How Real Time Data Is Creating Trust And Accelerating New Business Growth
The quickest way to gain and grow customer trust is to excel at product quality, be flexible by providing short-notice production runs, and find creative new ways to help customers grow their business. These and many other insights are from the recently published IQMS Survey, What Drives Growth in Manufacturing (free PDF).
The majority of 125 manufacturers who participated in the online survey produce parts for tier-one original equipment (OE) manufacturing companies or tier-one suppliers to OEs. The focused intensity on manufacturing quality, ability to flex production capability fast, and meet tight delivery schedules are highly valued by OE manufacturers today.
Key takeaways from the study include the following:
- 92% of manufacturers say product quality defines their success in the eyes of their customers.
- 56% of manufacturers find their customers most frequently demand short notice production capabilities as a value-added service.
- 50% define their success by their ability to meet on-time deliveries consistently.
Real Time Data Drives Higher Quality From The Shop Floor To The Top Floor
It’s time to start managing inventory, warehouse, supply chain and manufacturing operations with the future in mind, not the past. Supply Chain Management (SCM), Inventory Management (IM) and Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) are converging fast as virtual and physical supply chains create new opportunities unlocked with real time data.
From improving product quality levels to giving shop floor operations the flexibility they need to flex for short-notice production runs, real time data is revolutionizing manufacturing quickly today. With 70% of manufacturers rely on additional business from existing customers to drive their sales growth, product quality has to be excellent on every fulfilled order to drive new business.
The bottom line is that every manufacturer is a global competitor who must excel at product quality, the flexibility of providing short-notice production runs, and enabling their customers’ growth better than anyone else.
The following factors are driving a real time revolution in manufacturing, improving insights from the shop floor to the top floor:
Competing with insight, speed and quality are the new normal, making Manufacturing Intelligence critically important today
Manufacturers earning the most trust today prioritize quality, speed, scale and simplifying how customers do business with them. They also have greater insight and intelligence into how they can improve their average cycle times, improved scheduled production performance, optimize inventory on hand, and automatically update finite schedules.
Manufacturing Intelligence creates more opportunities to the entire manufacturing and supply chain operations teams to excel. Having real time data across the shop floor helps better manage the production schedule, improve delivery times, improve product quality. Manufacturing Intelligence also can help find open slots in the production schedule to slot in short-notice production runs too.
The IQMS survey results shown above underscore how critical real time data is to reaching and staying at high-quality levels. 67% of manufacturers participating in the survey say production monitoring is the most important aspect of their operations supporting product quality.
The more real time the monitoring, the greater the potential for reaching quality, on-time delivery, and service goals.
One of the best-kept secrets for creating a strong, fast supply chain is making real time data available from the shop floor to the top floor
The faster a given manufacturer’s response is to an opportunity, the greater the chance they’re going to win new customers and rapidly gain the trust of existing ones. The survey underscores how important it is to flex with short-notice production runs while delivering excellent product quality.
Two researchers who spent a year working in the Toyota Production System (TPS) discovered valuable insights into how real time data becomes a catalyst for faster business growth. Dr. Jeffrey Dyer and Dr. Kentaro Nobeoka wrote Creating and Managing A High-Performance Knowledge-Sharing Network: The Toyota Case based on the year they spent researching Toyota’s massive supply chain operations. They found that real time data shared across a supply chain and throughout manufacturing operations were more valuable than cash.
Real time data becomes the currency suppliers would trade in to help each other gain supplier certifications and begin selling to Toyota for their manufacturing needs. Insights gained and shared from real time data accelerated how quickly each supplier improved, making the entire network more efficient.
Every manufacturer’s ability to launch new products says more about who they are than a year’s worth of marketing and Public Relations (PR) and wins more customers than the best pricing deals
How well any given manufacturer manages the new product development and introduction (NPDI) process says a lot more than all their marketing and PR materials combined. It’s the truest measure of supply chain execution, production scheduling and how well integrated the shop floor and the top floor is.
Attaining greater customer trust by having an outstanding product launch is the goal every manufacturer strives for. With the real time integration of data from the shop floor to track machine health, performance levels, and productivity every detail that goes into excelling at a new product introduction can be addressed.
Manufacturers doing this today emerge from product launches growing sales and winning even greater trust from customers.
