In these competitive times, continuous improvement is crucial, but it’s not always easy to pinpoint where the biggest benefits lie. How can you prioritize manufacturing improvement opportunities to ensure maximum value to the business? This Buyer’s Guide points to an array of software characteristics to support such decisions. You need digital means to support greater…
- Evaluation Criteria
- Urgency to Improve Manufacturing Productivity
- Current Situation
- Prioritizing Manufacturing Productivity Opportunities
- Functionality for Prioritizing Opportunities
- Analytics for Clear Action
- Technology Considerations
- Evaluating Software Partners
- Implementation Factors
- Software Investment Priorities
- Maximum Value for Productivity Projects
- Recommendations
- Acknowledgments
Urgency to Improve Manufacturing Productivity
Staying Competitive Most manufacturers are in competitive markets with supply chain challenges. With so much out of the company’s control, it’s vital to leverage production resources such as facilities, equipment, people, materials, and tools effectively. Today’s environment of great uncertainty makes this more complex and crucial to success. Needs Expand with the Move to the Digital Enterprise Productivity is all about minimizing losses – and time is the obvious way to measure those losses. The impacts of lost time are not just on the production operation itself. Time losses can be quantified in terms of impact on profit and customer service. Capacity-constrained companies can sell as much as they can make, so it’s a top-line issue for revenues. For these companies, it also determines when they can promise and deliver orders to customers.Even when not capacity constrained, time losses can impact costs and customer satisfaction. In some cases, companies could lower materials, assets, energy, quality, compliance, and payroll costs. Continuous Improvement Yet, calculating where to focus to stem those time losses is not straightforward since many sources of waste contribute to throughput and productivity losses. Continuous Improvement (CI) is a common process manufacturers use to identify and eliminate waste to improve performance. It may be called Lean, Six Sigma, Operational Excellence, or other names. In these trying times, CI programs can feed success – particularly if they have balanced characteristics and digital support.Prioritizing Manufacturing Productivity Opportunities
Helping Focus As the term prioritizing suggests, what is new here is that the software is not just measuring performance but ranking opportunities for improvement. By seeking prioritization, you get support to focus resources and attention, which can be challenging with traditional manufacturing intelligence, OEE, or dashboard software. Readying for Action In addition to prioritizing opportunities, seek out software that provides a reason drill-down for each problem. This ability to deliver deeper insights into root causes can transform challenges into opportunities One Application, Many Roles Seek a software system that can support multiple user profiles:- Executives and Managers for comparing plants, products, and investment in CI programs
- CI leads for plotting priorities and tracking progress
- Supervisors for focusing on how to improve in their area
- Operators and Technicians to focus, buy in, and see what’s working and how much time they can save
This summary is an abbreviated version of the research and does not contain the full content. For the full research, please visit our sponsor PTC (registration required).
If you have difficulty obtaining a copy of the report, please contact us.
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What most contributes to a supply chain having a positive impact on the business? Which disciplines and data sets make the most difference in supply chain resilience? Learn what Top Performers have to say about these that’s different. Julie Fraser, Tech-Clarity’s VP of Research for Operations and Manufacturing, will discuss initial findings of a soon-to-be released survey of 229 industry professionals. We will discuss supply chain findings including:
- Top supply chain challenges
- What Top Performers see as the top factor enabling their supply chain to have a positive impact on the business
- Where Top Performers have visibility others may not have consistently
- Which data and disciplines Top Performers are more likely to have than Others
- Which types of Digital Twins should be part of an ideal planning solution
How can companies leverage the digital thread to grow their top line and market share through better customer experiences? Our new eBook teaches companies how to adapt people, processes, and technology to improve revenue and customer experiences by connecting the product digital thread from design through product commercialization.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Propel (registration required).
To learn how extending the digital thread into the customer experience can help, please read our earlier eBook: Extending Digital Threads to the Customer Experience.
Table of Contents
- Recognize the Downside of Disconnects
- Connect the Product Digital Thread through Commercialization
- The Two Primary Values of the Digital Thread
- Extend the Digital Thread through Commercialization
- Connect People
- Connect Processes
- Connect Technology
- Recommendations and Next Steps
- Acknowledgments
Grow Revenue with Better Customer Experience
Provide Consistent, Compelling Product Experience
One way to improve customer experiences, and business performance, is by feeding compelling, accurate, and consistent product experiences across channels to entice customers and influence their buying decisions. It’s important to recognize, however, that the job doesn’t end there. Experiences can’t be static. They have to evolve as products, messaging, customer needs, channels, and markets change and expand.
