15 March 2012

Advanced Discrete Manufacturing Creates Innovation Without Compromise

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If you’re looking to create product innovation in your organization, making cuts isn’t the answer. Yes, our economy isn’t rock-solid, but those who look to make cuts and strip away talent may actually hamper their companies’ abilities to innovate. Before you decide to make any more cuts, let me take you through a few options and show you why innovation doesn’t mean compromising.

Controlling Chaos

Today’s economy is a fragile state, there’s no doubt about that. With this, manufacturers are now in a state of chaos. What do I mean?

Maintaining communication, lifecycle and document management, among others is a real pain for organizations without some kind of integrated strategy. Ah, integrated – that’s the key.

When you look at streamlining processes and other ways to control the chaos, it becomes clear you need to have more than people talking – you need to have your systems talking, together. This is where advanced discrete manufacturing comes into play.

Now, think of it this way: your ERP and PLM systems are talking; your document and other key systems are talking and you have full visibility from anywhere, without checking a specific system. That would certainly bring an end to much of the chaos, wouldn’t it?

So, when I hear manufacturers cutting applications and processes, I say we need to look at how to streamline with integration in order to control the chaos.

Reducing Costs

Coming from controlling the chaos, our economy’s fragile state has many manufacturers looking for ways to reduce costs and change their cash flow. Again, from my previous point, we should first look at integration and that alone will help in savings for resources, productivity and funding.

Another option is to examine advanced discrete manufacturing practices and look at outsourcing some processes in your organization. The comparison in cost tells us outsourcing is one way to cut them, but many fear the risk of handing off these projects to someone else – they actually stay away, due to these risks. It’s natural, but with a solid integration strategy in place, I believe the pros will outweigh the cons in this instance.

Put It Together

As advanced discrete manufacturing plays more of a role for us as manufacturers, we need to look at how we can keep up with customer demand, while reducing our costs and streamlining our processes. The answer is in a fully integrated system that ties in customer management, warehouse management, asset management, development and all the other vital pieces of our systems puzzle.

This gives you the right mix to evolve past your competitors and still work efficiently and increase your bottom-line

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Luciano Cunha
Luciano Cunha,
Luciano Cunha,
Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

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