The coronavirus pandemic has tested manufacturers’ resilience in unprecedented ways, straining supply networks, shuttering factories, and pushing some industry sectors to the brink. Now more than ever, the times call for an agile, adaptable, and responsive workforce.
Manufacturers are continuing to hire during the outbreak, albeit often with modified practices such as virtual interviews and delayed onboarding. Some are responding to an uptick in demand or adjustments to production, while others are positioning themselves for the eventual upswing. In either case, manufacturing’s chronic shortage of skilled talent adds another layer of challenge to the process.
One source of skilled talent with technical know-how is the military veteran community. Veterans are motivated, able to respond to change and trained to stay calm under pressure. They have often been given technical training during their military career, and many are willing to relocate for good job opportunities as they transition to civilian life.
The Manufacturing Institute created the Heroes MAKE America program to provide skills training to veterans to prepare them for careers in manufacturing and then connect that talent with hiring managers at manufacturers nationwide. In addition to instruction, veteran participants also have engagement opportunities at manufacturing facilities to meet with other veteran employees, hiring managers, and plant leadership.
In the era of COVID-19 restrictions, those engagement opportunities have moved online to a program called Heroes Connect. This means that manufacturers anywhere are now able to connect with veterans who are ready to be hired. Heroes MAKE America currently operates at five military installations and has placed program graduates in 37 states and three countries.
The resilience exhibited by our nation’s military veterans makes them an ideal fit for moving to the front lines of manufacturing. In this critical time for our industry, our economy, and our nation, it is more vital than ever to build a connection to this important group.
If you’d like to know more about how your company can participate in Heroes MAKE America and build its outreach to the veteran community, contact Babs Chase at [email protected].
In these particularly challenging times, business operations are being disrupted in unprecedented ways. Amid extreme and sudden changes in supply and demand, manufacturers are putting together action plans and recovery initiatives to manage the current pandemic crisis, and they’re looking to automation to help lighten the load.
As an industry heavily reliant on dependable processes, manufacturing is primed with opportunities for robotic process automation (RPA), which delivers huge gains in efficiency. These use cases discuss RPA and its uses specific to manufacturing, outlining four common solutions the technology is supplying the industry.
- Data Migration
As manufacturers see widespread adoption of IoT equipment, upgrading legacy systems is inevitable. But that is no small feat. Luckily, it is a perfect use case for RPA.
Legacy systems often aren’t easily capable of sharing data with other systems. Custom interfaces must be built to allow the transformation of data before it is loaded into the new system. But because RPA bots can work independent of APIs, RPA acts as an intermediary between new and old systems, efficiently integrating the applications. What’s more, bots can be programmed to monitor the migration along the way, flagging and correcting any inconsistencies in real time. This saves time and money on auditing with precise, error-free results.
2. Secure Proof of Deliveries (PODs)
PODs are a critical component to customer service, but they can also be a tremendous drain on resources, leading to errors, delays, and an increase in days sales outstanding (DSO). It’s a tedious process that is time-intensive and high-risk for human error. With RPA, bots can regularly query carrier tracking systems and link the shipping data to the original orders in warehouse management systems—all without human assistance.
This relieves employees of time-consuming tracking work, freeing them to do more direct customer service and other important tasks. It also improves response times and DSO metrics and supports strong, consistent cash flow.
3. CRM and Sales Order Integration
Sales order integration is another common area RPA is helping manufacturers (and really businesses in general). It’s no secret that sales staff are usually quite skilled at selling. Their work depends on relationship building and constructive communication—activities in which humans excel. But there is often much more involved with the sales process than just the sale itself. There are estimates, product availability, order processing, fulfillments, logistics and more. Sometimes, these tasks are further complicated by being completed in different departments. Either way, the sales cycle can be a challenging process with hang-ups and headaches.
With RPA, you can allow your people to perform work aligned to their unique skills, while bots automate the rest of it. Once the salesperson enters their prospecting opportunities into the CRM, the bot can take the info from there, checking pricing, cross-referencing other software for product availability, auto-generating quotes and shipping times, and more. Once an order is approved, the bot can extract and validate sales order data and send it downstream to other systems to optimize the entire sales lifecycle. All the while, people continue to do their best work, generating leads, building relationships and selling products.
