Hiring difficulties are a big problem everywhere, including in the accounts payable (AP) departments of manufacturing companies. Higher wages, fat signing bonuses, staff training, and other enticements only go so far with job seekers and employees.
The key to attracting and retaining top talent is to digitally transform the AP function into a more rewarding and strategic role, where staff have the automated, personalized tools they need to be productive anywhere.
The ripple effect on manufacturing is massive. Finance leaders are left grappling with how to do more with less, forcing staff to work longer hours—all while managing unrelenting pressure to reduce overhead and provide the business with insights to navigate an uncertain economy. Management needs to act fast and address the situation head on. Staff turnover can contribute to a drop in productivity, more errors, late payments, and missed early payment discounts. Suppliers may become frustrated by slower responses to their inquiries about the status of payments. And there is greater risk of fraudulent transactions slipping through without seasoned employees to catch them.
Most of the typical AP practitioner’s day is wasted on manual, repetitive tasks such as keying invoice data, pushing paper, fixing typos and other mistakes, chasing down information, and responding to calls and emails from suppliers and stakeholders about the status of invoices and payments. All the while, AP professionals must manage dozens of business rules, best practices, auditor guidelines, and corporate standards for processing invoices, as well as making payments to suppliers. In fact, the typical AP manager spends more of the workday on transaction processing than on the managerial tasks they were hired to perform—things like hiring and upskilling employees. All the time AP teams spend on manual, repetitive tasks is time that they cannot spend on fulfilling higher-value tasks such as analyzing data and collaborating with stakeholders.
One of the biggest misconceptions about AP automation is that many workers will be left behind by the technology—an understandable fear when job seekers are in short supply. But that could not be further from the truth. Modern AP automation solutions include online training, intuitive interfaces, configurable workflows, automated work queues, and machine-assisted decision making that make it easy for workers with different skills and knowledge to get up and running fast and perform their jobs well. By providing employees with digital tools that make it easier for them to do their jobs, AP departments are better positioned to retain staff and cultivate a greater breadth of job candidates.
Employee turnover is inevitable. But making AP a “better job” through automation can stem the tide of productive, loyal employees heading for the door, solidifying your workforce from within.
Learn more about AP automation at paymerang.com.
Scientists, engineers, and academics from the manufacturing world met in West Lafayette, Ind., to discuss industry advances and acknowledge excellence in research and commercial implementation at the 50th annual North American Manufacturing Research Conference (NAMRC). The event, June 27–July 1, was organized by Purdue University. It is sponsored annually by the North American Manufacturing Research Institution of SME (NAMRI | SME).
During NAMRC 50, the following awards and recognition were presented:
NAMRI | SME S.M. Wu Research Implementation Award—Named after the late University of Michigan Professor Shien-Ming Wu, Ph.D., FSME, this award recognizes outstanding original research presented at NAMRC that subsequently, upon implementation, had a significant commercial and/or societal impact. The 2021 recipient was:
Jay Lee, Ph.D., FSME, University of Cincinnati.
NAMRI | SME Outstanding Lifetime Service Award—This award honors distinguished members for their long-term dedication and contributions to NAMRI | SME. This year’s recipient was:
Thomas R. Kurfess, Ph.D., FSME, NAE, PE, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.
2021 Outstanding Paper Awards—Three papers were chosen as “outstanding” from the more than 165 that were submitted:
“Toward smart manufacturing: Analysis and Classification of cutting parameters and energy consumption patterns in turning processes,” by authors Ihab Ragai, Abdallah Abdallah, Hussein Abdeltawab, Feng Qian and Jeff Ma from Penn State Behrend, Erie, Pa.
“Data-driven prediction of next-layer melt pool temperatures in laser powder bed fusion based on co-axial high-resolution Planck thermometry measurements,” by authors Dominik Kozjek, Fred Carter, Conor Porter, Jon-Erik Mogonye, Kornel Ehmann and Jian Cao of Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.
“A control strategy for incremental profile forming,” by authors Ryo Nakahata, Satyanarayana Seetharaman, Krishnaswamy Srinivasan, and Erman Tekkaya from Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
NSF Blue Sky Award Competitors / David Dornfeld Manufacturing Vision Award Winner—The NSF Blue Sky Awards competition, which culminates in the selection of the David Dornfeld Manufacturing Vision Award winner, encourages participants to think big—sometimes even outrageously—in posing grand challenges to be addressed and in thinking transformatively in a manner that may interest government entities in supporting and funding their projects. The winner of the competition, chosen among eight finalists, was:
“Feeding the future through convergent manufacturing,” authored by Michael Sealy of Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind.
NAMRI | SME Board of Directors Sustained by Membership—As part of the NAMRI | SME Member Meeting preceding the awards ceremony, the NAMRI | SME 2022-23 Board of Directors were ratified by vote from members present. The following board officers were confirmed:
President—Livan Fratini, Ph.D., University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy
President-Elect—KC Morris, FSME, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Md.
Secretary—Ihab Ragai, Ph.D., PE, Penn State Behrend, Erie, Pa.
Scientific Committee Chair—Robert X. Gao, Ph.D., FSME, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland.
Scientific Committee Chair-Elect—Xun “William” Xu, Ph.D., University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
Immediate Past-President—Brigid Mullany, Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Charlotte, N.C.
Second Past-President—Lihui Wang, Ph.D., FSME, PE, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.
NAMRI | SME Directors:
Stephania Bruschi, Ph.D., University of Padova, Padua, Italy.
Dale R. Lombardo, GE Aviation, Niskayuna, N.Y.
Patrick Kwon, Ph.D., Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.
Zhijian “ZJ” Pei, Ph.D., FSME, Texas A & M, College Station, Texas.
Mike Vogler, Ph.D., CMfgE, Caterpillar Inc., Peoria, Ill.
Founders Lecture—Given during the NAMRI | SME Member Meeting, the Founders Lecture, which reflected on the first 50 years of NAMRC, was jointly delivered by 2003 NAMRI | SME President Shiv G. Kapoor, Ph.D., FSME, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Ill., and 2004-05 NAMRI | SME President Kornel F. Ehmann, Ph.D., FSME, of Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.
NAMRC 51 will convene next year at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., June 12-16, 2023. Visit namrc.sme.org for additional details.
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