The Industrial sector faces immense challenges, from product development complexity, to disruptions in the supply chain, to stringent regulations. Despite all this, companies are scrambling to manufacture better, faster and at lower costs while simultaneously tackling digital transformation in the post-COVID era.
After talking to hundreds of manufacturing companies and engineering firms over the last few years, I see five common, critical challenges in modern manufacturing. These challenges exist regardless of company size or industry.
So, since every manufacturing company I see experiences these problems, let’s talk about them.
The list includes:
- The need for speed.
- Digital transformations in a post-COVID world.
- Supply chain disruption.
- Regulation and risks.
- Transitioning to everything as a service (XaaS).
Manufacture Better, Faster and at Lower Costs
Productivity and efficiency are a big deal. Companies are looking at how to develop faster, better and less expensive products—but it’s a tough goal. Many problems can impact a company’s productivity and efficiency, and much of the time data and process optimization are the keys to improvement. As such, inefficient data management practices, legacy systems, messy data and data silos are some of the most common reasons companies continue to be inefficient.
Speaking of process optimization, it is important to be wary of applying a waterfall methodology to process organization. Highly complex products and multi-disciplinary teams make sequential processes killers for productivity. With 80 percent of the product footprint defined during the design stage, addressing problems early and accelerating new product development (NPD) are a big deal.
The Post-COVID Digital Transformation of Processes
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the necessity of digital transformation in the industrial sector. It was a pivotal moment for companies to understand that they cannot operate as before.
As a result, companies are focusing on multiple digital initiatives to address many of the changes since COVID-19—such as the increased number of engineers working from home. Two of the most important initiatives seeing change are NPD and Change Management (CM). Accelerating and streamlining these processes is key to success. Bringing new innovative products to market faster requires changes in the way companies work. Integrating multi-disciplinary teams and optimizing the supply chain using digital transformation is a big challenge. Companies need to figure out how to accelerate these processes and stay ahead of the competition. These processes also need to be able to support a quick response to customer demand.
Ongoing Supply Chain Disruption
What started as a disruption triggered by COVID-19 is continuing to be a challenge for the industrial world. The most important aspect of supply chain disruption is the global visibility of supply chains, and the tracking of multiple events such as price instability, local conflicts and financial markets. The supply chain world is complex and fluctuates at a high speed, which continues to be a challenge for manufacturing companies in all industries. Information about suppliers, raw materials, production processes and lead time are basic elements to track supply chain performance.
Regulation Complexity and Risks
Modern compliance requirements and regulations are complex, which makes them challenging for manufacturing companies to follow. Selling products in the global market requires companies to manage the complexity of compliance and be able to react fast to new regulations. It requires the quick capture of information about these new rules and the ability to provide quick and efficient answers (including automatic updates) and history tracking. The risk of non-compliance is too high for manufacturing businesses, and they don’t want to risk it.
Everything as a Service (XaaS)
Manufacturing on demand and the XaaS model is revolutionizing the industry. Companies are switching from selling products to selling services. Moving from tires to miles, from turbines to hours, and from equipment to time are only a few examples of how industry and business models are changing. For this change to be successful, products need to have significant service life improvements. To encourage such transformations, companies must have robust process upkeep, including the ability to improve not only engineering processes, but also support and maintenance.
Is the PLM industry ready for the challenge?
The PLM industry is looking to get ahead of the transformations and modern challenges in the industrial world. Let’s talk about how recent development in PLM technologies can help to close the gaps and cope with these challenges.
Information Accuracy:
Data is fast becoming a king of PLM technologies. This involves killing silos, improving data availability across multiple organizations and processes, real-time data access, collaboration support and many other elements of data management. A short list of what PLM can do to make digital data available for everyone includes:
- Implementing robust and modern data technologies
- Ensuring data connectivity and integrity
- Integrating accurate product information across various stages of the lifecycle
Accelerate NPD and CM Processes:
PLM offers significant opportunities to accelerate critical processes such as NPD and CM. One of the main elements of these improvements is connected to information availability and the organization of collaborative agile product development processes. Data sharing and instant communication are the key elements. Software as a service (SaaS) and cloud technology are key enablers in this process. In addition to that, multi-tenant data management streamlines data sharing and allows everyone involved in the process to stay connected without the need to import or export data.
Collaboration, Decision Support and Copilots:
To solve these problems, companies also need to integrate data and streamline communication between teams. By achieving this goal, companies can make better decisions and improve overall efficiency. Staying connected is quickly becoming a norm in the industrial world to improve decision support and communication between companies, contractors and suppliers. No one wants to wait for information to be synced between multiple systems, and everyone is looking for the best systems with elements of AI and decision support to help make the right decisions at the right time. How PLM technologies help to do so includes but is not limited to: SaaS, data sharing, knowledge graphs, artificial intelligence and many others. This should also be an alert for many legacy system providers and industrial companies that need to invest in new tech coming from the business to consumer (B2C) world to PLM.
Roadblocks to Addressing These Challenges with PLM
PLM is a transformative tool that helps bridge the gap between the challenges faced by the industrial sector and the opportunities that lie ahead. By enhancing information accuracy, improving decision-making processes, accelerating operations, mitigating risks and supporting new manufacturing models, PLM can empower companies to thrive in today's dynamic industrial landscape.
However, such an optimistic view will become a mirage if industrial companies and PLM vendors continue to keep current legacy platforms and focus on minor functional improvements. Existing PLM platforms are over 25-years-old and demand modification and substantial improvement. Thus, it’s not just on industry to address the challenges stated above, the PLM vendors need to step up as well.