Great companies don’t just happen overnight. They are the result of rigorous work, long hours, lessons learned from past failures, and exhaustive future-oriented planning. Planning for the future of your machine shop or manufacturing facility is no easy task – so use our engineering planning checklist to get the wheels turning.
Here are some key areas to focus on to map out a plan that hits all your intended targets:
- Goal setting for the new year: What are the revenue targets? What are the key projects?
- Technology investments: What software and hardware will you need to upgrade to stay competitive? Look at example tech stacks from companies you admire, who are already very successful. Emulate their moves. Talk to their team.
- Training and Development for your employees: What kinds of activities are you putting in front of your team to keep them up to date on the latest technologies and best practices? (Hint: Check out our guide to Attract Top Engineers and Build Better Products.)
5 Key Steps to Mastering Your 12-Month Engineering Plan
The above is quite a bit to assess, which is why we created the engineering planning checklist for leaders in engineering and manufacturing.
The checklist encourages leaders to:
- Evaluate past year’s performance
- Identify areas for improvement
- Analyze market trends and financials
- Outline goals and necessary resources, including tech and personnel changes
- Upgrade processes and make investments in software and hardware
- Start upskilling your team
By following this checklist, businesses can strategically prepare for a successful and profitable new year.
Reflecting On Past Business Operations and Performance: Fuel for Your New Plan
There are a number of key questions to ask yourself when reflecting on how the past year went, and context is important too. What were the market conditions like? What drove business? What didn’t? Besides this zoomed out, high-level view, you should also be able to assess things with a keen attention to detail and in-depth work processes, technologies, and the people involved in making the business what it is. When evaluating past performance, give attention to:
- Optimizing tech stacks: What does your current technology stack look like? Have you mapped it out? (Identify gaps, redundancies, opportunities for optimization)
- Processes ripe for automation: What processes can be automated that are slowing you down currently?
- Important achievements and milestones: What were the key wins and lessons learned this year?
- Team building: What people and human resources challenges do you currently have? (Look at staffing, training, and getting the right people on board and aligned to the company mission.) Hint: Read the Book “Who: A Hiring Method” to get your A-team in place.
Building Your Plan
To utilize your checklist to its full potential, it’s important to be up to date on emerging trends, real-time news and market conditions. Your 12-month engineering roadmap should be a reflection of your more long-term plans for where you want your company to be in a decade from now. Be sure to read “Your Checklist to Future-Proofing Engineering & Manufacturing Workforces for more information on how to upskill your team and manufacturing tools. And for guidance on the most popular software used by engineers, check out our blog “Future-Proofing Your Workforce with SOLIDWORKS”
Conducting an Industry Scan
Besides sourcing data from your team, you can conduct an industry scan online or even use an LLM to ask key questions that can help you with input into your plan. For more targeted research, Hawk Ridge Systems has key research for engineering firms on the topic of Industry 4.0 and industry-specific research for Aerospace & Defense as well as for Industrial Equipment manufacturers.
Accessing Financials
When it comes to money — ask yourself the difficult questions. What expenses this year were absolute flops and didn’t provide any return on investment? Are they aligned to a more long-term plan that requires more time, research, or development, or can those funds be repurposed for something more impactful? Did your company experience downtime due to hardware failures or software issues?
What funds did you NOT spend that you need to get out the door before the end of Q4? And how might they be spent most judiciously (hint: you’ll uncover some good ideas in the engineering planning checklist.)
Set Clear Goals: Align Your Plan to Your Company Mission
In the checklist, you’ll also answer key questions to help you map out clear goals such as specific revenue targets for the upcoming year, and the top priority projects you’ll tackle.
Ready to start your plan?
Get the engineering planning checklist for a structured and open-ended approach.
