Are preparations in place for you to make the most out of your business accounting program in the new year? As 2014 rolls around, it's becoming clear that there's a serious appreciation for what domestic business needs to do in order to succeed in the future of manufacturing.

As this blog has touched upon before, there are two areas in which businesses might need to focus: technology and staffing. It might seem that mechanization might threaten the presence of live workers, but there is perhaps a way that these two goals can be reconciled with a greater overall net result.

Work Force

There's an NPR story about the way that American companies are reacting to the current state of manufacturing in our country. According to writer Chris Arnold and information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the amount of U.S. employees working in production plants may pale in comparison to the astronomically high numbers seen in 1998, but represents a methodical climb up over the past few years to the level of $12 million this past November.

The way Arnold counts it, 665,000 jobs in the industry have opened up over the past three years. And more are expected to come as this generation of workers retires and passes on, which of course is one of the major topics of speculation within this branch of business today.

But it looks like the savvy business may yet be able to "have their cake and eat it too" when it comes to both streamlining production and giving others the chance to organically progress into a sustainable future.

Arnold also quotes a Boston-based economist named Barry Bluestone from Northeastern University on the viability for manufacturing, which he sees as on a definite rebound.

"We're seeing a new, almost renaissance in manufacturing," he said. "There are millions of jobs that will open up in manufacturing as the current workforce retires.

Staffing With an Eye for Technology

But "work force" can also apply to the expertise that is needed to design and maintain useful business accounting systems for optimization. An article from Manufacturing.net examines the ways that putting an emphasis on this aspect of successful expansion doesn't necessarily lock out other kinds of improvements that you may mean to implement.

The author of this piece quotes from Kelly Services America Product Group director Joseph Lampinen on the stratified approach to manufacturing staffing that could help businesses make smarter decisions about who they employ. This could include finding those skilled enough to use the business accounting solutions you take on for success.

"Let's say they're a software engineer that has been displaced out on the West Coast, in Silicon Valley," he's quoted as saying in this article. "They have the raw talent to program, but they just need to pick up the right programming language and they can go to Detroit and program embedded software, or work in developing infotainment systems for the automakers."

This way, you can start thinking about how not just staffing on the floor but also keeping other aspects of the business well-managed can be long-term answer to apparent lack of productivity that you need.