2024 Wisconsin Manufacturing Report with a turnkey solution. 

• Turnkey Manufacturing over Manual Labor: If there is not enough labor, you are either shuttering your doors or turning to automation. A machine won’t just take over those unfillable tasks on your floor, they can do so by drastically reducing your labor overhead on the benefit and salary headaches mentioned in the Wisconsin Manufacturing Report. 

• Turnkey Scalability: If you can’t stop inflation and you need to scale, you need to rely on something that is less vulnerable to inflation. A turnkey solution works at machine speeds with less waste, less rework, more safety, more efficiency, and more consistency while reducing your dependence on 3rd parties, suppliers, and competition for labor. Turnkey solutions combine the aggressive posture of investment with the best parts of lean manufacturing. 

• Turnkey Stability: The global events that upturn your ability to operate can be reduced to sudden loss of labor, a sudden spike in costs for supplies and materials, and sudden loss of control of your market. Turnkey machines, robotic solutions, and custom automation are all about control. If you can make your supplies in house, you have control. If you can protect yourself from spikes in costs by manufacturing internally, you have control. If you can address the market with control of speed and choices in house, you can protect your business. 

• Turnkey Data: If ambiguity is the problem, you need data. You need a way to automatically gather and analyze that data. Nothing parses data like a turnkey machine. Your custom turnkey machine can gather that data during normal operation. You can stop operating on ambiguity and make decisions for your business based on data. 

Search for Your Turnkey Solution with DEVELOP LLC 

We hope you’ve enjoyed our review of the 2024 Wisconsin Manufacturing Report. Special thanks to everyone at the Wisconsin Center for Manufacturing and Productivity for putting this study together every year. Even if you aren’t a Wisconsin manufacturer, Wisconsin holds a special place in the Midwest as a microcosm of American manufacturing. Expect the Wisconsin manufacturing conclusions and data to be representative of challenges, concerns, and predictions facing the United States, so if you have the time, you owe it to yourself to take a look no matter what part of the country you live in.  

 While a lot of the same issues plagued our Wisconsin manufacturers from last year, Wisconsin manufacturers are opening their eyes to a more automated future for their manufacturing. You don’t have to wait, try out our Automation Questionnaire and see if you have what it takes to start your automated manufacturing line with the turnkey solution experts at DEVELOP LLC. 

Tell us more about your project, schedule a virtual meeting, or call (262)-622-6104 to learn more about how our team can help you become the success story everyone wants to hear about.  

About the Author:

Matt Moseman leads as President of DEVELOP, with a strong foundation from the Milwaukee School of Engineering, where he earned both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s in New Product Management. Moseman’s career highlights include his pivotal role in founding NodeUDesign, innovating in automation hardware, and driving DEVELOP LLC to the forefront of industrial robotics with a focus on enhancing productivity and efficiency.