It’s important for American manufacturers to stay current if they wish to remain successful. Positioning yourself for growth means looking to the future and gaining efficiencies through
new technologies. That’s why this question may be the most important one for your business — are you a future-ready manufacturer, one that embraces digital transformation in your operation?
Now, in all fairness, before you can adequately answer that question, you and the members of your organization need to know the answers to these three questions:
- Where are we today?
- Where do we want to be in three to five years?
- How can we embrace innovation and automation?
If decision-makers in your organization can’t answer these questions, you have bigger issues than you may realize. At the very least, tackling these tough questions now will put you ahead of competitors who are consumed with putting out today’s fires rather than focusing on growth opportunities. Manufacturers that aren’t prepared for the coming global mega-trends and don’t invest in breakthrough technologies will be rendered irrelevant—and more often than not, it will happen at a much faster rate than they ever could have dreamed possible.
Right now, today’s factories are smarter than ever. Plants are embracing robots for practically every purpose. Lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, change management—the trends morph and pivot all the time, but at their heart, the key is working smarter and more efficiently—all the time. It’s clear, today’s generation of manufacturers can’t afford to sit on the sidelines – they must be aware of how the world is changing, pay attention to economic and geopolitical forecasts, and — this can’t be emphasized enough — invest in digital technology.
Enabling Growth
Innovation is important, but for the average manufacturing plant looking to enable growth, the key is knowing your customers and their needs just a little bit better than the competition does. How is this possible? Manufacturers can become digitally optimized, employing technologies that allow them to not only drive, but increase profitability thanks to analytics intelligence.
Advanced ERP systems, for example, allow manufacturers to gain efficiencies by making workforces more capable – mobile and data empowered with cloud-based business intelligence solutions.
Leveraging technology for growth, particularly cloud-based and web-based, real-time platforms, allow for better organizational connectivity (that means productivity) with open architecture. Manufacturing is changing —the advantages digital transformation are taking hold for today’s growth-minded manufacturers. It makes sense, just consider all the capabilities digital transformation brings.
- IoT
- Omnichannel experiences
- Data privacy/encryption
- Collaboration
- Mobility
- Cloud, extensibility, and microservices
- Compliance and traceability
- Multilevel customer interaction and profiling
- Geolocation
- Data discovery and algorithms
- Manufacturing intelligence
- Additive manufacturing (3D printing)
- Big data and analytics
- Blockchain and cryptocurrency
The reality is, those manufacturers who accept where the future is heading are right now – today – building a digital infrastructure to carry their operations to the next level.
Are you a digitally optimized manufacturer? CompuData can get you there!