Leadership

The Cost of Traffic Delays? Don’t Ask a Manufacturing Company

Aug. 6, 2018

Despite the fact that traffic delays due to congestion and roads in disrepair are on the rise, manufacturing executives maintain a very limited understanding of the importance of infrastructure to their bottom line.

Karen Field

In pursuit of continuous improvement, leading manufacturers today are highly skilled at reducing waste and taking unnecessary cost out of their operations.

But that’s not the case when it comes to the impact of transportation delays.

The manufacturing industry understands that all companies would be better off if our roads and bridges were fixed. In fact, the National Association of Manufacturers has taken up arms and is calling upon the Trump Administration to “Undertake an infrastructure effort that seeks to modernize our aging systems, put to work private-sector capital to increase efficiencies and deliver results, prioritize and expand public investment and make a long-term federal commitment to infrastructure.”

But the cost of doing nothing about our transportation infrastructure seems to elude companies.

In a recent survey of manufacturing companies, we asked executives to name the primary benefits of fixing our transportation infrastructure. To read the full article published on IndustryWeek’s sister publication Icons of Infrastructure, click here.

About the Author

Karen Field | Group Content Director

Karen Field is Executive Director, Content for Penton’s new Internet of Things Initiative. She has 25+ years experience developing content for an audience of technical and business professionals and a reputation for challenging conventional thinking and taking a novel approach in the creation of world class editorial and conference programming.

Most recently she launched the Internet of Things Summit at the Embedded Systems Conference and has covered the emerging issues associated with the Internet of Things extensively for EE Times, EDN, and Embedded.com.

Karen has a mechanical engineering degree and a master’s of business degree from the University of Minnesota and Boston University.