manufacturing and business experts

manufacturing and business experts

The Intersection of Manufacturing and Business: Strategies for Success

1. Introduction to the Manufacturing Industry and Business Landscape

The manufacturing world is far from the world of pickaxes and foundries of yesteryear. Technological advancements have led to such tools as computer numerical control (CNC) machines, designed to perform manufacturing activities with little to no human interaction. Heavy machinery companies are the largest consumers in the industrial manufacturing industries and account for the majority of industry revenue. The economic benefits of outsourcing have been popular globally over the past several decades. Today, on the other hand, “reshoring” and “nearshoring” are increasingly receiving media attention and becoming a key initiative of companies in many industries, from manufacturing and service to retail industries. Companies globally are assessing their cost drivers and are increasingly taking a total cost of ownership view, including aspects such as logistics, customs, lead times and risk mitigation taking into account geo-political issues, innovation and intellectual property rights.

This management report will collectively provide Chief Executive Officers, with current manufacturing trends, successful current business strategies and how to improve operations and productivity. This report will focus on strategies to be employed for manufacturers to succeed. 79% of U.S. manufacturers are small to medium-sized businesses (SMB), meaning fewer than 250 employees. The overwhelming portion of manufacturers is under-resourced as well; the majority don’t have in-house IT departments. These companies are easy targets for cybercriminals. As with healthcare institutions, these production companies need to have a solid cyber protection platform. Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is the application of the Internet of Things (IoT) in industrial and business contexts. Included in this section will be a current look at business strategies employed by large and small corporations with detailed business strategy examples.

2. Key Challenges and Opportunities in the Manufacturing Sector

While manufacturers have much in common with other businesses, they have unique challenges and opportunities. This section offers a brief exploration of these challenges and opportunities, keeping in mind that discrete manufacturers have somewhat different concerns than do process manufacturers. The most common roadblock to action is a belief that only direct, immediate costs are relevant, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Learning to see is one of the basic tools of modern manufacturing success. Manufacturers have complex relationships with partners, customers, suppliers, and regulators. Unless these relationships are sound, efficiency will elude the manufacturer. Manufacturers have a wide range of stakeholders who measure success in many ways.

Increasingly, investors are concerned with the value provided by the company, customers are aware when they experience undue pollution or unfair labor treatment, suppliers are cognizant of whether the manufacturer pays on time or tries to pressure competitors that are partners or customers, regardless of the effect on the supplier. Since engineering is mostly about turning raw materials into assets – like an automobile – it follows that good engineering practice in a mass-produce society should focus on building assets that society values. It should select designs and production processes that will not quickly outlive their useful lifespan. It should minimize pollution and it should not degrade the human spirit. Highly efficient modern manufacturing companies epitomize good practice in engineering. They build products that society loves, and they do so without excessive pollution or resource waste.

3. Innovative Business Models and Technologies in Manufacturing

A myriad of new innovations are emerging that could transform the industry’s business models and technological landscapes. A more systemic interaction between the technologies creating these innovations – including new materials, advanced technologies, interoperability, etc. – provides important value streams to ply for the competitive advantage of customers and producers. Industry is pushing to adopt and adapt them quicker. Central to this enterprise is the use of the rich data and information available from the numerous connection points of the whole value chain to create new knowledge and insights to make better decisions at every level. This chapter shows a variety of the types of innovations that are driven by real-world problems in industry, but leveraging the advanced technologies brought via the advanced industrial-based technologists, the MFOs, and their surrounding providers to enable the digital manufacturing revolution taking place.

To capture the current state of leading-edge industry-moving topics, all the proposed papers on Chapter themes in response to this “call for chapters” made by the MFOs in the project channels in processors, sensors, cloud functionalities and several types of Additive Manufacturing (AM), originally referred to as “3-D printing,” are proposed or completed. These and other technologies, along with the data and the information that travels throughout the value network, have led to research that will impact the whole value chain that research and practitioners need to understand. AM in metal creates a set of new capabilities. Its real value is in the uses – how industries and business models are modified by the use, “what” is made now, that is so different from anything we could RSVP before. All of this only works in embracing technologies like AM into the product models as an economic low-cost means of producing a small designs experiment, to try things out and to see what happens even though they are complicated.

4. Strategies for Effective Collaboration Between Manufacturing and Business Experts

Here are a number of strategies that educators in higher education and corporations can take to enhance employability skills for technicians and multi-disciplined professionals required by modern manufacturing. Some of the strategies target actions that can even be done today, while others will require a curriculum redesign. The first set of strategies is aimed at rapid deployment and moves graduates quickly into intermediate employability.

1) Include both technical and professional skills in a woven curriculum, so that students see the need for both sets of skills and understand why both are needed. 2) Incorporate case-based learning with multiple “right” outcomes, as this stimulates both thinking outside the box and also teamwork skills. Such activities also expose students to the fuzzy nature of real manufacturing problems (e.g., not enough information, etc.) and give students confidence that they can tackle these problems. 3) In the woven curriculum, ensure that each of the taught courses is relevant to industry. The curriculum is tighter and careers are long, so maximum payoff of each course is required for rapid and substantial return on investment. 4) Capability-focused activities aiming at allowing students to develop, recognize, and articulate with informed passion both their professional and technical skills.

5. Case Studies and Best Practices in Integrated Manufacturing and Business Operations

The examples and case studies in this report demonstrate that manufacturers have responded with a variety of strategies to the challenges of the emerging global economy. GM is consolidating operations and standardizing processes that support customer order fulfillment worldwide. Facility and product rationalization and consolidation are key at Varian, thus leveraging investment in engineering, manufacturing, and support operations. Opticote has developed an XML-based system for sharing demand and supply forecast information with its suppliers. Corporate Express has taken key steps to provide a “hassle-free” service by improving customer service at the front office in a way that drives efficiency and effectiveness throughout the back office. Each of these manufacturers has recognized that an integrated, cross-functional approach makes the difference.

The variety of solutions reflects the fact that these manufacturers are varied in many ways. They are in different industries and serve different types of markets. One may have mostly domestic customers while others have customers from around the globe. Some have facilities dispersed around the world while some have facilities that specialize in manufacturing only certain product lines while others have facilities that handle multiple parts of the supply chain. Some are new, successful start-ups, while some are big diversified international enterprises. However, what these manufacturers have in common is that they recognize that they can’t shut out the world and that solutions to continued profitability from business and manufacturing processes will be integrated, cross-functional, and take advantage of all the tools available to conduct business in the new global economy. The good news is that these tools are available today from activities as simple as attending cross-functional seminars to complex technology that crosses enterprise boundaries.