ARTICLE
July 24, 2023
Contact: Sara Davis, saradavismarketing@gmail.com, 414.303.5149
2023 Mid-year Economic Forecast
Badger Alloys CEO Rob Cowen shared his insights on the current state of manufacturing in BizTimes Media‘s “2023 Mid-Year Economic Forecast: As economic uncertainty continues, more manufacturers look to enter new Asian markets.”
Excerpt from the BizTimes article:
Rob Cowen, chief executive officer of Milwaukee-based Badger Alloys Inc., a full-service castings manufacturer, said his outlook on the overall economy hasn’t changed much within the past year, but how he runs the business has.
“My opinions really haven’t changed. I’m cautiously optimistic,” he said. “I’ve probably been running the business more conservatively than I have in the past. I would say others within my industry, within different segments, are seeing a bit of a slowdown.”
Cowen is continuing to invest in the company at pre-pandemic levels so it can catch up from the slowdown caused by the pandemic and stay ahead of other companies in the future. Some upcoming technological investments include a new “cobot,” or collaborative robot.
Cowen doesn’t believe supply chains will ever return to pre-pandemic levels as clients continue to shrink their inventories, a strategy that will likely worsen if a recession does hit. NAM survey respondents anticipate their inventories will shrink by 2% over the next year, the most since the question was added to the survey in 2011.
“People become much more conservative in what they’re doing, and I think that slows down the economy more than we would like to see,” said Cowen.
Workforce development continues to be the biggest challenge for Badger Alloys as more tenured employees reach retirement age. This is in line with NAM’s survey, which found that attracting and retaining a quality workforce is the top-ranked difficulty for manufacturers (74.4% of respondents selected the issue).”
Located in the heart of Milwaukee and founded in 1966, Badger Alloys offers single-source capabilities for custom castings. The company pours more than 200 different alloys and features a sand foundry, pattern making, machining, engineering and rapid-response technologies on one manufacturing campus to offer customers fully integrated services.
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