Tag Archives: “Manufacturing
Predictive Analytics in Manufacturing: A Winning Edge
The modern manufacturing world is a delicate dance, filled with interconnected pieces that all need to work perfectly in order to produce the goods that keep the world running. In Moving Parts, we explore the unique data and analytics challenges manufacturing companies face every day.
Building an accurate predictive analytics model isn’t easy. It requires a skilled data team, advanced tools, and enormous amounts of clean data from the right combination of inputs. It’s a difficult process, but an effective predictive analytics engine is an enormous asset for any organization.
Big challenges, big rewards
Manufacturing companies are in a unique position regarding data: they create and capture tons of it every day. The process of producing goods is an enormous opportunity for data optimization. Raw materials need to be ordered, received, constructed, packaged, and shipped out for sale in the most efficient manner possible. Because the steps are repeated so many times through the process, a small edge created via predictive analytics in manufacturing will be magnified at every repetition to produce significant benefit.
Because of the cyclical nature of the manufacturing process, data-driven companies are building superior processes to create bigger and bigger advantages. Here are a few examples of companies using manufacturing analytics to win the future:
Predicting return rate
Skullcandy’s dive into predictive analytics started with the challenge of understanding return rates on new products. The logic was that if the team could predict certain features or aspects of a product that would lead to a return, they could optimize those policies around returning products. They used BigSquid to blend and analyze historical data related to returns and added their learnings to features and products on their roadmap. From there, the team could ask new questions of that dataset to understand the way customers were interacting with their products and ultimately build a better warranty policy for products before they were even released. This data was also useful for product managers, giving them a clear picture of what was making customers adopt Skullcandy’s products (or not).
Once the return rate questions were answered, the team focused their efforts on uncovering insights around reviews and warranty claims to generate insights about positive and negative drivers. Data like this is ideal for making decisions for product roadmaps. All those customer insights can be used in a number of creative ways to better focus resources and improve products.
Improve forecasts and maximize revenue
Gentex made the most of their budget to optimize their incoming revenue. Just six months after implementing predictive analytics, their ecommerce sales increased by 50%!
Gentex deployed Sisense to comb through millions of records after switching over from an outdated ERP system. They needed a platform that could churn through all that data quickly and deliver quick intelligence about both current and future revenues. Initially, Gentex created dashboards for their sales and operations teams that collected information about sales, quotes, and orders across the company. Those dashboards answered immediate questions about the current state of the business.
To answer more forward-looking questions, Gentex creates a sales forecast for an entire year using just a few months of data. They use predictive models to forecast revenues based on spending. They even incorporate trend data to improve accuracy over time. Currently, Gentex builds visualizations of year-to-date revenue data to forecast up to 15 months into the future.
Operating off those accurate forecasts, Gentex made the most of their budget to optimize their incoming revenue. Just six months after implementing predictive analytics, their ecommerce sales increased by 50%!
Improve inventory management with demand forecasting
Making a product that consumers want to buy is only useful if a company can find a way to get that product in front of the consumers who demand it. Several of today’s most cutting-edge manufacturers are blending historical customer data and external factors to predict demand for goods so they can increase production when demand will be high and decrease production when demand will be low. These companies aren’t just building for the future, they’re building the future.
The need to accurately forecast demand is crucial to these manufacturers. Assessing demand in real-time is ineffective since companies need to make decisions about demand far enough in advance to complete an entire production cycle and get that product in front of customers. With a solid predictive analytics model in place, manufacturers can create exactly the right amount of products (and the right variety of those products) to satisfy future customers.
These forecasts optimize sales revenue, but it also avoids unnecessary costs associated with producing, shipping, and stocking items that won’t sell. Accurate predictions are a win-win for any manufacturer.
Build your manufacturing business with analytics
Predictive analytics in manufacturing have gone from being science fiction to being a make-or-break addition to any company’s technology stack. Using a platform like Sisense for manufacturing analytics, combining internal and external information into a series of accurate forecasts is incredibly invaluable to any manufacturer. Improving any step of the manufacturing process is an advantage over the competition, but improving every step is a data-driven way to become an industry leader faster.
Adam Bonefeste is a veteran content marketing manager. When he isn’t writing copy, he’s probably reading books, running through San Francisco or getting lost in YouTube holes about math/logic problems.
3 Manufacturing Inefficiency Problems Solved with Microsoft Dynamics 365
There are IT inefficiency risks that are consistent among the manufacturing industry. Businesses that leverage CRM software see their sales increase by , sales productivity increase by 34%, and sales forecast accuracy increase by 42%. Let’s identify the problems, and then talk about a simple approach to significant process improvement using Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM.
, more than some other industries, greatly benefits from a full-service CRM solution such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. This shouldn’t be surprising, yet it is a requirement that some manufacturers have ignored.
From not having a 360-degree view of customers to poor demand forecasting, and limited visibility into your sales pipeline and inefficient sales processes, these challenges can be met with a robust, integrated CRM solution.
Which of These Inefficiency Problems Does Your Manufacturing Business Face?
Problem 1: Excessive Internal Communications About Order and Invoice Information
Obtaining order and invoice information can be a nightmare for some sales teams in manufacturing. Sales reps will call or email someone in their department to obtain order and invoice information. In most cases, the required information is in an ERP or accounting system to which the sales team doesn’t have access. Phone calls are made, and emails are sent back and forth to get the information to the sales team, which would relay to the sales rep.
