Today’s manufacturers are overrun with technology innovations. From the showy wearables displayed at CES to the foundational technologies that underpin smart factories, there are numerous ways manufacturers can choose to move toward a future where their operations run more easily, efficiently, and beneficially.
 
However, given the options, it can be tricky to find out where to start. Such as, how should manufacturers qualify technology investments? What characteristics should they look for? And will today’s choices still serve their needs both today and in the future?
 
With a fast-moving industry, it is important to remain on top of trends and opportunities. That’s why we study hundreds of manufacturers year after year to understand what they’re investing in, what is making the biggest impact, and how companies plan to use technology to enhance their competitive differentiators.
 
Consider the following findings from this year’s annual State of Manufacturing Technology Report on future technology plans and purchases.
 
Solving Tomorrow’s Challenges
 
When looking at technology use, it is crucial to first discover the external factors currently impacting manufacturers, and how they could be affecting the buying and implementing process. While the industry has generally been growing for the past couple of years, there are looming concerns about the skilled worker shortage. It was the No. 1 concern of this year’s research participants and highlights that inspite of market growth, there's a challenge ahead of us to fill those positions. Other external concerns included the potential impact tariffs will have on the industry, as well as lower-priced competitors.
 
I've heard from manufacturers firsthand who have a lot of orders coming in they are extending delivery times, being forced to raise prices, or in some cases even turning work down. While a booming economy is good in several aspects, it also creates additional pressure on manufacturers to get the right workers, improve their processes, and reduce inefficiencies all while meeting their customers’ needs.
 
Regardless of the challenges, the manufacturers we surveyed in general felt optimistic about their futures—55 percent of respondents are confident in their company’s projected growth over the next 12 months.
 
Technology: A Pragmatic Problem-Solver
 
We know through our work with thousands of manufacturing professionals all over the world that leaders normally don’t invest in technology simply because it’s new or part of a big trend. Technology must have a direct and quantifiable impact on the company’s ability to work successfully. Future technologies not quite yet proven in smaller to mid-sized production environments are probably to not be adopted as fast. The survey data reflects this as well: Consistent with past years, this segment is not as likely to take on more recent innovations such as wearables, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. It doesn’t mean that these technologies won’t eventually have a role in manufacturing operations, but does validate the pragmatism of many manufacturing industry leaders in regards to business investments.
 
The technology that manufacturers are most satisfied with is management dashboards (one-third use these today) and sales analytics for management insight (at 67 percent). One of the fastest-growing technology segments is analytics: the use of analytics in operations is expected to grow 20 percent in the next five years.
 
Analytics hold the real key to allowing manufacturers to generate operational data for more control and visibility across the organization. As more manufacturers see that “big data” isn’t just as much about building a massive predictive analytics system but more about tapping into machine, sensor, and tool data to make decisions about optimizing production, we believe the cloud to play a pivotal role in building the necessary connectivity to accomplish this.
 
As the pressure to fill open jobs to meet customer demand intensifies, manufacturers are seeing the chance to look inside the organization to make changes to business processes and free workers from repetitive tasks. Tasks like manual cycle counting, inventory management, software/server maintenance, or running business and production reports can be controlled in a more effective and efficient way. Technology like the cloud makes employees to undertake higher-value work, as well as give them access to information that helps them do their jobs better.
 
Creating a Framework for Future Success
 
When we started to analyze what sorts of technologies made the biggest impact today, and which had staying power when manufacturers share their five-year investment plans, we noticed a few commonalities: Technologies that helped make the biggest operational improvements were automated, integrated, and connected.
 
Some technologies more readily support this strategy — such as big investments in a manufacturing system of record, and cloud technologies that smoothly integrate APIs with other business processes and systems — but others, such as for instance analytics and IIoT initiatives, could be layered onto existing systems to pull, synthesize and contextualize relevant information.
 
This also aligns with the future goals of most manufacturers surveyed: 60 percent of manufacturers planning to make use of technology to maximize plant floor integration and automation; 48 percent intending to raise business process automation; and another third working to both increase plant/enterprise integration and increase supply chain connectivity.
 
Next-Generation Manufacturing Technology Separates Leaders from the Rest
 
It’s clear that manufacturers view technology as an effective way to manage and overcome industry challenges. When next-generation technology is focused on enabling the core functions of a manufacturing business, manufacturers believe it separates the leaders from the followers (76 percent agree).
 
As a final point, if we were to distill one thing from this year’s survey, it’s this: There are multiple paths to building a manufacturing business of the future, but organizations should choose their next steps wisely.
 
This article is originally posted on tronserve.com