2021 hasn’t been an easy year for the manufacturing industry, and 2022 will get even more challenging. Manufacturing today has evolved to become more capital-intensive and automated, supported by a highly skilled and trained workforce. Data and product innovation also play significant roles in the industry.
However, many of the challenges faced by manufacturers point towards the same direction: to remain relevant and grow is today's dynamic and highly competitive business environment.
Amongst the most common challenges are as follows:
Market volatility
New global tariffs and trade wars may be reducing your profit margins. The landscape of global competitors is changing, bringing unexpected disruption to the marketplace.
Supply chain risk
Fluctuating compliance regulations, political uncertainty, and even climate change are factors that can impact your company’s access to the supplies, parts, and materials it needs to operate. If you don’t have a viable way to track the movement of parts around the world in real time to improve planning, make changes, and enable your ability
to take action, your supply chain is at risk.
Ubiquitous technology
Like a lot of manufacturers, you may be collecting large amounts of data from your shop floor, but most of that data probably isn’t being used. For many manufacturers, it isn’t feasible to dedicate resources to sift through and analyze all that data—and investing in new data technologies risks opening a whole new set of integration problems.
High customer expectations
Because of the so-called “Amazon effect”—the ever-rising demand for a pleasant, technology-driven customer experience disrupting today’s markets—your customers are expecting rapid, convenient delivery on their terms, easy self-service tools, and personalization.
Skills shortage
All the above challenges are compounded by the skills shortage, talent gaps, and a fluctuating workforce. With five generations typically represented in any given workplace, all of them approaching technology with different expectations, it can pose big challenges for manufacturing companies to accommodate and engage all of them.
To overcome the above challenges, adopting a connected manufacturing strategy is necessary or even right for you. Facilities are increasingly becoming connected - like connected factories, warehouses, and machines, with the use of robots and ERP systems to leverage on data for productivity gains, savings, and revenue growth.
Get in touch with us now to see how connected manufacturing strategy works and returns on long-term investment on Enterprise Resource Planning systems
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