The job description of a supply chain manager sure sounds cool, doesn’t it? On this position, you’d be managing all activities for purchasing raw materials, delivering them to the right point across the organization, making sure the organization is producing enough supply to meet the demand of the audience, and deliver the product to the right place at the right time. You’re basically managing the entire journey of the product.

The high salary (it usually ranges between $93,825 and $122,675 annually) is a huge factor of attraction, too. It’s no wonder why so many people are interested in becoming supply chain managers.

This is one of the most important positions in an organization. It carries tons of responsibility, so the hiring managers have extremely high standards when choosing among the candidates. You want to meet those standards? Then it’s best to learn from the best.

In this post, you will see, what successful manufacturing leaders do from 8 am to 8 pm. We also included some other tips successful folks do before 8 am and right before bed to stay as optimized as possible, including a few productivity tools.

In today’s manufacturing enterprise, executives and line of business managers are constantly bombarded with information, making it difficult to weed through all the available manufacturing metrics to figure out what business issues need to be addressed.

As we get settled into this new year, we thought we’d share observations from conversations we’ve had with manufacturers and distributors recently. 

These ten issues are what is keeping them up at night. We believe they are worthy of discussion in 2015 as they are more pressing than ever as competition continues to heat up with current incumbents and the growing competition from start ups.

There’s one voice that’s often conspicuously absent from the online ERP software conversation: the one belonging to actual users.

It’s easy to find information from developers, integrators, consultants, and the tech media. But to find out what real users are saying about the tangible benefits they’ve seen from their ERP investment? That’s tougher.

The relative lack of published information from ERP software users is a bit unfortunate. After all, actual users are best-positioned to provide an unbiased report on how ERP features can be harnessed for real-world competitive advantages.

To better understand how your organization can benefit, we’ve collected comments from 20 manufacturers detailing the results they were able to achieve via their investments in ERP software.