Digitally Transform the Product Experience Pipeline
Conveying consistent product experiences relies on speed and accuracy. Today’s processes, however, are typically manual, slow, disconnected, and error-prone. To drive growth, companies need reliable, trusted information as soon as it is available. It’s time to digitally transform the product information pipeline. Without this, companies can’t be fast and accurate enough to create compelling customer experiences that drive growth across channels and the product lifecycle.
Extend the Digital Thread through Commercialization
Understand the Need / Priority
Most people recognize that designing a great product is only half of the job. They have to effectively bring them to market. Beyond the initial introduction, they also need to support channel growth. Ember Technologies, Inc. is a global company whose mission is to harness the power of temperature control to transform how the world eats, drinks and lives. “Ember started out strictly eCommerce, then added Amazon, before growing into a large retail business,” says Ember’s Siobhan Hunter. Rapid growth adds effort and complexity because companies with a trajectory like Ember must continue to provide consistent product experiences even as they expand to broader channels.
Recognize Broad Applicability
Consumer goods companies like Ember are more likely to have cross-departmental processes defined to link product design with commercialization. But even these companies typically have room for improvement. The evolution of the digital thread, however, applies to virtually every industry and channel. For example:
- Business to Consumer (B2C) companies can quickly get consistent, accurate, and compelling information into their channels
- Business to Business (B2B) companies can get the right specifications and information for their datasheets, spec sheets, website, distributors, catalogs, portals, and customers
- Regulated industries can ensure information is accurate and auditable in a trusted source for improved control and traceability
Recommendations and Next Steps
Recognize the Urgency It’s time to recognize the value and the need to change how product experiences and product information flows through the organization. Companies that want to outpace the market, grow faster, drive revenue, reach customers sooner, and create better experiences should extend their digital thread from design through commercialization. Companies that adopt this approach will be able to:- Improve time to market
- Bring continuity, timeliness, and quality to product data
- Build customer loyalty and brand trust
- Give marketing and commercialization teams the information they need, when they need it, in a way they trust
- Allow marketers to enrich, structure, and organize product data for the buyer
- Allow them to put forward a consistent, compelling product experience to customers, regardless of the channel or platform they interact with it
- Connect people across the product digital thread
- Develop cross-departmental processes from design through commercialization
- Integrate technology, or find a solution that prioritizes integration in the places that add the most value to your business
- SaaS Strategy
- Support for Software/Smart Products
- Extending Field Service Capabilities
- Design for Sustainability
1. SaaS Strategy
Most significant was PTC's strengthened SaaS strategy with the acquisitions of cloud-native Onshape and Arena for product design (CAD and CAE/Simulation), product data management (PDM), and product lifecycle management (PLM). These products make up its Velocity Group. PTC then created its Altas SaaS platform based on Onshape technology. This platform was used to create SaaS offerings for its existing products. They designate their SaaS offerings as "+," meaning the current offering, "plus more," with added cloud capabilities. These capabilities include real-time collaboration, faster deployment, reduced hardware costs, and easier methods for the broader enterprise to access product information. PTC previously launched Windchill+, Kepware +, and Vfuria+. The newest addition, Creo+, was announced at LiveWorx 2023. Brian Thompson explained that Creo+ offers all the capabilities of Creo 10 (also announced at LiveWorx 2023), but with new cloud-based tools. Creo+ enables real-time collaboration so internal and external team members can simultaneously work on the same design. While an exciting development, does PTC need two cloud-based solutions with Onshape/Arena and Creo+ / Windchill+? How should customers determine which is best for them? I liked how Jim Heppleman positioned this during a Q&A session. He explained that customers can decide between two product development priorities, and select the solution that best matches their needs. The priorities are:
Agile Product Development: This approach applies the Agile methodologies that have been successful in software development to the entire product. Agile focuses on customer needs and providing value quickly. Work is completed in short intervals, or sprints, typically two weeks long, and validated along the way. The goal is to have a workable, high-quality product in less time. In contrast, the traditional Waterfall method waits until development work is complete before testing. Typically, teams then spend months fixing problems. An Agile approach could be particularly valuable for companies looking for high growth. For these customers, PTC suggests Onshape and Arena and David Katzman explained how these solutions support an Agile methodology.
