FEATURE ARTICLE
All companies face similar visibility challenges
Visibility into the production floor, one of the biggest challenges for modern manufacturers, is a relevant issue for companies of all sizes and industries. According to the “2006 Manufacturing Software and Execution Trends” report, visibility was most likely to promote dissatisfaction among manufacturing professionals (when compared to other supply chain management issues such as supply and demand and real-time data acquisition).
Visibility can lead to a competitive advantage because it allows executives to make informed business decisions. However, it is difficult to come by in any organization because of the plasticity of overhead allocations and supply chain productivity. Manufacturing professionals have attempted to adapt their systems to create visibility; however, professionals completely satisfied with their system are rare.
The survey respondents, manufacturing professionals from more than 30 industries and various roles within those industries, tended to show mixed levels of satisfaction with their access to production data, but the smallest (0-$25M) and largest ($500M+) companies were the only ones who reported complete satisfaction. In each of those revenue categories, only two respondents reported complete satisfaction1. Conversely, 31 percent of respondents from all revenue categories reported that they were very to moderately dissatisfied with their ability to gather and analyze production data from every source.
In the current business climate, this dissatisfaction indicates that manufacturing professionals are aware of the results they need but struggling to execute. A variety of systems have been implemented to resolve the lack of visibility, including homegrown, modified ERP and MES, but none has been universally accepted in the manufacturing space.
Figure 1: Satisfaction with current visibility into the factory floor
Takeaway points to consider:
- While diverse systems have been tried, none has been consistently and successfully implemented
- No industry or revenue vertical has mastered the visibility challenge
- The smallest (0-$25M) and largest companies ($500M+) tend to show the most satisfaction with their visibility into the production floor
1In Q1 2006, the 2006 Manufacturing and Execution Survey was distributed to more than 8,200 professionals in the manufacturing industry throughout the U.S. by the Jet Powered Group. It was completed by email questionnaire. All respondents were assured their company names would not be disclosed in this report and that data would be anonymously aggregated and presented in this trend-oriented analysis.
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