Problem 2: Double Entry of Sales Order Information
Your sales reps are responsible for getting orders and closing deals. Once an order is received, it’s not uncommon to see the sales rep hand off the order information to someone else within the sales department. This could be done by email, Word template, or hand-written paper document delivered to the back-office staff for manual input. When such information is manually being passed across people and departments, there is great risk of sales order information being lost, entered multiple times, entered erroneously, or siloed into systems or outdated spreadsheets.
Problem 3: Sales People Need to See Their Open Order Status
For your sales rep, any open order represents pending revenue. If an order remains open, the sales rep (and the customer) needs to know why. Sales representatives want to be able to see open order information in real time, either to manage customer expectations or to assist in resolving an order that hasn’t been fully processed or shipped. Since sales reps generally earn their commission on invoiced and delivered products, income from these open orders will not show up in their paychecks.
Solving Inefficiency Problems Through System Integration
One of the simplest ways to resolve these common inefficiency problems is through System Integration, the process of connecting your business systems so they can work together seamlessly. For sales people who don’t have access to your company’s , System Integration offers a host of benefits:
- System Integration pushes data from the ERP to the CRM system and vice versa.
- Sales people can initiate orders from the Dynamics 365 CRM system; they can populate products (which are also integrated with the ERP’s product catalog) as well as any other information needed about the order.
- When the order is ready, it is pushed to the ERP system where it is processed.
- As the order travels through its normal process, the order status managed in the ERP is passed back to the CRM system in real time for much needed visibility for the sales team.
The Advantages of Microsoft Dynamics 365
It is reported that for companies that use a CRM system, the average return on their technology investment is for each dollar spent. Given how critical a CRM system is for manufacturers, offers a bevy of benefits to sales teams. The out-of-the-box solution comes with a robust quote-to-order system so that sales reps can convert a quote to an order with a simple click. Another key advantage is that order and invoice data tables and fields already reside in the system and are ready to be received from the ERP via the integration.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM when fully integrated with your ERP provides improved ability to sort and filter through order and invoice information. Sales people can manage a “My Open Orders” list where orders fall off automatically as they are invoiced. Invoice information is also available for sales people for real-time visibility and for summing invoices on a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis.
Achieve Efficiency Gains
In today’s customer-centric era, the importance of an integrated CRM solution has never been greater. A quality CRM solution not only allows manufacturers to facilitate basic sales tasks, but it also helps them overcome the many challenges they face. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement is a full service CRM solution that can add value to your distribution business by creating a leaner organization that will manage customer demand and meet it quickly and efficiently. If you’re looking to achieve efficiency gains, invest in Microsoft Dynamics 365 today!
Learn more about how to leverage and help improve the business processes of your .
As Senior CRM Consultant of Synoptek, Julie brings a solid business background in addition to 9 years of hands-on experience in D365 CRM. It’s with this broad understanding of business processes that aids in serving companies well and knowing how and why the D365 CRM provides positive change. As a Microsoft Dynamics Certified and ClickDimensions Certified professional, Julie provides leadership that helps the deployment team stay focused on quality and project priorities.
Add Muscle And Flexibility To Your Manufacturing Operations With 3D Printing
Part 3 of a 3-part “Manufacturing Fitness” series
Concluding our series on manufacturing fitness, we now turn our attention to 3D printing – the process of physically manufacturing a product directly from a CAD model. Simply upload the CAD file to a 3D printer, feed it with some sort of base material, and the printer builds the object layer by layer.
This layering approach is what gives the technique its other name: additive manufacturing. The base material that gets added or layered can be almost anything imaginable. Typically, it’s plastic dust – but it can also be metal or concrete. In some futuristic scenarios, it can even be human tissue. So, if you’re looking to add muscle to your manufacturing operations – lean, flexible muscle, that is – then additive manufacturing or 3D printing may be the answer.
While 3D printing is certainly on the rise, perhaps the most significant factor holding back wider adoption is its slow speed of production. This issue, however, may soon be solved. According to UPS, one of the most prominent players in the 3D printing space, the average speed of production for 3D printing is expected to increase by 88% by 2023. Already, 3D printing represents a multibillion-dollar market that is projected to hit $ 21 billion by 2020.
Use cases today
Most manufacturers want to know what 3D printing is good for today. In terms of products that can be produced, the list is quite long: eyewear, dental molds, prosthetics, jewelry, smartphone cases, musical instruments, architectural models, car parts, medical devices – the list goes on.
But why would 3D printing replace traditional manufacturing approaches for any of these products? It all depends on the manufacturing context. Here are some ways in which 3D printing is being used today:
- Prototyping: 3D printing is quite flexible for single-use scenarios. Organizations with design and engineering skills can quickly draw up CAD models for new product ideas and generate physical versions of products with a 3D printer. Traditional manufacturing approaches – such as machining, casting, and forging – can be cost-prohibitive for quick prototypes. 3D printing helps drive a more iterative approach to innovation – one that makes it easier and more cost-effective to get physical products into the hands of stakeholders, decision-makers, and focus groups who can then determine whether or not to move forward with further development.