Model-Based Digital Thread: With this approach, companies need the digital thread across the lifecycle. This supports traceability, reuse, efficiency, and a more disciplined approach. For companies that value this and profitability over growth, PTC recommends Creo and Windchill. PTC also reassures customers that all Creo data is upward compatible with Creo+.
2. Support for Software/Smart Products
Smart products have become increasingly critical to product success. In fact, Tech-Clarity's Profiting from Smart Products found that 86% of survey respondents indicated that smart products are important for their company's long-term success and profitability. PTC already supports this with PTC Integrity for Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), including Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). However, with the acquisition of Codebeamer, PTC expands their solution to support software development for manufactured products with a cloud-ready solution. With software continuing to be a major innovation driver for today's modern products, this remains an important area for a complete product development solution.
3. Extending Field Service Capabilities
PTC has several offerings to support product service, including PTC Arbortext for technical publications and service manuals, Servigistics for optimized spare parts management, and Vuforia. for 3D work instructions and augmented reality. PTC significantly expanded this portfolio by acquiring ServiceMax, the largest acquisition in its history. Neil Barua explained that ServiceMax supports field service operations. It keeps a record of prior issues, previous maintenance, and part replacements. The offering is further strengthened with ThingWorx to monitor the product fleet for more predictive and preventative maintenance.
4. Design for Sustainability
Finally, EVP Chief Strategy & Sustainability Officer, Catherine Kniker (CK) stressed the importance of sustainability considerations during design, emphasizing that design decisions determine 80% of a product's environmental footprint. Engineers can improve sustainability by evaluating materials, energy efficiency, and waste reduction. PTC plans to support some of these decisions through expanded partnerships with Ansys and aPriori Technologies.
Integrated workflows with Ansys Granta, a Materials Information Management solution (Ansys Materials), Creo, and Windchill, will allow engineers to assess the impact of different materials on performance, recyclability, and carbon footprint. Ansys CEO Ajei Gopal also joined Jim Hepplemann on stage to discuss the strength of their partnership in other ways to support for digital transformation and simulation-driven design with continued and tighter integrations across products lines including Windchill and Ansys Minerva.
PTC and aPriori are also planning for greater interoperability between aPriori, Creo, and Windchill so that engineers can leverage aPriori to assess cost, manufacturability, and sustainability. Engineers will be able to understand their impact on the manufacturing footprint and cost as the design evolves. aPriori's software will also make improvement recommendations.
Beyond these expanded partnerships, PTC signed the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) commitment letter, pledging to reduce near-term emissions reductions and meet long-term net-zero targets.
We look forward to hearing how these investments offer PTC customers even more value. Thanks to Coray Thibaut de Maisieres, and Ernestine Tiongson for hosting us at PTC LiveWorx 2023.
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Machine builders must continuously raise the bar to compete in today's dynamic, global markets. How are they leveraging digital twins to improve how they quote, design, produce, install, and commission more complex, smart, connected, flexible, and tailored equipment than ever? Further, how can they extend their digital twins to improve installation, commissioning, and service?
Please enjoy the summary below and visit our sponsor Siemens to learn more about machine builder digital twins and other solutions for machine builders. You can also download the full eBook to learn more.
For related research, please read Increasing Equipment Design Velocity and Increasing Performance Engineering Performance.
Table of Contents
- Recognize the Potential of the Digital Twin
- Making Progress Toward Your Digital Twin
- 1) Design in Full Product Context
- 2) Embrace BOMs / Configurations / Variability
- 3) Simulate / Optimize / Virtually Validate Equipment
- 4) Expand Further Down the Lifecycle
- Get Started
- Acknowledgments
Improving Engineering, and more, with the Digital Twin
Digital Twin Potential
Machine builders must continuously raise the bar to compete in today's dynamic, global markets. How are they leveraging digital twins to improve how they quote, design, produce, install, and commission more complex, smart, connected, flexible, and tailored equipment than ever? Further, how can they extend their digital twins to improve installation, commissioning, and service
Increase Digital Twin Maturity to Drive Value
Digital twin improvement opportunities span the product lifecycle and offer significant new business value from bids through service. Our research shows that top-performing manufacturers use more advanced, mature digital twin capabilities.1 But few machine builders have tapped the full potential.