4. Regulatory Compliance
The world is a rapidly changing place. And in manufacturing, that unfortunately means changing compliance requirements. From safety protocols to individual product regulations, regulatory compliance is a part of the industry. RPA simplifies the process, providing accurate data processing, detailed records in the event of an audit, and real-time monitoring of all bot activities. And because the technology is rules-based, it can be updated at any time to comply with new regulations.
These are just a few of the most common applications we see with RPA. And it’s important to understand that the technology is only just the beginning of process optimization. As the foundation for process mining and process intelligence, the potential of RPA—and its ROI—truly becomes limitless.
Why should you consider nominating your team for a Manufacturing Leadership Award? One word: Innovation. Your company depends on it to stay competitive in the digital era. How can you inspire your team to discover your next big idea?
Nothing drives innovation quite like competition. When your team beats out other industry leaders to win a prestigious award, something incredible happens. They continue to innovate and work even harder to help your company thrive.
The Manufacturing Leadership Awards is the ultimate innovator’s competition. It’s the only award that recognizes achievements in Manufacturing 4.0. It rewards forward-thinking manufacturers in front of their peers and fuels further innovations—to move the industry forward.
But is it really worth your time and effort to enter an awards competition? The short answer is yes. Benefits are numerous and include improved employee engagement and retention. Engaged employees are more likely to share ideas that can improve efficiencies, enhance your processes and reduce costs.
Additionally, winning a Manufacturing Leadership Award can reinforce your customers’ decision to do business with you. You could also gain new business through networking at the Manufacturing Leadership Awards Gala along with highly publicized awards recognition.
The Manufacturing Leadership Awards nominations are now open. This year’s competition includes 12 categories – nine for company-level project awards and three for individual leaders. New for 2020, each project category will include a small/medium enterprise high achiever award to recognize the most innovative small businesses. A new Community Service Leadership individual award has also been introduced to recognize leaders who have had a measurable impact on giving back to their local community.
Nominate today to reward your team and drive innovation at your company. Learn more at https://mlawards.manufacturingleadershipcouncil.com.
Is U.S. industry lagging behind in its adoption of Manufacturing 4.0?
“It probably is,” said John Fleming, Chairman of the Manufacturing Leadership Council’s Board of Governors and former Executive Vice President of Global Manufacturing & Labor Affairs, Ford Motor Co., during his on-screen speech at last week’s 2019 ML Summit in California.
“But there’s still a huge opportunity ahead for U.S. industry, and now is the time to accelerate its efforts,” he added.
Industry predictions suggest that around $220 billion will be spent globally by industrial companies on adopting Manufacturing 4.0 technologies and approaches by 2025.
Taking a global perspective, Fleming identified Germany as currently leading the global M4.0 pack, having first coined the Industry 4.0 name back in 2011 to highlight the concept of the digital industrial revolution. Japan and the rest of Europe he considers as “fast followers”; while he believes China is swiftly catching up thanks to its government-led initiatives such as China 2025.
The U.S. meanwhile, has good federal funding but is slow at implementation, and while the federal network of manufacturing innovation institutes look at the what and why, U.S. companies now need to focus on the how, who, and when.
Those companies need to be willing to learn about and embrace new M4.0 technologies, develop the organizational structures and corporate cultures that are capable of harnessing the power of the data these technologies create, and nurture a spirit of digital acumen among both its leaders and employees to help drive efficiencies, accelerate innovation, fill the workforce gap, and deliver global competitive advantage.
“It will be very difficult for the U.S. to grow competitively in the future without increasing the speed of M4.0 adoption,” he warned.
“The M4.0 opportunity is now,” he added, “but we need to move quickly.”
Data is manufacturing’s new gold, but much like any raw material, it only has value once it’s mined, refined, and polished to make it shine.
Manufacturers generally have no problem collecting massive amounts of data, but leveraging it to its best advantage is still a tall order for many. At the 2019 Manufacturing Leadership Summit, Hitachi Vantara Director of Digital Solutions for Manufacturing Sath Rao shared insights on some of the tools and technologies that are helping with that challenge.
