Technology is increasingly a leading competitive differentiator in manufacturing and supply chain industries. The Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), digital twins, and predictive analytics can help you get in front of issues that could crimp your supply chain.
These advanced digital tools can impact your team’s success and lead to greater productivity gains and a healthier bottom line across the entire organization.
Information is a critical asset for the manufacturing industry, affecting all aspects of an organization and its value chain partners. But all these technologies and systems also generate exponential volumes of data, insights and, sometimes, noise. Advanced technologies help you derive the critical, actionable intelligence you need to catapult your organization’s ability to be more productive and reduce waste. The right platforms and technology partners can give you better data transparency across siloed systems, customers, and suppliers in real time. It’s like having a sixth sense that allows you to succeed at levels far beyond what many in your field can accomplish today allowing you to:
Know where shipments are at any given time and what they need to pass through backlogged customs or rough weather to get where they need to be, and by when.
Get visibility into where upstream products, materials and components are in their cycles.
Gain the knowledge and ongoing discovery of new suppliers and supply channels that can give you more options and greater negotiating power.
Develop better transparency and data sharing within your organization so you can use supply chain data, insights and recommendations for greater collaboration across the business.
Predict—and mitigate—input delays and their impacts on downtime and related production losses.
Calculate and leverage how reducing downtime can, in turn, reduce raw material waste and improve sustainability across the supply chain.
Get consistent, accurate, clean data and insights on when customers receive their goods, how that process works with that client, and how you can create better customer journeys.
Optimize production solving multi-dimensional KPIs simultaneously
Innovate new ways of getting products to market.
Take advantage of digital data-driven tools that ease—and properly secure—the sharing of data across business partners and within the organization. This is critical since supply chain executives play an increasing role in an organization’s ability to meet environmental, social, and governance (ESG) targets from the government, your customers, and your executive boards.
And rather than waiting for the conditions for evolution to be “just right,” you can begin making meaningful improvements now—with existing resources and budgets and a quick return on investment (ROI). These are the kind of wins that lay the foundation and justification for more significant organizational improvements down the road.
Spreadsheets, email and manual procedures dominate our processes