- Replacement parts: Keeping all possible spare parts in inventory is costly, and depending on third-party providers to deliver a needed part can mean long wait times. But if you have a 3D printer and the needed CAD drawings available – or if you can find them quickly – you can use 3D printing to produce the part on-site. For organizations running large vehicle fleets, warehouses, or manufacturing facilities, 3D printing offers a way forward that can help minimize downtime due to equipment failure or maintenance.
- Profitable individualization (configurable products): 3D printing represents an intriguing solution for highly configurable products where keeping all possible combinations of parts in stock can be a logistics headache. At a time when organizations seek ways to profitably address the expectations of customers for individualized products that fit their unique needs, companies can use 3D printing to meet demand by simply printing out the parts that customers require.
- Sustainability: 3D printing localizes production – which cuts down on shipping costs and the carbon footprint associated with it. When products are produced using plastic dust or powder, the products are also 100% recyclable – so whatever is produced can be returned to the dust from which it is formed, making the base material available once again for use in new products. For organizations serious about their sustainability efforts, 3D printing can help put the circular economy into action.
Networks for 3D printing
As the 3D printing market matures, the cost of printers is coming down. Today, lower-end hobbyist machines for in-home use weigh in at just around $ 300 while professional-grade machines can cost more than $ 10,000.
But does it make sense to own your own printer? Increasingly, the idea of 3D printing as a service is taking hold – with 3D printing farms emerging to serve the needs of the market. UPS, in fact, offers 3D printing services from its many retail outlets across the U.S. Organizations or individuals can simply send CAD drawings to UPS, place an order, and pick up the final product when it’s ready – or have it delivered by UPS as needed.
But how do you get the CAD drawings if you don’t have the ability to generate them in-house? Here is where the idea of a manufacturing network for 3D printing comes into play. Manufacturing networks that connect organizations to suppliers and manufacturing service providers have been around for some time. Increasingly, these networks are offering pre-made CAD drawings for, say, spare parts – or services for custom drawing as needed.
Let’s say you’re a refrigerator manufacturer. In a 3D printing world, instead of keeping all of the parts for every model you produce in stock, you can provide the schematics for each part to manufacturing networks where suppliers can offer the service of 3D printing the part on demand. Or you can maintain your own printer farm and serve your customers yourself.
The point is that as 3D printing takes off, manufacturing networks will play an increasingly important role in facilitating the market – enabling more organizations to take advantage of the benefits that this new mode of manufacturing has to offer. So when it comes to maintaining your manufacturing fitness in a highly competitive environment, think of 3D printing as a way to add some of the muscle and flexibility you need to succeed.
For more information, download the latest IDC report on digital manufacturing.
How CPQ Can Drive Manufacturing Sales
In manufacturing, margins are everything. In fact, if you’re like most manufacturers, your business operates on such tight margins that even a small change in the price list can have an enormous impact on your bottom line.
So what happens if your sales team inadvertently uses an old price list and the cost of steel actually has gone up a quarter since that price list was made? A million-dollar project quickly could go from profitable business to a big loss.
Unfortunately, this situation happens too frequently in manufacturing — but it is preventable.
Disconnect Between ERP and Sales
Most manufacturing companies encounter several common challenges that limit sales potential and create situations like the ones described above. Critically, all of those challenges stem from a disconnect between the sales team and the enterprise resource planning system.
Every manufacturing organization has an ERP system, and this tool typically gets significant attention because it’s required to operate the business effectively. However, this tends to create challenges for sales, because ERP systems are not sales tools.
It’s typically slow and difficult to make changes in ERP systems, and they’re definitely not optimized for sales processes like lead and pipeline management. As a result, sales people end up using spreadsheets or a handful of systems cobbled together to build quotes and manage deals, and neither approach is reliable or trackable.
When this happens, sales processes operate completely outside the ERP, even though important information like costs, margins, valid configurations and price lists live inside the ERP. Ultimately, this disconnect leads to challenges like these:
- Sales people selling and pricing products that don’t reflect the products you actually can deliver or the prices you want in the market;
- Lost money due to sales people using inaccurate price lists to develop quotes;
- Double entries for sales quotes, which create a higher likelihood of mistakes;
- No way to audit approvals in the sales process or, in some cases, no way to control the approval process; and
- Individual sales people using their own methods for delivering quotes, which can create inconsistencies and lead to quotes with outdated business and legal terms (in addition to inaccurate pricing).
How CPQ Can Resolve the ERP Disconnect
The best way for manufacturing organizations to resolve the sales-ERP disconnect is to introduce a program that can formalize the process for configuring, pricing and quoting products. Essentially, the CPQ should act as a bridge between your ERP system and your sales processes.
With a CPQ integrated into your ERP, your product master list can continue to live in the ERP, but you also can make all of the relevant data (available products, pricing, etc.) accessible to your sales team through the CPQ. Notably, the CPQ will reflect any changes to that data in real time. With the right integration, this setup accomplishes the following:
- Ensures sales people always have the most up-to-date product and pricing information to eliminate the issue of generating quotes based on inaccurate data;
- Introduces a standard and automated approval process, complete with different levels of approval and thresholds for discounts, to create a documented and auditable process without adding significant time or aggravation for sales people;
- Creates a standard quote template with opportunities for dynamic terms and conditions to ensure sales people always have accurate business and legal information and deliver a professional-looking, on-brand document; and
- Automates document input once a customer signs the quote to save time and eliminate the risk of human error or miscommunications.