Continuous improvement through a comprehensive digital twin spanning the lifecycle is valuable, but it is a journey. There is plenty of room for most manufacturers to improve and drive increased profitability, but they can't do it all at once. Instead, they can implement the basics and find ways to expand the value through higher maturity at each step. This eBook introduces four areas where machine builders can improve their digital twins, sharing a combination of first steps and more advanced actions to drive business value and increase profitability.
Recognize the Potential of the Machine Builder Digital Twin
The Growing Need for Machine Digital Twins Machine builders face increased challenges, including increased equipment complexity, greater market complexity, and new demands for sustainability. These issues impact their operations and their operators, driving additional engineering requirements such as increased machine automation, monitoring, and the need for remote service. Extend Machine Builder Digital Twin Value over the Product Lifecycle Comprehensive digital twins allow equipment manufacturers to innovate and experiment in the virtual world to get unique machines right the first time. Virtual design helps them improve machine design cycles, quality, performance, configurability, and sustainability by allowing all disciplines to collaborate starting as early as equipment requirements on a holistic, contextualized product model. Lastly, running digital twin simulations enable them to optimize designs virtually before building them. But the value doesn't end in Engineering. Machine digital twins incorporating manufacturing operations and quality data allow them to produce equipment faster and more efficiently with higher first-time quality. Machine digital twins extended to the operating environment can speed up commissioning, ensure equipment runs the first time, improve performance for machine operators, and enhance operator training. Twins can also enhance service through service transformation, including machine monitoring and analytics. Finally, they can help in product retirement by enabling circular thinking where equipment can be brought back, refurbished, or harvested for valuable components.Making Progress Toward Your Digital Twin
Choosing a Starting Point For many companies, the improvements described on the previous page sound like rocket science. In fact, it is. Industries like aerospace have proven the value, and the potential is nearly limitless. But adoption can be intimidating, especially for manufacturers that haven't fully achieved the value a holistic digital twin can offer to Engineering. What should machine builders do now? Each manufacturer needs to define what the digital twin means to their business, assess their current capabilities and then make tangible, incremental steps to improve their maturity and associated business value. Digital twin initiatives should have rapid ROIs, providing value right away and making progress toward a fully mature future state. The value will be different for each company, but we've identified a number of improvements for companies to use as a starting point based on their goals and maturity. Create a Value-Driven Strategy It's essential to develop a practical plan based on what would be the most valuable to the company. Find practical problems and use the digital twin to address them. The challenges may relate to quality, speed to market, or supporting additional configurability without compromising quality. Or, they may be supplier collaboration challenges. For some, they could be sales enablers to let potential customers experience how configured equipment will behave in their environment using high-fidelity simulations. We recognize that each company is different in their starting point, what will drive the most value, and the practical sequence in which they can implement changes. It's time to identify ways to get started, create a customized plan with first steps to drive business success, extend the value, and expand on the competitive advantages achieved. Let's look at some opportunities. Start Small, then Expand The opportunities are expansive and potentially overwhelming. Remember that every company is different in where they start and what will drive the most value. Don't try to do too much at once or skip maturity steps. Focus on the tangible steps that add value to your business. But, keep the big picture in mind to ensure that early successes can be built on to reach a higher vision.
Focus on People and Process
The end goal is a better way of doing business, an integrated design and development process supported by the machine digital twin. To achieve this vision, make sure to get key people and departments aligned with the vision and the transformation. Help them understand the big picture, the steps to achieve it, and how it will help them in addition to helping the company.
Enable the Transition
New ways of working require the right tools. It's essential to evaluate your current software solution portfolio to ensure they are sufficient for the job. An effective machine digital twin requires support from a variety of engineering solutions, including CAD, multiphysics CAE, software design, and PLM. It also requires industrial and factory automation solutions, including CAM, MES, HMI, SCADA, virtual commissioning, and the IIoT. Depending on maturity, it may also require asset lifecycle and service management solutions (ALM and SLM).
