Julian Salguero

To create a talent strategy that fosters frontline stability and productivity, organizations need to start by conducting a holistic talent assessment. Here’s how to do it. Talent stability and productivity are critical challenges in manufacturing today. With over 4.7 million worker separations in 2023,1 representing one-third of the industry’s workforce, the need for change is evident.

Can gen Z reshape the manufacturing industry by bringing fresh perspectives and values to a sector ripe for technological innovation and significant change? Operational roles in manufacturing don’t often appear on the “dream job” lists of schoolchildren and students, but they absolutely should. The sector is now—and will continue to be—a crucible of change as technology-enabled operations transform organizations and careers, almost beyond recognition.

COVID-19 has brought major shifts in how products are consumed, forcing consumer-goods companies to adapt in absorbing the variations in demand that resulted. Yet even though the pandemic’s specific dislocations were unprecedented, disruption is becoming all too familiar. Our colleagues’ research estimates that disruptions lasting a month or longer now occur every 3.7 years, on average, with a cumulative cost to consumer-goods companies of one-third a year’s earnings every decade.