Beyond these initial uses, many manufacturing organizations also use CPQ to manage cost plus markup pricing. Since most sales systems only do pricing, integrating a CPQ program that can handle the appropriate markup goes one step further to ensure that sales people always give accurate pricing in quotes.
On top of that, you can make it so that your CPQ properly reflects the bill of materials for each quote. That way, when the signed quote gets pushed back to your ERP, your team immediately has a clear list of what to build for the customer.
A leading manufacturer of steel roof and wall products and structural roof and floor decks recently launched a CPQ program to resolve the disconnect between its ERP and its sales tool. The team used two best practice solutions for ERP and sales, but still found a disconnect between the two that led to sales people using inaccurate data, making it difficult to audit customer quotes.
To resolve that challenge, the company introduced a CPQ program to act as a bridge between the two solutions and bring ERP data– like product lists, price lists and valid configurations — directly into the CRM.
By introducing CPQ, the company increased control and auditability over the quote process, and ensured sales people always would have the most accurate data, since what they see in the CRM through the CPQ program is the exact data that lives in its ERP system.
Now, the company can remain confident that everything sales people send to customers — from quotes all the way through to production — is correct.
Introducing CPQ can help drive sales in manufacturing by resolving the disconnect between sales processes and ERP data — but that’s only the beginning. It also can act as a bridge between other systems to help calculate appropriate tax and shipping costs, confirm inventory availability, improve the online payment process, and more.
Waiakea Overcame Major Manufacturing, Supply Chain and System Issues to Thrive as a Premium, Sustainable Water Brand
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Waiakea Overcame Major Manufacturing, Supply Chain and System Issues to Thrive as a Premium, Sustainable Water Brand
Posted by Kendall Fisher, Executive Producer and Host of The NetSuite Podcast
Waiakea is a premium water company founded in 2012 with the sole mission of protecting our earth through sustainable packaging, sustainable sourcing and sustainable logistics.
Under the leadership of CEO and co-founder, Ryan Emmons, the Waiakea team has remained dedicated to this mission, which sets the brand apart in the premium water industry. However, its focus on making the world a better place was getting slowed down by Waiakea’s business processes, which became outdated and cumbersome.
Both Emmons and Plant Manager, Jerry Clark, explain the company started off writing everything down on paper and taking hand-written logs. At the end of the month, the team would then reconcile production reports, resulting in time wasted as well as inconsistent numbers.
“It wasn’t that people didn’t want to buy the water,” Clark explains. “We actually had to slow ourselves down because we just weren’t reliable in our process. Every time something went wrong, we had to scramble to try and figure out what was going on.”
Emmons says Waiakea saw about 50% downtime in a day, bleeding money and barely staying afloat. And that’s precisely when he realized Waiakea needed to update its business processes and management system in order to survive.
Watch the video to find out why Waiakea ultimately chose Oracle NetSuite to manage its entire business—from manufacturing to the supply chain, demand planning to sourcing and accounting.
And to learn more about Waiakea’s growth story, click here.
by NetSuite filed under
Design To Operate: Manufacturing For Empowered Customers
Part 3 in a 5-part series on Design-to-Operate with the Digital Supply Chain
In this blog series, we’re looking at the design-to-operate (D2O) product lifecycle, which spans the phases of design, plan, manufacture, deliver, and operate. The first installments focused on design (by Thomas Ohnemus) and planning (by David Vallejo). My focus here will be on manufacturing.
Breaking down silos
Today’s customers are connected, informed, and always on. They demand high-quality, individualized products and faster delivery. When it comes to the manufacturing function, manual processes and isolated information silos make meeting these demands increasingly difficult, putting your organization at a competitive disadvantage.
A lack of data transparency, for example, impedes consistent performance measurements across plants and contract manufacturers. It makes scheduling production runs a tedious chore. It clouds insight into quality metrics while also impeding manufacturing agility – a key requirement for delivering what customers want in an individualized, dynamic, and highly variable market. How do you quickly accommodate new product introductions when you can’t even get the engineering bill of materials (BOM) to align with the manufacturing BOM?
Today’s manufacturers are also challenged by highly variable demand from customers who expect individualized products and experiences. This means that organizations are increasingly moving to product platforms that enable greater configurability while still keeping costs down, quality up, and lifecycles short. The move is one from mass production to mass customization – where the ability to deliver the lot size of one is what helps you deliver to customer expectations and demand.
What’s needed are connected manufacturing processes that are integrated across the entire D2O product lifecycle to break down silos and enable visibility across the phases of design, planning, logistics, and operations. This can enable next-generation business processes that leverage intelligent technologies to analyze root causes of inefficiency, predict machine and process failures, and speed execution.
Integrated D2O for manufacturing
An integrated D2O environment for manufacturing can help you compress cycle times, speed time to market, minimize costs, and meet manufacturing demand with greater efficiency and agility – despite growing variability. To get an idea of how such value can be realized, let’s take a quick look at each phase:
- Design: When engineers share data with production teams, they can better understand issues of manufacturability from the get-go – making production processes far less likely to break down mid-process. An integrated D2O process, moreover, helps align engineering and manufacturing BOMs so that you execute the handoff from one phase to another in a more seamless fashion. Ultimately, this speeds product delivery to the end customer regardless of configuration complexity.