Think Holistically
It's important to consider more than individual tools. Evaluating how solutions work together to support the digital thread across the lifecycle is crucial. The machine digital twin is best served by a platform of solutions that work together. The platform should provide a central data model, the digital twin backbone, kept in configured context. It should be able to be acted on from different angles so everyone can contribute and get what they need in a secure, collaborative environment. Together, these product innovation platform capabilities support the machine digital twin.
It's essential to acknowledge, though, that no single platform will support every need. It's critical that the platform is open to allow integration and offers the capability to develop new applications that pull information together for specific purposes, ideally in a no-code or low-code environment.
Let’s Get Started
There are many options and a lot to do, but the value should come fast and be extended over time. Let's get started.
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[post_content] => ACE is Back!
PLM conferences are back, and it seems there’s a conference a week right now! The first one I attended this Spring was Aras’ ACE conference. This
was a special one for me because it was my first time attending in person. I was planning to attend in 2020 but it was canceled due to the pandemic, and this event marked the first in-person ACE since 2019. You could feel, and hear, the energy and excitement customers and Aras employees shared about being back in person as you walked the halls and the exhibit floor. It was a large and excited crowd of customers and partners eager to share information and experience with each other and learn from Aras.
Other than the excitement of the event and the enthusiastic customer support, there are several main things I took away from the conference:
- First, a confirmation about how different the Aras Innovator offering is
- Second, how that impacts the way Aras partners with others
- Third, that Aras Innovator can compete on the strengths of their solution capabilities even without the “Aras difference”
- Aras and Microsoft announced that Aras Enterprise SaaS is now available in the Azure Marketplace, allowing Azure customers to use their Microsoft Azure contract (MAC) credits gain to access Aras’ cloud-based PLM
- CTO Rob McAveney shared that Aras is not resting on their current platform advantage, but working on “next-gen low-code” that they will deliver over the coming years
- Aras’ Alan Mendel highlighted their efforts to help manufacturers achieve sustainability needs by leveraging a variety of Aras Innovator capabilities, this appears to be an important initiative for Aras
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[post_content] => I feel rejuvenated after a briefing with Apprentice. Their Tempo suite is a fresh approach that marries the latest enterprise mobile and SaaS technologies with composable applications for pressing industry issues. Yes, there’s a SaaS MES – but there is more for the plant, quality lab, enterprise, and manufacturing network. It serves the product lifecycle, starting with preclinical and clinical.
The company came into being in 2014. The founders saw the industry move toward large molecule and personalized products, and they predicted the resulting radical changes in the structure of the industry. They believed older software could not support production needs such as faster changes, higher mix, continuous processes, demanding processes to grow and culture biologics, and tight collaboration with contract manufacturers. So they leveraged the most modern B2B SaaS technologies to develop the GMP-compliant Tempo Manufacturing Cloud.
The latest addition to the Tempo suite is Connected Manufacturing Network, to connect internal and external sites and teams. Capabilities include product lifecycle, enterprise recipe management, external manufacturing collaboration, and streamlined tech transfer. This real-time data-sharing capability could revolutionize how biopharma companies manage global and CMO operations.
The Tempo product line started with Tandem Virtual Collaboration, a connected worker platform with headset. Augmented Work Instructions for EBR, Procedures management, line clearance, training, and an electronic logbook came from that foundation. MES includes built-in quality, no-code procedure and recipe authoring, and enforcement. LES for the quality lab leverages some of the strengths of the MES but tailored for scientific testing and managing samples, materials, and equipment.
Apprentice.io has been growing rapidly for the past five years and has just raised another VC round to keep that momentum going. Like the company itself, their team of VCs includes both traditional high tech and life-science-focused investment companies.
I now understand how a company less than a decade old got on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for the second year in a row and moved into the visionary quadrant. The time appears to be right to infuse the most modern B2B software capabilities into the biopharma production process.
Thank you, Kristen Kucks and Marie Forshaw, for taking the time to get me up to speed!
