Goaaaaallllllllll! Does this sound familiar? In the past few weeks, the world has been captured by the World Cup, an international soccer (or football, depending where you come from) tournament that is played once every four years. If you’ve been busy keeping up with all of the scores and trying to catch games on your phone, you’re not alone—so has the manufacturing industry.
When you think about how the World Cup affects manufacturing, it goes beyond the makers of the athletes’ uniforms and the materials of the soccer equipment. In fact, it directly affects the domestic manufacturing production process as a whole more than you may think. Especially true of areas where soccer is the leading sport, manufacturing plants will be shutting down and ceasing production on their team’s game days. Why? Because the sport is huge and so important to the people, many employees will take time off to watch the games; this has become so prevalent that manufacturers are now working their production schedules around the games.
Here at Universal Polymer and Rubber, we have found the subject of the World Cup to be a prevalent one with many of our customers and suppliers. Some plants we know are planning their schedules around the games; this is especially true if they work with some of the major auto makers who have plants in Brazil, the host country. In some cases, manufacturing has been benched in favor of the exciting tournament.
Whether you’re rooting for the U.S., Brazil, Germany, Italy, or one of the other thirty-two qualifying countries, you should know that manufacturing hasn’t picked a favorite—all of the industry is celebrating the whole World Cup.