“It’s the ability to realize that data is not just outward; data is also something we need to look at monetizing,” Rao said. “In the not too distant future, companies that are not operating at peak efficiency might want to sell off their plant operating data for AI systems to learn about their challenges and issues and then educate other factories” from those insights.
Rao says it’s often about “choosing to win,” and also about choosing uses cases that tie back to the overall corporate mission to gain more attention and support from C-suite leadership. “The research is already out there,” he said. “The KPIs from the (World Economic Forum’s) Lighthouse factories are giving an idea of what’s possible.
“Instead of ‘don’t fix something that isn’t broken,’ the new paradigm with data will be to break things to fix them, because of the power to look at data across siloes for new insight and discovering new points of improvement,” Rao said. “In my opinion, the factories of the future will only be possible if you are realizing the data factories that are available today.”
“In reality, we would not be here today if innovation wasn’t at the core of who we are.” – Regan Gallo, Operations Director and Industry 4.0 Project Lead, Certain-Teed Corp., Saint-Gobain
When asked to describe a company that’s more than 350 years old, the term innovative is not often one that comes to mind. However, Saint-Gobain has withstood the test of time by taking a strategic approach to boosting innovation. To move their business into the next 350 years, the company is focused on their customers and the products they will demand due to the impact of global paradigm shifts: digitalization, urbanization, resource scarcity and recycling, climate change, global economic growth, and new mobilities such as ride sharing, electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles.
As described in a case study presented at the Manufacturing Leadership Summit by Regan Gallo, the company has developed a manufacturing-focused innovation initiative that has shown results. Saint-Gobain filed for nearly 400 patents in 2018, and one out of four products the company sells today didn’t exist five years ago. Not bad for any company, much less one whose first project was a seventeenth-century commission from Louis XIV for the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.
In 2014 the company began to discuss ways that it could embrace emerging technologies and the industrial digital revolution and determined that it could lead much of its innovation efforts through manufacturing. With more than 1,000 manufacturing facilities worldwide, Saint-Gobain determined it was best to develop innovation efforts at a few selected sites that demonstrated a mix of the right culture and readiness. The focus is on establishing and developing best practices at these sites with projects that cover a wide array of the company’s product portfolio, with an eye toward rolling out the lessons learned across all manufacturing operations throughout the enterprise.
The company also promoted internal collaboration through its first ever North American Manufacturing Summit, a live event where the company’s manufacturing employees from North American sites came together to meet and share ideas.
Not forgetting external sources of innovation, Saint-Gobain also looks for mission-aligned startups they might be able to further develop, and has introduced an Essentials of Manufacturing career development program to embed college students into operations.
By keeping attuned to current and future challenges and developing both internal and external collaboration initiatives, Saint-Gobain is positioning itself for another few centuries in business.
“Our purpose is to use M4.0 to achieve more customer-focused innovation, not simply to change all our plants to be digital. We believe that if it’s doesn’t add value to our customers, we shouldn’t be doing it at all,” explained Dr. Rebecca Teeters, Corporate Manufacturing Operations Director, Film and Materials Resource Division at 3M during her insightful speech on the first morning of the 2019 Manufacturing Leadership Summit in Huntington Beach CA, today.
At 3M, she stressed, the ultimate goal of M4.0 is to create smart value streams that better serve its customers. To do that, it needs to make its people better and smarter, and empower them as part of a continuously improving performance culture. And to do that, it aims to use new digital tools in such a way that they will help make the work of those people easier and give them the opportunity and power to make change, improvement, and innovation happen.
And, added Teeters, that requires a different kind of company culture. “We truly believe in the collaborative democratized environment, which doesn’t work with a traditional command and control structure,” she said,
So when 3M looks at M4.0 opportunities, she continued, “we realized that we should really be leveraging new technologies to make our people smarter, not simply to create digital factories.”
One of the challenges, she noted, is to move out what 3M calls ‘pilot purgatory’, where the focus is often only on proving the technology itself. So 3M not longer uses the word ‘pilot’ in any of its M4.0 deployments. Instead, it uses phrases like ‘first applications’ and ‘first use cases’, which doesn’t raise the question about “whether we are going to do it,” she explained, “it’s about how we are going to scale it.”
This approach, she suggests, is essential to increasing the velocity of change and helping to empower and engage people, all supported by a highly customer-focused, end-to-end digital ecosystem.
