Advanced Technologies for Forward-Looking Companies

Forward-looking companies are pursuing advanced technologies to ensure superior customer value, address labor shortages, and deliver bottom line results. From robotics to advanced planning and forecasting systems, leverage ERP system and advanced technologies can fill gaps, automate processes, and enable superior functionality. Not only are the benefits important, but these technologies are simply required for survival in the next decade. In addition, as companies ramp up domestic production to mitigate geopolitical and supply chain risks, upgrading with advanced technologies can keep costs under control and increase output and capabilities to support profitable growth.

Advanced Technologies in the News

According to Automotive News, Toyota has overhauled its supply chain and upgraded from 75 labor intensive spreadsheets to a consolidated, cloud-based forecasting tool. With this upgrade, the company will increase its forecasts from 13 weeks to 52 weeks. This type of forecast information is an invaluable input into its suppliers’ SIOP (Sales Inventory Operations Planning) processes which can work effectively and collaboratively with lean programs.

Amazon is planning its fourth robotics fulfillment center in Virginia according to Supply Chain Dive. The center is a 3.1-million-square-foot-facility and will use robotics to automate pick, pack, and ship operations in the facility. Amazon has 100 of these types of facilities across the country. Not only is Amazon rolling out these automated facilities, but it is also testing new robot models including the “Vulcan” which can pick and stow items and also has a sense of touch. There is no time to celebrate automation if you want to stay ahead of the competition.

Energy security has become a hot topic in supply chains with the dramatic needs associated with artificial intelligence. Honeywell has announced its first commercial scale hydrogen supply chain and it will include production, storage, transportation, distribution and material recovery to recycle components involved in the hydrogen process. Honeywell will partner with ENEOS, a leading energy company in Japan. In a similar vein related to water security, Xylem announced that their advanced technologies enabled utilities and businesses to reuse 18.1 billion cubic meters of water since 2019.

According to Inside Precision Medicine, in a proof-of-concept study published in Nature Cardiovascular Research, researchers from King’s College London, Imperial College London, and the Alan Turing Institute were able to produce personalized cardiac “digital twins” at an unprecedented scale using real patient data and clinical measurements. The study enables researchers to study how age, sex, and lifestyle factors influence the heart’s electrical function. Similarly, manufacturers will benefit from Nvidia’s announcement of the significant expansion of its Omniverse Blueprint for AI factory digital twins with additional features.

Advanced Technologies: Where to Start?

There are almost “too many” opportunities to utilize advanced technologies and better optimize modern ERP systems. With that said, your competition will not wait for you to catch up. Thus, jump on this topic with a rapid assessment of your ERP and advanced technologies. In our experience, we have yet to work with a client that didn’t have low-hanging fruit opportunities available with limited to no investment required. These quick wins could fund the rollout of additional technologies.

Review what’s essential to fulfill your strategy. Which technologies will accelerate your pace and/or mitigate likely roadblocks? For example, an industrial manufacturer located in a small Midwest town struggled to find resources to scale up production rapidly as the learning curve could take 6 months to a year to be effective. Thus, they focused on rolling our SIOP processes with advanced forecasting technologies for their ETO (engineer-to-order) product and better utilized their CRM, quoting, and MRP systems to get ahead of changing requirements so that they didn’t waste precious resources yet fulfilled customer requirements. In addition, they upgraded their laser machine and installed robotics to increase output with fewer resources and automated and simplified several processes. Thus, when business increased significantly, not only did they scale up successfully, but they also were well-positioned and took market share with short lead times and exceptional delivery performance.

In many client scenarios, it is equally important what is not focused on. It is easy to get distracted with fads and interesting technologies that might improve performance by 1% and miss perfect-fit technologies that will provide a 20%+ benefit. The key is to remain fact based and practical in your assessment yet constantly strive for improved performance. For example, at an industrial building products manufacturer, they struggled to keep up with planning activities as the leadership didn’t want to add high-skilled resources yet they expected a detailed and simplified production schedule amidst the chaos (date changes, production employee volatility, engineering changes, etc.).

Thus, instead of hiring several planners across their North America sites, they hired supply chain consultants to determine where to focus. Instead of recommending an ERP upgrade or adding an AI software, they upgraded processes and better leveraged their ERP system and related technologies including their MES (manufacturing execution system), barcode and labor tracking systems. They created reports, rolled out additional process upgrades, and designed additional functionality and related tools to achieve the goal by automating the repetitive process steps and focusing their limited resources on exception-based review and making the final tweaks to the production schedule.

Utilize uncommon common sense, invest smartly when others panic, and tailor advanced technologies to your needs. Bottom line business results will follow.

If you are interested in reading more on this topic:
Digitization of the Supply Chain Drives Profitable Growth