5 Reasons Why Mobility Will Work Like Magic for Your Manufacturing Business

With the rise in globalization, enterprises across industries, continue to face stiff competition in all forms.

Dwindling profits, limited resources, ever-increasing customer demands, and the need to reduce operational costs without compromising on quality have emerged as some of the biggest concerns for manufacturers worldwide.

Thankfully, MOBILITY has emerged as the go-to SOLUTION for manufacturers to achieve operational excellence and take their business into the next orbit.

A survey of 3300 professionals (mostly IT decision makers) in the manufacturing sector showed 70% viewing mobility as the key to converting downtime into productive time, recovering a daily average of 42 minutes per employee.

Studies also show that approximately 10% of the mobile users are in a factory or on a construction site. And, most importantly, this number continues to grow.

On average, the IT operational spending was 4% in manufacturing companies as opposed to 2.2% across other industries. Mobile applications take up a huge chunk of this investment. In 2013, 80% of manufacturing companies developed mobile applications (Source: IDC).

Where does Mobility fit into the Manufacturing Value Chain

With technology evolving, it makes more sense to embrace mobility because of the kind of competitive advantage it will offer you.

Whether you are dealing with customers or seeking to improve field sales operations, mobility helps you overcome bottlenecks and make better business decisions.

Improve Customer Experience

Enterprise solutions are helping manufacturers make high impact on customers in terms of how they deal with them. For instance, using mobile applications, you can deliver product information in real-time anytime, anywhere. What’s more, manufacturers can help dealers view product stock, post queries, and book appointments. This is especially in say, for e.g. car manufacturing.

Mobility can also be used for customer feedback. The traditional medium of collecting feedback can prove disastrous. If critical feedback reaches you late, it could mean a loss of market share. Mobile applications help you stay closer to customers. These facilitate seamless collection of feedback from the point of contact.

Plus, mobility solutions, help customers get in touch with you faster. Meaningful insights can be taken from their feedback to improve products.

Field Sales

Inefficient business processes coupled with tiresome manual paperwork can eat into your profits. By arming your field sales force with mobile applications you can not only enhance customer retention but also improve business opportunities. It even helps in planning, promotion and marketing of your product. By integrating CRM with your enterprise solution, you can deliver accurate, timely information to your field staff on-the-go to make better decisions.

With RIFD Implementation, manufacturers can identify and track tags by tagging stationary equipment. It helps track shipments, handle materials smoothly. Mobile applications play a huge role in minimizing critical downtime by giving real-time information on stock levels, order progress, and inventory movement.

Supply Chain Management & Warehousing

When it comes to manufacturing, logistics, SCM and Warehousing can be a nightmare. Some challenges involve inefficiency in material handling & tracking due to inaccuracy in inventory management. Then there is paperwork here too. Inability to locate specific documents or information on spare parts can cost companies a fortune. Enterprise apps step in to overcome these concerns and make your processes more streamlined and efficient.

GPS-based applications are particularly helpful for warehouse management. Whether it is load scheduling, delivery management, route tracking or container management, a mobile app can make your workers’ life lot easier and productive.

Operations Management

Plan operation management is a big task for manufacturers. Getting shop-floor information on machine downtime, task scheduling, locating right people for specific jobs, managing workers and other resources can be quite a hellish experience for your supervisor.

Mobile applications with intuitive dashboards can make accomplishing all these tasks a matter of few minutes instead of hours.

Quality Assurance

Your QA & Testing processes can be more streamlined and efficient with enterprise mobility. Right from getting notification alerts for faulty parts/products to batch tracking, these solutions can help you do everything. Moreover, apps can also be tailored for inspection processes.

For example, if you manufacture toys, you can reduce paperwork and increase worker productivity by having mobile applications for inspecting raw materials, maintaining your plant and inspecting finished products.

Success Story of ArcelorMittal

ArcelorMittal needs no introduction.

Being the world’s largest steel production company, its core competency is centered on manufacturing steel for use in automotive, construction, packaging and household appliances. It has its facilities spread over 60 countries.

The company achieved excellence in its sample testing process with mobile applications.

ArcelorMittal Atlantique (in Northern France) faced significant challenges in meeting customer expectations and ensuring that its product quality was phenomenal. The process involved sending samples of manufactured steel to laboratory for mechanical and physical testing.

There was no place for tracking information between sample creation and delivery. There was no way to see the sample delivery schedule. This had resulted in testing delays ultimately leading to delays in final delivery.

Here’s what they did.

These guys implemented a mobile solution that helped track samples from production to testing. The staff was given mobile devices to scan barcodes that linked to the laboratory’s information management system.

Benefits they achieved

• Improved visibility of sample status between collection and delivery.
• Reduction in errors, before the samples, were sent to the lab.
• Enhanced productivity with improved workload planning.
• Efficiency in sample traceability.

Conclusion

By adopting mobility in the right way, you will see returns come in all forms through better customer engagement, increased worker productivity, profitable business decisions and increased profits. It’s time to mobilize your manufacturing processes to set-up a next generation operation.

Get in touch with our consultants today!