It is also the way that the almost 120-year old 3M organization, where a substantial 54,000 of its 90,000 employees work directly in manufacturing, can truly harness the power of new digital M4.0 tools to continue to enhance its century-old reputation as a hothouse of innovation in the future.
Creating new engagement narratives for the connected customer
A vast array of technology advancements has quickly coalesced to create a smart and connected world. The advent of cutting edge digital technology including big data and analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, analytics and the cheap availability of bandwidth, reliable networks and storage are catalyzing an extraordinary revolution in how manufacturers can engage with their customers. Suddenly, by leveraging these technologies, manufacturers have the opportunity to move from producing low-margin products to creating highly personalized relationships with customer as well as exploring new revenue streams.
The change is acute in the automobile industry. Using connected systems, data analytics and automation, it is possible to achieve operational velocity that was unheard of before. Digital technologies are bringing the buyer, channel partner (dealer) and the auto manufacturer closer than ever before, providing a seamless personalized omni-channel experience to the customer across web and dealership channels.
A case in point is the retail-consumer transformation program that Mindtree is engaged with a large automobile manufacturer that has resulted in re-imagining the dealer sales and after-sales service operations. Today, an auto buyer can begin the search for a vehicle on the web then see online ads to drive those potential buyers to our customer’s website. Here the buyer can configure his/her SUV by specifying the model, color, options and accessories and be directed to the nearest dealer based on current availability. Before heading to the dealer, the buyer can also choose specific offers, like financing, insurance and after-sales service programs.
Then, when the buyer arrives at the showroom, the sales associate they see is equipped with every detail of their query. The sale can be closed within a few minutes of the buyer arriving at the dealership. After the vehicle purchase, real-time information around various vehicle conditions (oil and fluid levels, maintenance needs, battery condition, service history, etc.) is passed to the service partner who can then send personalized offers for specific services to the buyer. Simultaneously, a dedicated online owner site for the buyer is updated with the status of the car and sends alerts to the owner. This connection across the three ecosystems of the buyer, the dealer and the auto manufacturer in a real-time data-driven manner is what will drive the future of automotive buying and servicing.
This consumer experience transformation is not only enabled by transformation of consumer engagement mechanisms like product owner sites, brand sites and dealer sites but also the integration of traditionally disparate functions like distribution and logistics, sales, marketing, after sales parts and service and finance divisions within the manufacturing enterprise. Many of these groups are often dictated by various regulatory guidelines in addition to having technology silos that result in significant challenges in communicating accurately and in a timely manner between each other. Those challenges can be solved through an enterprise-wide digital transformation that embraces connected manufacturing operations, asset and product management, dealer operations, marketing, sales, after-sales and complex regulatory environments using big data, analytics and automation.
This digital transformation in manufacturing is exciting and is the most significant change that the industry has seen throughout its history. Recent outcomes indicate that manufacturers are transforming their entire value chains from warehousing, supply chain management, logistics, distribution, customer engagement and new service creation for the connected customer in all environments – B2B, B2C and so on. This is happening with the active assistance of partners such as Mindtree that have a deep understanding of emerging digital technologies coupled with domain-specific experience. To understand how your manufacturing enterprise can approach digital transformation for customer engagement, click here.
Editor’s note: This is a sponsored post from Mindtree.
… or does investing in the digital revolution seem like jumping out of a perfectly good plane without a parachute?
“Industry 4.0” refers to the fourth industrial revolution: the age of digital technologies such as the internet of things, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, drones and other emerging technologies. This revolution will not only disrupt businesses and industries but will affect the lives of every human being on this planet. According to the World Economic Forum, “the combined value – to society and industry – of digital transformation across industries could be greater than $100 trillion over the next 10 years.”1 McKinsey reports that over the next decade, one of the major impacts of this digital transformation will be on the $10-trillion-plus global manufacturing sector.2
Manufacturing puts the “Industrial” in “Industrial Revolution”
By definition, industrial revolutions are led by manufacturing – and today’s manufacturers are already seeing the impact of Industry 4.0. Digital manufacturing technologies are beginning to disrupt every link in the manufacturing value chain, from research and development, shop floor operations, and supply chain to marketing, sales, service and even business models. Digital connectivity between suppliers, factories and consumers is unlocking enormous value and altering the manufacturing landscape. IDC predicts that when the numbers come in on 2018, spending on digital transformation in process and discrete manufacturing alone will exceed $333 billion.3 These investments will be focused on disruptors such as smart manufacturing, automated operations, smart asset management, optimization of the supply chain, services in connectivity, and in-house IT infrastructure that will allow the business to be relevant and competitive in the digital economy.