- Plan: To serve customers demanding more individualized products, planning and manufacturing teams need to collaborate more closely. With connected manufacturing processes, both teams can share information to more effectively respond to variable product demand. Planning, for instance, may need to shore up smaller lots of inventory and stage raw materials in more defined increments to meet production requirements. Simulation tools can help planning teams prepare more effectively for these more individualized production runs. Meanwhile, manufacturing needs to quickly plan and adapt production schedules to current plant conditions, capacity, and demand – while also communicating back to planning on any bottlenecks in production that create gaps between the plan and actuals on the shop floor.
- Deliver: Increasingly, organizations are under pressure to move produced goods directly out of production and into the delivery phase. To honor SLAs for same-day delivery, the handoff to logistics teams needs to take place virtually immediately. This requires increased levels of cohesion between the two groups such that the timing of production – which can be variable according to demand – is aligned with the scheduling of trucks and other delivery vehicles.
- Operate: The capital equipment used in production needs to be constantly monitored to avoid the breakdowns that lead to downtime. At the same time, products and assets that are produced for end customers can also be monitored to yield insightful usage data for improving product quality or managing after-sale maintenance businesses. Whatever the use case, manufacturing and operations teams can work together to share information with an eye toward increasing efficiency, maximizing uptime, improving products, and revealing important insights on what users want.
The low-hanging fruit
So how do manufacturing teams move forward with integrated D2O processes? One piece of practical advice is to avoid boiling the ocean. Quick wins that demonstrate the value of D2O integration can generate the kind of buy-in needed to take on projects at a larger scale.
Internet of Things (IoT) technology serves as a good example. By outfitting production equipment with IoT sensors, manufacturing teams can generate high volumes of high-value data. This data can be used to help planning teams pinpoint production issues early, coordinate with logistics to ensure on-time delivery, and optimize the maintenance of production equipment.
When it comes to manufacturing, sophisticated digital supply chain capabilities and greater connectedness can help organizations increase shop-floor visibility, identify process bottlenecks, and manage operations with greater agility. This, in turn, facilitates smart factory capabilities where rigid production lines are transformed into flexible manufacturing cells – making it possible to shift from mass production to mass customization.
These are just two quick examples of how to move forward with integrated D2O processes. The ultimate objective, of course, is the smart connected factory that uses data visibility, advanced automation, and the integration of shop-floor processes to optimize performance and deliver what empowered customers expect.
Learn more
If you need more information on the D2O product lifecycle, have a look at the new whitepaper from IDC. Also, be sure to catch the next blog in this series, which will focus on delivery and logistics in the context of the D2O lifecycle.
Goodbye Spreadsheets, Hello Industry 4.0: Continental Standardizes Manufacturing Processes
Continental is one of the world’s largest producers of automotive components for passenger and commercial vehicles.
The company develops pioneering technologies and services for sustainable and connected mobility of people and their goods. Founded in 1871, the company offers safe, efficient, intelligent, and affordable solutions for vehicles, machines, traffic, and transportation. Products include internal-combustion, hybrid, and electric power trains, injection, chassis, and brake systems, and innovative electronic systems for connected cars.
With about 245,000 employees in 60 countries and markets worldwide, Continental is a truly global organization, but when the company wanted to standardize manufacturing processes and seize the advantage in the area of smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0, it had the good sense to start small.
A test case for digital transformation
One of the company’s business units is acting in the field of air-spring technology – making the vibration absorbers used in cars, trucks, rail vehicles, and industrial machinery. Operating worldwide, this business unit is now serving as a test case for digital transformation.
The project at Continental is led by Hendrik Neumann. He says its air-springs unit ran multiple manufacturing execution systems from different vendors. “We had a lot of manual process steps,” he says. “A lot of paper and spreadsheets, too. There was no real-time global visibility into manufacturing.”
This state of affairs also impacted workforce staffing. Non-existent support for multiple languages made it difficult to move employees around. At the same time, Continental was in competition for suitable, highly qualified personnel, such as engineers with the skills to maintain and further develop a highly customized, heterogeneous system landscape.
The journey to the smart factory
What Continental sought was a single, standardized manufacturing executions system with comprehensive functionality, capable of digitalizing shop-floor processes while running on a global scale. As processes varied across plants and locations, Continental also wanted flexible configuration for modeling the way air springs get made from plant to plant.
Integration was important. “We wanted to integrate with our ERP application and the in-memory computing database – both of which we run as a company,” says Neumann. “We also knew that our transformation would pivot on machine integration and data visibility, which is why we wanted a bi-directional flow of information – from machines to the system and back again.” This required a system that supports Internet of Things (IoT) technology for digesting, managing, and analyzing machine sensor data – and using this data to automate processes.
The ultimate objective is nothing short of the smart factory. Neumann talks about paperless and spreadsheet-less processes, data visualizations that reveal insight, and intuitive interfaces that minimize training. “We want KPIs that report on automated processes so that our teams are free to focus on other activities,” he says. “We’re also aiming for analytics on demand, integrated with business processes, so that we can take action in the here and now. More sensing and responding, less meeting and planning.”
Small means small
This is a solid vision – but first, Continental needed to move forward with the new manufacturing execution system. Continental chose to deploy a manufacturing execution application.
