Technologies giving competitive edge in the Manufacturing sector

Other than the standard ERP solution, for which we use SAP, our Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is looking for the sorts of things that can handle the amount of complexity and the scale of our operations. That’s one piece. The other piece, is the PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) software that helps us manage our products from design all the way to manufacturing, market deployment, and then, product closure. Those are two of the most sophisticated tools sets that we use.

Technology trends Impacting Enterprise Business Environment and Manufacturing Industry

I think there are a couple of them. One is, the proliferation of data. We collect more and more data all the time and the more sophisticated the tools we use, the more data it generates. So being able to manage that in a quality way, make sure that it’s governed well over time and that we can actually mine that data and use it appropriately, is one challenge. The second thing is the tradeoff between the amount of data and the refinement that you have – the granularity of the data, and once you collect all that, what the impact is on performance. More data you collect through your system, the more challenging your performance can be.

Challenges in Technology in Manufacturing Sector and its Solutions

Firstly, the solution has to work. It has to be scalable and flexible. I don’t want to spend a lot of money to implement something in one place. I need to be able to replicate it across my businesses. The second thing is the sophistication level of the tools. Part of the challenge that we have is, we operate all over the globe and some of these tools that we’ve looked at are so sophisticated – somebody in Brazil and China may not need the level of sophistication of, say, Germany or the U.S., so we need to find a way to make them more user friendly so that they have broader deploy ability to across the globe.