Although manufacturing leaders are bracing for these disruptive forces, most are unsure of the best direction forward. If you’re a manufacturer, you already know that early adoption of Industry 4.0 can result in being the first to own a market or claim a target market, but you also know that significant investments in new technologies may put the very existence of your organization at risk. The disruptive technologies of Industry 4.0 are only one facet of the revolution; the unprecedented challenge facing you will be to integrate digitization and emerging technologies within your existing operations and culture, while continuing to delight your customers. To many executives, investing in a journey toward Industry 4.0 may seem like jumping out of a perfectly good plane without a parachute. But what if you jumped with a parachute? What would that parachute look like?
Achieve a soft landing with Operational Excellence 4.0
According to a recent report by BTOES Insights, 53.1% of global executives believe that the key challenge they face today is achieving operational excellence, mainly around changing and improving their company culture.4 As the pressure to make the leap to Industry 4.0 increases, manufacturers are finding a new and powerful ally: Operational Excellence 4.0.
With Operational Excellence 4.0, you can elevate your thinking to the system level to not only prepare for the coming business disruption but follow a new, holistic understanding to execute a robust strategy of excellence. Just as humans, in addition to a healthy, balanced diet, need a stimulating mental and physical ecosystem for survival and growth, the manufacturing industry cannot survive and grow on new technology alone. For your company to thrive in the future, you must take a more holistic approach that integrates technology with your culture, your workforce needs and your strategy execution. OpEx 4.0 is the parachute you need to feel confident that you are taking calculated risks for ultimate success.
If you’re ready to take the leap and skydive into Industry 4.0, make sure you’re well-equipped with Operational Excellence 4.0 as your parachute.
To get your Manufacturing 4.0 parachute, click here.
HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA–Tomorrow’s successful enterprises and dominant economies will be those that most successfully navigate the digital transformation now taking place across the global manufacturing landscape. But industry leaders alone cannot realize the promise of Manufacturing 4.0. They will need to collaborate more effectively with government, academic, and labor leaders to come out on top in the race to a digital future, said David R. Brousell, co-founder, vice president, and executive director of the Manufacturing Leadership Council (MLC) in his opening speech at the fifteenth annual Manufacturing Leadership Summit.
“The digital trend is too big, too pervasive, too all-encompassing,” said Brousell, noting that digital technologies and business models are transforming everything from how products are designed and made to how organizations are structured. “We need to bring all constituencies to the table – industry, the academic community, government, labor – and harness that power to drive change,” said Brousell.
The stakes are sky high, said Brousell, noting that manufacturers and policy makers in China, Germany, and India have made digital transformation of manufacturing a national priority. “M4.0 is an international competitiveness issue of the highest order and, in my view, the most important competitiveness issue facing our industry and our country’s future,” said Brousell. “Manufacturing leaders all over the world see and want the brass ring of M4.0 superiority.”
Transitioning to a digital model while competing in increasingly tough, rapidly changing global markets is proving challenging for many manufacturing leaders, Brousell noted. According to a new leadership survey published in the MLC’s Manufacturing Leadership Journal, only 13% or manufacturers say M4.0 concepts, requirements, and challenges are well understood in their companies. Manufacturing leaders will need to quickly expand this understanding, in part by enhancing their own digital acumen and learning to think digital first, said Brousell.
But they will also need to collaborate more closely with government, academic, and labor leaders to drive digital transformation and win against global competitors. The Manufacturing Leadership Council, which is now part of the National Association of Manufacturers, will play a role in building that coalition, Brousell said.
If it succeeds, said Brousell, U.S. manufacturers have an opportunity “to win the battle for digital transformation now underway globally and enable the United States to regain its rightful position as the world’s largest manufacturer.”