According to Neumann, Continental decided to focus the implementation on the five facilities responsible for the majority of production. These include its Hannover and Hamburg plants in Germany as well as plants in Mexico, Hungary, and Turkey.
If starting small was a guiding principle for the implementation, Neumann’s team executed according to plan. “At first, we focused our efforts on a single machine in a single production area of our plant in Hannover, Germany,” Neumann recalls. “From there, we were iterative, building on successful go-lives in succession.”
Eventually, the team was up and running on numerous machines spanning a complete production process for air springs in the Hannover plant. “Based on our efforts in Hannover,” says Neumann, “we formed a template for implementing elsewhere.”
Plants serving Continental’s air springs business run a variety of production processes. For this reason, Neumann and his team are following a process-by-process approach rather than plant-by-plant. “When one production area is moved to the new system, we replicate it across facilities,” Neumann says.
Configuration first
One goal for Continental is to keep to the standard code base as much as possible. This will help minimize complexity and maintain the ability to consume future innovations based on the standard.
Thus, when it comes to meeting unique needs for individual plants (needs that may have to do with regulatory compliance or serving niche markets, for example), Continental has remained committed to configuration over customizations.
“We’ve found that for the vast majority of cases, we’re able to model the process in the software,” says Neumann. “In the rare cases where we’ve had to develop customized code, we’ve done it in a standardized way so that the same customizations are reused across plants.”
Standardization and transparency
Today, while Continental is still in the process of rolling out its new manufacturing execution system, the company is already bringing its vision for Industry 4.0 into sharper focus. Digitization of the shop floor is now underway. “IoT sensors now connect our machines to our system and processes,” says Neumann. “And all of it is based on a foundation of standardization and transparency.
Standardization can be seen as a synonym for simplicity. By bringing uniformity to processes across plants and locations, Continental’s new manufacturing execution system reduces landscape complexity and, thus, costs. This makes it easier to shift manufacturing workload to different plants – helping to maximize the productivity of employees who can now jump from process to process (rail, trucks and buses, industrial machinery) with minimal training.
The system’s rollout has been standardized, too. The template approach speeds implementation by introducing standard functionality across all plants – while still accommodating unique circumstances with flexible configuration. “Our templates are like Legos,” says Neumann. “We design the process once, and then implement it in pieces. If a piece needs to be added to meet local needs – a rare occasion – we hardly break our stride.”
Transparency can be seen as a synonym for data visibility. At Continental, improved data visibility means global track-and-trace capabilities – down to the individual product level. “We put rubberized labels on all of the parts,” says Neumann. “I can tell you when the part was made, which plant produced it, what materials were used, and much more.”
Uniform data also adds to the transparency. Based on a single source of manufacturing truth, Continental can visualize data from KPIs to better understand what’s happening on the shop floor in real time. It can also generate standardized reports – all within the system without the mess and complexity of spreadsheets.
“Spreadsheets are probably the number one manufacturing execution systems in the world,” Neumann jokes, “but this is no way to get to Industry 4.0. Today, we have a single version of manufacturing truth that allows us to compare plant to plant and understand exactly where we stand.”
Next stop, Industry 4.0
All of this is a good start on the route to Industry 4.0, but what are the next steps in Continental’s journey? Topping the list is predictive quality. “With machine learning, we can detect quality issues before they impact production,” says Neumann. “This can save us tremendous resources – while also improving the customer experience with our products.”
These are the kinds of moves that will continue to push Continental toward becoming an intelligent enterprise in an Industry 4.0 world. To learn more, download the IDC report “Leveraging your intelligent digital supply chain” and follow me @howellsrichard.
Manufacturing Industry Slow to Adopt Emerging Digital Marketing Software
Earlier this year, we set off on a joint venture with our friends at London Research to conduct a major marketing survey. Our goal was to gain a better understanding of how marketers are using digital marketing software (marketing automation, email service providers, customer relationship management systems, etc.) and to learn about their existing pain points. Specifically, we were curious how marketers in certain verticals were (or weren’t, as it were) using marketing automation software, which is why we focused heavily on marketers in the financial services, tech, and manufacturing industries.
As it turns out, manufacturing marketers are still taking their first steps toward digital marketing maturity, as the overwhelming majority of marketing professionals in that sphere are not currently using marketing automation software — or even an email service provider (ESP). Subsequently, there’s a major opportunity for manufacturing and distribution companies to gain a significant advantage over their competition by adopting marketing automation platforms and working with their vendor to get the most out of this powerful and dynamic software.
Keep reading to learn more about how manufacturing marketers are using marketing automation, as well as the largest challenge they’re facing in regards to their software. And, of course, be sure to download the full State of Marketing Automation report for even more useful insights.
How Is the Manufacturing Industry Utilizing Marketing Automation Software?
According to our research, the manufacturing industry appears to be far behind the technology industry vertical and on par with their counterparts in financial services as far as digital marketing software adoption. For instance, manufacturing companies are slightly more likely to use marketing automation software than financial services companies but far less likely than the tech industry to do so. The survey results also suggest that this reluctance among manufacturers to adopt marketing automation is likely to continue — with only 19% of manufacturers saying they plan to invest in marketing software this year (compared to 48% of financial services businesses).
