Distributed manufacturing and cloud 'leverage'

Gone are the days when manufacturers spent their bucks on resources, machinery, facilities, people and equipment. These are times when they put their wallets and focus on a slew of enterprise software and the supporting infrastructure, so that they do not find themselves handicapped when their rivals are rising up the food chain. But this can get a little tricky when it comes to dealing with a branched-out supply chain, fluid-and-everywhere distribution and flag posts in the best sourcing destinations all over the planet.

Going the global way

Globalisation is an unrelenting hurricane that has swallowed conventional business and operational formats far out of sight. Today’s context calls that manufacturing dances in step with other functions like sales, marketing or finance and is able to not only stay at the numbing pace of a fast-moving world but also optimize the unique situations and advantages that this new world presents.

Precision and productivity form just the basic layer of bricks in this wall, which is stacked further by a rigorous need for making factory operations a competitive force and not mere backyard furniture.

Atop this, lies the pressure of tapping internal data, external insights and applying analytics in every sphere from suppliers, distributors, procurement points, to service interactions or assembly pit stops.

This piles up in varying forms until everything is cemented with real-time collaboration, blink-of-the-eye decision-making and extreme agility.

Now you need the new glue called Cloud to hold this complex and multi-hued wall together. This is where cloud-based solutions come in with their brisk roll-out times, easy customization flexibility, lower capital costs, uncompromised functionality, anytime scalability, feature-rich usability, new-age dynamics and swift integration mash-ups.

Imagine a scenario of some new product launch and the breakneck speed as well as depth of synergy needed between suppliers and distributors. Or think of a complex and unplanned situation of resource allocation. You may alternatively, want to simulate a day where internal engineers or design teams have no time or room to breathe as they sync up and build up over inputs and actions from external points like customers, sales teams, distributors etc at whizzing rates. All such and many more manufacturing-seated challenges can be smoothened very well with the suave force of Cloud benefits.

Cloud to the rescue

Cloud is the perfect way to accelerate other dimensions like build-to-order, configure-to-order and engineer-to-order chains; and at the same time it can facilitate quality management, Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and other demand management chains with stupefying speeds and deep forecasts.

That certainly and instantly adds to other sides of manufacturing floors like inventory management, smart procurement strategies, distributed order management, pricing, time-to-market etc with significant upper hand on cost and time schedules.

Cloud is also helping engineers become more insightful, productive, and is bridging internal and external supply chain teams like never before. Cloud, alongside, has wiped off all those yesteryear boundaries that did not let manufacturing reach its full potential, thanks to its wave of sharp insights and integration between forces inside and outside the factory walls.

Ease of use, operational flexibility, and growing maturity of tools and options has also made IT departments less hesitant about deploying Cloud on factory premises.

Add to that the new challenges that global supply chains pose before manufacturing heads and we soon see how Cloud can actually turn the story upside down for complex and time-intensive areas like Business Process Management (BPM), PLM, Warehouse Management Systems (WMS), Transportation Management Systems (TMS), or inventory control without forcing any heavy hardware or capital spends.

Leading by example

Cloud can equip any manufacturing instance to connect disparate areas like purchasing, subcontracting, EDI, shipping, documentation, preventive maintenance, production, QC, reporting etc in an integrated fashion. This is crucial for any organization with a footprint spanning many diverse locations and with the need to juggle multi-entity financial and supply chain management requirements. If we look at a SaaS adoption survey by MintJutras, for manufacturing, distribution and other industries, what pops out is how 49% of respondents in the manufacturing & distribution industries still do not grasp the difference between single- and multi-tenant SaaS architectures. 

But a lot many have started considering cloud-based manufacturing applications and have increasingly adopted cloud-based applications across their companies. SaaS-based applications that hover around 22% of all manufacturing and distribution software installed can leap to 45% within ten years, if MintJutras augurs it well.

It is in the scenario that Microsoft, a front-runner in cloud manufacturing space, is leading the way to new integrated manufacturing. With a broad set of tools and applications that help innovate quickly in changing markets by providing insightful analytics into complex data and more efficient ways to monitor and integrate every various aspects in an organization. With better margins and higher productivity, companies deploying these solutions are able boost profitability and productivity in more ways than one.

In the end, Globalisation has redefined manufacturing but look a little closer and you won’t miss how Cloud has been and continues as a profound escort to this big transformation.