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What most contributes to supply chain resiliency? What are the challenges and impacts of doing it well? Can better collaboration, cadence, or technology improve manufacturers' capability to respond to disruptions? What does it take to recover with operational continuity and minimal negative impact? What is the role of departments beyond Supply Chain?
Tech-Clarity is conducting research on these topics right now. Julie Fraser, Tech-Clarity’s VP of Research for Operations and Manufacturing, will discuss what questions are included and why. We will explore these topics:
- Supply chain challenges and impacts in these disrupted times
- Drivers, benefits, and goals for investing in resilience
- The impact of having established and effective planning at various cadences
- The role of visibility to production capabilities and product changes in resilience
- Integration of varied disciplines and technologies to support resilience
[post_title] => Supply Chain Resiliency: Taking the Road Less Traveled
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How can manufacturers improve manufacturing engineering? We surveyed 177 people directly involved with manufacturing engineering and found that modernizing processes and technology drives higher manufacturing engineering productivity and performance. These improvements are crucial to profitability in the industrial equipment industry as customers demand high quality, more personalized products at increasingly faster time to market; all despite rising product and manufacturing complexity.
Survey results show that Top Performers waste less time on non-value-added activities, find issues sooner, and spend less on physical prototypes. They accomplish this through best practices, including more advanced collaboration and communication methods and increased use of 3D and simulation, to plan and validate manufacturing operations with digital twins.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Dassault Systèmes DELMIA (registration required).
This eBook shares additional data analysis and insights for the industrial equipment industry from our Transforming Manufacturing Engineering with Virtual Build research. Watch this three-part on-demand webinar series with Jim Brown to learn how manufacturers can improve manufacturing engineering and technology.
Address Process Designer Challenges
Manufacturing Engineers Face Increased Complexity and Change
Manufacturing is more complex than ever. Complexity has increased in three areas; products, manufacturing processes, and markets. Today’s products are offered with increasing numbers of variants and configuration options and require a combination of mechanical, electrical, and software components. Today’s production may include industrial additive manufacturing capabilities, and involves increased automation. In addition, increasing demand for automation and new power sources including electric, hydrogen, and solar are accelerating the rate of change in the industrial equipment industry. Finally, manufacturers are shifting production and reshoring as the industry is trying to cope with supply chain issues. Despite these, manufacturing engineers need to decrease cycle times and improve quality.
Challenges Reflect Lack of Ability to Visualize, Data Challenges
Manufacturing engineers must overcome significant challenges to design and validate production processes. The most commonly reported challenge is the inability to visualize assembly processes. This makes it challenging for planners to optimize process plans and provide feedback on manufacturability. The inability to experience production virtually leads to the need for time-consuming, costly physical mockups.
They also report challenges with obtaining accurate, timely product design data which limits the ability for manufacturing engineers to work in parallel to shorten time to market. Finally, respondents report challenges with the time required to build prototypes, their ability to capture knowledge for reuse, and optimizing complex processes.
Too Much Wasted Time
Survey respondents identified manufacturing engineering inefficiency as both a challenge and profitability requirement. Researchers further inquired about the amount of manufacturing engineering time that participants estimate their companies spend on non-value-added activities, including:
- Searching for data
- Rekeying information

- Recreating data
- Documenting feedback for others
- Modeling common assets
- Other activities that don’t involve engineering innovation and decision making
Recommendations and Next Steps
Make a Strategic Improvement Today’s product, manufacturing process, and market complexity demand new ways of working. The Top Performers are transforming manufacturing engineering through digitalization, better collaboration, 3D, and simulation allowing them to overcome efficiency, quality, and cost challenges. Using virtual, digital twins offers manufacturing engineers in the industrial equipment industry both the ability to improve their own performance and a strategic opportunity to increase overall product development profitability. These leaders spend 17% less time on non-value-added activities in manufacturing engineering, directly reducing development cycle times. Increase Quality Respondents indicate that they can reduce ECOs by over one-third. They do this by improving manufacturing process design using virtual technologies. Top Performers are more likely to find physical manufacturing issues in a virtual model than Others who are more likely to discover them in physical prototypes and actual production. Reduce Cost Survey respondents share that they can eliminate 37% of their prototypes by increasing