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The Manufacturing Executive

Joe Sullivan talks with the leaders driving midsized manufacturers forward, alongside B2B sales and marketing experts, about growth strategy, industrial marketing, and modernising the shop floor.

332 episodes · 166 hours · since 2020

Visit The Manufacturing Executive

The Manufacturing Executive is filed under manufacturing, sales & marketing and interviews. Its most recent episode published on , so it is still actively publishing. Listeners have left 158 ratings on Apple Podcasts, averaging 5 out of 5.

Latest episodes

The 10 newest episodes of The Manufacturing Executive, each with a summary and chapters.

  • · 40m

    Let the Experts Be the Experts: Leading Without Every Answer w/ Amy Mercante

    Amy Mercante, General Manager of Specialty Products at PPG, discusses her transition from research chemist to business leader and her philosophy of 'letting the experts be the experts.' She explains how she flips the leadership pyramid by empowering teams closest to the work to provide recommendations rather than just data, and how she makes decisions without waiting for every fact. Mercante also details her approach to mentoring emerging leaders, emphasizing the importance of defining a 'North Star' career goal and taking calculated risks outside one's comfort zone.

    Leadership, teams & cultureCareers & education
    7 chapters

  • · 24m

    Why Manufacturing Marketing Is Different and The Event to Support Your Team w/ Wendy Covey

    Wendy Covey of TREW Marketing and Joe Sullivan of Gorilla 76 discuss the fourth annual Industrial Marketing Summit, an event for B2B industrial marketers held in Austin, Texas. They highlight the summit's focus on nuanced topics like reaching technical buyers, AI search, and foundational messaging, alongside new features like the Industrial Marketing Awards. The hosts explain how their competing agencies collaborated to create a unique community and educational experience for isolated manufacturing marketers.

    Marketing & brandAI & machine learning
    7 chapters

  • · 42m

    Always Be Exiting: How Manufacturers Build Value Years Before a Sale w/ Eric Wiklendt

    Eric Wiklendt, Managing Director at Speyside Equity, explains his two-phase 'portco value creation system' for middle-market manufacturing businesses: fixing margins through operational improvement (Phase 1) and then building top-line growth (Phase 2). He details how Speyside evaluates scalability, mitigates customer concentration risk, and structures management teams to ensure a business is sellable, arguing that owners should operate with the mindset of 'always be exiting' to maximize value. The discussion covers specific tools like sales force effectiveness frameworks and the importance of starting exit planning 24 months before a liquidity event.

    Growth, exits & acquisitionsPricing, margins & unit economics
    8 chapters

  • · 33m

    Growing Women Leaders in Manufacturing w/ Allison Grealis

    Allison Roberts Grealis, founder and president of the Women in Manufacturing Association (WIM), discusses the critical shift in manufacturing leadership from operational focus to managing complexity, including AI, cybersecurity, and multi-generational workforces. She highlights that while recruitment is important, retention is the industry's biggest challenge, driven by a lack of development pathways and flexibility. Grealis details WIM's new services, including on-site training, executive coaching, and a mentoring program, designed to support women and allies at all levels of the industry.

    Leadership, teams & cultureHiring & workforce
    6 chapters

  • · 40m

    The Next Chapter of SEO: How Manufacturers Get Recommended by AI w/ Grace Wright

    Grace Wright, VP of Innovation at Gorilla 76, explains how manufacturers can get recommended by AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini by optimizing for technical accessibility, comprehensive content, and external authority. She details a three-bucket audit framework—technical crawlability, content depth, and third-party trust signals—that determines whether a company appears in AI-generated vendor shortlists. Wright also describes a proprietary auditing system that tracks AI visibility across multiple models to identify content gaps and authority deficits for B2B manufacturers.

    Marketing & brand
    6 chapters

  • · 39m

    Why Your Toughest Parts Still Use 50-Year-Old Materials w/ Fazal Mahmood

    Fazal Mahmood, co-founder and CEO of Phase Shift Technologies, explains how AI is accelerating the discovery of new metal alloys to replace 50-year-old materials in industries like oil and gas, aerospace, and defense. He details the critical gap between designing a material and qualifying it for regulated markets, noting that legacy producers often lack the incentive to innovate outside their core franchises. Mahmood highlights three key drivers for this shift: the maturation of additive manufacturing, the performance limits of existing materials in technologies like nuclear fusion, and supply chain disruptions in critical raw materials like tungsten. He illustrates these points with a specific example of a new printable tungsten carbide alloy designed for laser powder bed fusion to solve wear resistance issues in complex flow components.

    Materials & manufacturing processesAI & machine learning
    6 chapters

  • · 34m

    How Safety Drives Your Bottom Line and Why It Starts With You w/ Brian Fielkow

    Brian Fielkow, former CEO of JetCo Delivery and author of 'Making Safety Happen', argues that safety must be a core value rather than a priority or compliance function. He explains that safety failures cost five times more than insurance claims due to hidden costs like downtime and reputation damage. Fielkow illustrates how Alcoa CEO Paul O'Neill used safety metrics to drive operational excellence and how JetCo leveraged frontline driver committees to improve performance. He also advocates for 'just culture' over progressive discipline to build trust and distinguish between honest mistakes and reckless behavior.

    Leadership, teams & cultureQuality & yield
    8 chapters

  • · 28m

    It's Not a Workforce Issue, It's a Workflow Issue w/ Alex Torrey

    Alex Torrey, co-founder and CEO of AIC (America's Innovation Corporation), argues that American manufacturing's constraint is workflow, not workforce, citing component shops running at 20-50% utilization versus world-class 90%+. He explains AIC's model of acquiring original component manufacturers to deploy proprietary software that empowers human operators, aiming to secure US supply chain sovereignty in physical AI. Torrey contrasts this 'permanent home' holding company approach with the short-term flip of private equity and the hollowing-out risk of strategic corporate acquirers, offering owner-operators a third option to preserve their legacy while scaling.

    Manufacturing partners & offshoringScaling production
    9 chapters

  • · 33m

    When Your Shop Is No Longer Bound by Geography w/ Sanjeev Singh Sahni

    Sanjeev Singh Sahni, CEO of Xometry, explains how the company is using data and AI to digitize the custom manufacturing market, which currently has less than 1% online penetration compared to 80% for books. He details the inefficiency of manual RFQs and how Xometry’s platform integrates directly with design software like Siemens to provide instant pricing and supplier matching. Sahni highlights how this digital infrastructure dissolves the traditional 30-to-50-mile geographic radius for machine shops, allowing specialized facilities to take on diverse work such as aerospace and medical devices regardless of location. The conversation emphasizes Xometry's strategy of treating manufacturers as 'partners' rather than suppliers, providing them with tools like a mobile app and AI-driven job recommendations to focus on production rather than sales.

    Design for manufacturing & NPIScaling production
    7 chapters

  • · 32m

    Six Facilities, Three Countries, One Culture w/ Darragh de Stonndún

    Darragh de Stonndún, CEO of Automated Industrial Robotics (AIR), explains how he scaled the company across six facilities in the US, UK, and Ireland by prioritizing cultural alignment over technology in acquisitions. He details AIR's 'wall-less' operating model, where subject matter experts are assembled globally to solve customer problems rather than assigning work to the nearest facility. De Stonndún also discusses his philosophy on AI in manufacturing, viewing it as a tool to optimize efficiency and augment human engineers rather than replace them, and defines success as building a self-sustaining culture.

    Leadership, teams & cultureScaling production
    8 chapters

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