Staying aware of the movements of national organizations is a key part of staying current and prepared as an American producer. Recently, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) reached out to the Securities and Exchange Commission on an issue that could already be on the radar of your business: pay ratio disclosure.

Specifically, as Shopfloor pointed out, the contention concerns the Dodd-Frank Act's rules that pertain to a mandatory regulation that will have companies informing others as to how their CEOs are paid on a regular basis. One chief element of this letter that is important to note for our purposes is the focus on a "bigger picture" approach to manufacturing rules.

Though the language of the letter, signed by senior director Carolyn Lee, implies a desire to work with the SEC and following their rules in order to comply fully with government standards, it also stresses the point that one piece of information shouldn't be given such significance.

"The idea that a single statistic, like the pay ratio, could be an indicator of a company's approach to compensation practices, business strategy, or hundreds of other decisions that comprise their business plan is false and overly simplistic," the message reads. 

But as a corrective to that, what should be done to find information that is useful in totality, rather than a simple token? Manufacturing ERP software can be of help in looking at different aspects of your business and using the way they interact to figure out real information, not just one factor which could be interpreted as arbitrary.