Further, while many marketers in the tech industry are using marketing automation software exclusively (that is, without supplementing their platforms with an ESP), only 21% of manufacturing marketers can say the same. In fact, 26% of manufacturing companies continue to use both marketing automation and an ESP, which, while that figure is less than those in other industries surveyed, still speaks to the fact that many marketers continue to invest in redundant technologies or are simply not getting everything they need from their current systems. It also implies a fundamental misunderstanding of the power and capabilities of marketing automation, despite their significant investment in the software.
Why Manufacturers Need Marketing Automation Software to Improve Their Marketing Efforts
So, while the numbers for marketers in the manufacturing sector aren’t quite where we would expect them to be at this point, the immensely bright silver lining is that now is the perfect time to capitalize on a rare opportunity to differentiate your company from your competitors. Implementing marketing automation software and learning how to use it to its full potential can make your marketing and sales just as streamlined as your production processes
There are a variety of factors leading to the inevitable evolution beyond the traditional batch-and-blast email approach offered by ESPs — including GDPR and other compliance regulations, the need to scale marketing efforts more purposefully, and meeting consumer expectations for more personalized content. Further, marketers are now expected to hand sales-ready leads to their sales teams, which means an increased focus on aligning marketing software with marketing strategy, especially as it pertains to segmentation, lead scoring and nurturing, and website personalization.
Thankfully, now is the time to strike, as many manufacturing and distribution companies have seen amazing success since implementing the Act-On platform for their business. For instance, Allegis — a leading international supplier of latches, handles, hinges, and related products — credits Act-On with helping them conserve resources, eliminate spam complaints, and increase their email open rate by 15-20%. Additionally, Absolute Exhibits — a full-service, turnkey exhibit house that designs and creates custom tradeshow exhibits — has experienced an 85% increase in revenue since utilizing the Act-On platform. In fact, they’ve been so successful, they’re actually hiring more personnel to keep up with demand.
If your company is looking to achieve these kinds of results, we’d like to speak with you further about how Act-On makes marketing personal.
The Major Marketing Challenge Facing Manufacturing Marketers
Although not many manufacturing and distribution marketers are using marketing automation software as of yet, those who do find themselves in the unenviable position of not being able to measure their return on investment, which is one of the great unrealized promises of these platforms for this vertical. Marketers who can’t quantify their success are unable to optimize successful campaigns, pause poor-performing efforts, or justify the investment to their key stakeholders.
This might be due to the fact that many departments using marketing automation have been unsuccessful at integrating their new software with their existing CRM — or haven’t even tried to connect the two. When this happens, accurately tracking performance and ROI becomes extremely difficult at best, not to mention extremely labor intensive. Further, siloing these two powerful pieces of software deepens the wedge between marketing and sales, eliminating efficiencies and causing further division between these historically-opposed departments.
Act-On seamlessly integrates with several of the most popular CRMs — such as Salesforce, SugarCRM, NetSuite, and Microsoft Dynamics, among several others. Without ever having to leave their CRM, manufacturing marketers can now view each aspect of a prospect’s engagement history. This helps manufacturing marketers and sales professionals better track their website visitors, engage those visitors with more targeted, segmented content, prioritize hot leads, and identify and pursue real opportunities.
Download the Full State of Marketing Automation Report to See How You Stack Up!
The infographic above is awesome, but it only tells a fraction of the story. If you’re interested in learning more about how, why, and to what ends marketers across oceans and industries are using digital marketing software, please download the State of Marketing Automation report in its entirety. And if you’d like to learn more about Act-On’s commitment to marketing made personal, you can take a virtual tour by clicking here.
Digital Twins for Yield: Analyzing Manufacturing Sensor and Process Data at Scale
As process complexity increases, digital twins are becoming key to efficient operations and high product yields, according to a recent SEMI blog. Traditional knowledge-based approaches are losing their effectiveness and increasingly must be augmented with data-driven approaches. The current interest in digital twins, which act as virtual representations of physical systems, is fueled by the convergence of IoT, machine learning and big data technology. In this blog, we will look at the implementation of a semiconductor manufacturing digital twin – a powerful tool to improve yield by detecting associations between product quality metrics and up to millions of predictor process parameters, primarily equipment sensor traces and process measurement data.
Moore’s law, even while slowing, continues to drive exponential increases in the performance and storage capacities of integrated circuits (ICs), while also increasing the volumes of data produced by the processes used to manufacture those ICs. As the number and complexity of the processing steps are growing rapidly, manufacturing process equipment is increasingly better instrumented with sensors. The process complexity necessitates, and the available data volumes enable, a shift to ever more data-driven yield improvement, leveraging the latest big data, machine learning, AI and streaming technologies.
But when creating digital twins for manufacturing and taking advantage of the opportunities they provide, there are several key challenges to consider:
- The wide and Big Data Challenge – processing very large numbers of potential predictors
- The Data Preprocessing Challenge – making sense of sensor trace and equipment attribute data
- The Feature Selection Challenge – identifying the important nuggets in the sea of less important variables
- In-Memory vs. Big-Data Analytics – how to combine them effectively for best results
- Performance Challenge – doing all this rapidly to aid in ‘real-time’ decisions
TIBCO’s Solution
Recently, TIBCO has addressed these challenges. Using the TIBCO Connected Intelligence platform, TIBCO built a solution to provide analytic applications involving millions of process variables (logical data columns) associated with product quality and performance measurements. These cutting edge applications support root-cause, clustering, and other analyses at the die level. Further, the results are available close to “real time” to enable useful process interventions. With real-time results, manufacturers can identify subtle equipment changes, process shift or drift in certain tools, or predict and remedy substandard yield for a lot moving through the manufacturing process.
