Over the decades, manufacturing businesses have been finding new technologies, opportunities, and strategies to improve scalability, boost speed, enhance accuracy, lessen costs, and most importantly, enhance human productivity.
In 2020, the pandemic showed us that there are many opportunities and challenges for manufacturing businesses. Discovering the appropriate balance with customers is one of the main challenges that manufacturing companies need to plan.
What customer experience future should manufacturing companies prepare for?
It helps in reassessing customer touchpoints on an ongoing basis. Hence, making all the difference in the manufacturing business revenue.
Automation is primarily helpful in the areas where manufacturers struggle to discover enough skilled workers to grow their business. Manufacturing units can accomplish their objectives by using intelligent automation.
Using intelligent automation increases efficiency & throughput. With higher throughput, manufacturing units can produce more products. Hence, more revenue. The best part is that intelligent automation eliminates limited-value and repeated workarounds at a reduced cost.
Automation - The Future of Manufacturing Companies
From small manufacturing units looking to improve their production processes to large manufacturing plants currently running entirely by robots, automation is changing the face of manufacturing.
Self-operating plants and manufacturing process automation systems are becoming popular among most manufacturers. More and more manufacturers are adopting automation on a smaller scale in ways that can add value for their businesses.
How Automated Manufacturing Software Improves Customer Experience?
With manufacturing automation software, the manufacturers can gain complete insight into their customer data across people and platforms. In practical terms, it means that your customer’s profile is in your CRM software. Everyone from your sales representative to customer service personnel can access the same information.
An automated manufacturing software solves the inconsistencies by centralizing everything in one place. It gives your unit a dashboard of all the interactions, activities, and relevant info, where everyone gets access to the same and current data.
Organizing customer data is one of the crucial areas where factory automation software improves customer service.
- Intelligent Production Planning
With automated manufacturing systems, you are very well aware of each product ordered and when they were collected. This lets you build a detailed production plan. You can avoid the guesswork and make a plan which products are required and when.
Usually, manufacturers use third-party nesting software to evaluate how to cut each fabric, but they still need to enter the data into their ERP system manually.
Automating the router with the nesting program reduces the time and expense of this crucial step.
Here are some of the benefits of this nesting automation:
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Optimized production and labor productivity
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More effective material utilization
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Reduced setup times and tool changes
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Enhanced programming capacity without adding personnel or machinery
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Real-time information (based on cycle changes). From operations, engineering, material management to sales departments, all the information at one place.
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Faster and easy migration of material, geometry, quantity, and other vital parameters.
Hence, manufacturing process automation systems are becoming the lookout for all the manufacturing units.
These days automated manufacturing systems have implemented the use of third-party applications. It helps manufacturers simplify specific production processes.
A simple example of CAD software justifies how automation can make an already good process even better. So, a third-party software integration helps in:
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Allowing customers to choose predefined options quickly
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Enabling self-service pricing, styling, and ordering online
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Improving speed and accuracy of pricing and quoting
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Automatically updating pricing throughout the ERP software
Getting Automation Right
Automation typically requires a significant investment in software and machinery. Therefore, it should be addressed from both a strategic and operational perspective. The best practice is to keep in mind an eye toward improving your business today and in the future.
To get the ROI, start by picking one problem that reduces your manufacturing process. Define and analyze how an automated manufacturing system can identify and solve the expected return on investment.
Understand deeply what improvements the automation has to offer and how it will help your business and customers.
How can TrackiTT Help in Picking the Solution that Works for you?
TRACKITT is an App Store for manufacturing automation where customers can deploy applications to increase the functionality of their manufacturing ops without changing existing MES/ERP/IoT systems.
With the Supplier Inventory & Shipping Traceability System by TRACKiTT, you can reduce your production downtime and on-hand inventory costs caused due to supplier delays. Track material from your suppliers in real-time and plan production accordingly. Build live dashboards, notifications, and integrations into existing systems to create a connected supply chain that makes your operations.
Most of all, we make sure that all your automation aligns with your business and operational strategies.