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MMT Chats: Using Data to Build Your Moldmaking Business and Stay on Top of Manufacturing Trends

MoldMaking Technology Editorial Director Christina Fuges chats with Jan Schafer, the Director of Market Research for Gardner Intelligence about her journey into market research, what led her to the world of moldmaking and plastics, the data and services her team offers and details on the premiere of MMT's Top Shops Benchmarking Program. This episode is brought to you by ISCAR with New Ideas for Machining Intelligently.

Christina Fuges
Christina Fuges
Editorial Director, MoldMaking Technology

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This episode is brought to you by ISCAR with New Ideas for Machining Intelligently.

For this MMT Chat I get the story behind Gardner Intelligence, Jan Schafer and MMT Top Shops.

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Gardner Intelligence has been developing and delivering market intelligence to industrial manufacturing for nearly 50 years. More than just forecasting, Gardner Intelligence produces quantitative and qualitative insight into sales, marketing, operations and business management. Some of our more widely-used reports include The Gardner Business Index, our annual Capital Spending Survey, Top Shops Benchmarking Reports, and the World Machine Tool Survey. 

Jan Schafer is a market research professional who loves learning and adding value to the businesses of Gardner’s advertisers, audience, and the company itself. Her curiosity, business knowledge, client service and shameless resourcefulness combine to enable Jan to lead research in manufacturing from objective-setting (do not even try to bypass it…) to delivering data-based recommendations (can’t dodge those either…) Jan attributes her capabilities to education in psychology and business administration followed by a healthy dose of ‘mixing it up.’ Her experience includes tending bar (more useful than you might expect,) early years (okay, 15!) at Procter & Gamble, developing her own consulting business, and leading supply-side research before landing the perfect gig at Gardner.

It is time  MMT to have its own survey aimed at mold builders to shed light on the technologies and processes that power the moldmaking industry’s most successful shops.

This survey collects data across several categories, including operations, technology, business strategy and human resources. Top Shops participants answer a series of thorough questions about their businesses. Responses are anonymously compiled to create a collective view. Select measures are scored and summed to total scores that serve as the basis for honoring certain shops.

Everyone who completes a survey receives:

  • A custom report from Gardner Intelligence showing how your shop stacks up against other shops in key metrics. Reports serve not only as baseline report cards, but they also list areas of relative strengths, areas your business is on track and opportunities for improvement. Then consistent benchmarking can demonstrate your shop’s improvement over time and provide data that can be used in your sales and marketing strategy, or aid your management team in yearly goal setting.
  • A chance to be selected as an honoree to be profiled in the October 2022 issue of MoldMaking Technology. Even though the program is open all year, honorees will be chosen from surveys completed before April 30, 2022.

You can take the survey at this link!

Thank you in advance for supporting MoldMaking Technology Top Shops!

For the full quick chat, watch above, and for more MMT Chats, click here.

This episode is brought to you by ISCAR with New Ideas for Machining Intelligently.

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