This solution is a hybrid big-data plus in-memory system that addresses the various new analytic and IT-architecture problems associated with creating digital twins. It delivers efficient, scalable, and practical actionable insights quickly to owners and stakeholders, even when there are hundreds of thousands or even millions of variables that must be considered.
The following diagram summarizes the solution’s overall architecture and data flows.
Additional contributors to this work: Michael Alperin, Steven Hillion, Ph.D., Siva Ramalingam, Nico Rode
For a deeper dive into these challenges and this solution, including the architecture and specific analytic activities, please download this technical paper “Addressing Process Control Challenges in Big and Wide Data Environments.” In addition, you can watch a demo of the use case described in this blog and visit the TIBCO Manufacturing Solutions Community page for more information about TIBCOs broader set of solutions for manufacturers.
Optimizing Operations with Blockchain in the Semiconductor and Electronics Manufacturing Supply Chain
Semiconductor, electronics and equipment manufacturers today face a number of logistics and supply chain challenges that could be overcome by systems providing a secure, tamper-resistant, single source of truth. One obstacle is data security barriers between suppliers, shippers, manufacturers and test houses, an impediment to achieving optimal product quality and regulatory compliance. Additionally, inefficient and inadequate processes for tracking goods make it more difficult to isolate shipping problems, track faulty parts and verify product authenticity. Counterfeiting has become a serious problem that costs US-based semiconductor manufacturers $ 7.5 billion annually.
How blockchain can help
Blockchain functions can help alleviate many data sharing pain points in manufacturing. Blockchain’s distributed functionality, bundled security measures, and associated features such as smart contracts have the potential to help manufacturers quickly trace goods, manage records transparently, and automate supply chain processes and payments. No isolated blockchain platform would solve all of these problems on its own. But, when combined with other solutions and applied to particular use cases, blockchain has the potential to optimize operations and foster an environment of trust and collaboration among consortium members.
Three core features of blockchain make it a valuable technology for manufacturing:
- Distributed and immutable system of record. With a distributed system of record in the blockchain network, there is no “central” data store controlled by one organization. The distributed ledger provides all participants with a view into the data, thus increasing transparency, data distribution timeliness, information sharing, and data access. Security also improves as there is no single central data store open to external attacks. Once data is inserted onto the chain, it cannot be easily changed.
- Security and Trust. Blockchain integrates best-of-breed cryptographic mechanisms to guarantee the digital identity of the network participants and secure the privacy of the data stored to enable role-based data access. It brings trust to a potentially trustless environment without the need for a centralized third party.
- Smart Contracts. Smart contracts are embedded business logic that can be added to a blockchain. They enable the automation of many processes and the secure handling of contracts.
Example use cases
In each stage of manufacturing, blockchain could be applied in a variety of use cases to expedite processes and alleviate security issues. A few examples that merely scratch the surface of what may be possible follow.
In pre-production, manufacturers may implement blockchain solutions for Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment (CPFR). These systems monitor inventory levels, enabling suppliers to replenish supplies before they run low. The expensive, proprietary B2B networks used today could be replaced with blockchain as the common sharing protocol, using non-proprietary or public networks.
Suppliers may also combine blockchain with IoT sensors on shipping containers to provide a tamper-resistant record of shipping conditions. This could be used to verify that temperature and humidity tolerances for chemicals and equipment have not been exceeded during transit from the supplier.
The identity and materials in components and subcomponents of manufacturing equipment could be collected on a blockchain to verify compliance with environmental and health regulations.
During production, a manufacturing process machine can be registered on a blockchain with a unique identity; its performance and maintenance history can be recorded. A maintenance service provider could then be automatically notified, via a smart contract, when a predictive maintenance alert is written, allowing repair of machines before they fail.
In the distribution stage, customers could search the ledger for a product’s complete history, reducing counterfeiting and solidifying the origin of properly sourced goods. When a faulty product is identified, the manufacturer may search the ledger to quickly locate the supplier or bad test results and alert all receivers of the defective product.
Conclusion
With blockchain, manufacturing can become a more collaborative process among suppliers, manufacturers, and customers. Blockchain can help streamline the supply chain and inventory replenishment, improve tracking and regulatory compliance, and reduce counterfeiting.
Augmenting blockchain with IoT enables use cases like predictive maintenance and monitoring of goods during transit. Blockchain is not yet mature and its business value still needs to be proven. However, it is poised to help manufacturers decrease costs and fraud, and provide customers with faster, more secure delivery, increased visibility, and consistency.
More resources on blockchain and manufacturing
TIBCO is an active member of SEMI’s Smart Manufacturing Technology Community, which hold regular meetings on this and other topics. Join now to get regular updates.
For more information on blockchain use cases in manufacturing, please see these resources.
Keywords: blockchain, data security, smart manufacturing, counterfeit, fraud, supply chain, semiconductor, electronics
This article first appeared on SEMI.org.