manufacturing engineering maturity, leading to significant cost savings per product. They do this by shifting validation and issue identification sooner in the product development process so they need fewer physical prototypes. Improve Time to Market Survey respondents report that they can reduce time to market by 35% by using 3D and simulation to plan and validate manufacturing operations. This is done, in part, by increasing efficiency, reducing time-consuming physical prototyping, and lowering rework by finding issues sooner in product development. Get Started It’s time to improve manufacturing engineering productivity and performance. Industrial equipment companies can follow the lead of the Top Performers to increase maturity in how they plan, validate, and communicate manufacturing plans. To increase maturity, manufacturers should adopt the best practices of the Top Performers, including using integrated solutions such as 3D and simulation for manufacturing engineering. *This summary is an abbreviated version of the research and does not contain the full content. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Dassault Systèmes DELMIA (registration required). If you have difficulty obtaining a copy of the report, please contact us. [post_title] => Transforming Manufacturing Engineering in Industrial Equipment [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => manufacturing-engineering-in-industrial-equipment [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-01-30 13:56:35 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-01-30 18:56:35 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://tech-clarity.com/?p=18276 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [9] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 18248 [post_author] => 2574 [post_date] => 2023-05-11 10:00:09 [post_date_gmt] => 2023-05-11 14:00:09 [post_content] => Jim Brown, Michelle Boucher, and I got an introduction to Canvas GFX and its Envision product for interactive work instructions in a recent briefing. The question I, as the manufacturing analyst had, was: Can a system for model-based interactive work instructions really be easy enough for non-engineering users to embrace? Canvas GFX says yes, and continues to enhance and expand its Canvas Envision product. Now, beyond a wide array of 2D and 3D CAD formats, it is ready to integrate with major PLM platforms such as Aras, Propel, and Siemens Teamcenter. This company has 30 years of history, starting in the 1980s as a Mac-based 2D illustration program. Since the mid-1990s, large aerospace, defense, and industrial equipment organizations adopted Canvas as a solution for technical illustrations. This foundation brings strength in 2D CAD, including some older and less-common formats. Canvas Envision came out in 2021, after new investors and executives joined. Canvas Envision is intended as a SaaS platform for all phases of work instruction: creation, customization, and consumption. However, some of its major customers have pushed it into on-prem and private cloud offerings. Canvas’ vision for Envision extends through the product lifecycle:- Manufacturing process instructions
- SOPs
- Technical documentation or manuals
- employee training
- MRO or field service repair guides
[post_title] => Canvas Envision Takes Work Instructions to New Levels of Ease (Insight)
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[post_date] => 2023-05-10 13:42:30
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[post_content] => We’ve been talking about operationalizing innovation for some time. It’s a crucial need because, as our research shows, innovation for products and services is among the top factors driving long-term business success. It can’t be left to organic inspiration or luck. It must be targeted and driven to provide a repeatable, scalable market advantage that drives profitable growth.
But what does it take to operationalize innovation? After a recent call with Sopheon, I’m happy to see there is effort being put into this question. Sopheon is supporting an initiative to define and support “InnovationOps” to serve the same role as DevOps, SecurityOps, or other approaches to take innovation to the next level. Unlike most software companies, they aren’t taking a “not invented here” approach. Instead, they are pulling together leaders in innovation practice and theory to help further the concept.
I suspect they will use what they learn to help drive their product strategy, which as I’ve written previously, has been extended to cover a broader set of processes than their traditional portfolio management solution alone. It’s a win-win, and an exciting idea that should provide a strong framework for companies to improve innovation value, speed, and efficiency.
Thank you Greg Coticchia, Mike Bauer, and Paul Heller for sharing the concept with me and inviting me to participate in the roundtables.
[post_title] => Sopheon Champions new InnovationOps Movement
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[post_content] => Jim Brown and I are jazzed up after learning about how Elisa IndustrIQ is combining the data management and analytics of the parent telco to strengthen already successful manufacturing applications. This combination of data structures, analytics algorithms for AI and ML, and applications that serve specific industries’ needs can deliver very high value. Elisa IndustrIQ is making its modular solution available in a way that also leverages data from outside the suite to make it even more valuable and broadly applicable.
A true digital transformation changes or extends the business model, and Finnish telco Elisa has done just that. It recognized that its analytics and automation to run the telco could apply to optimizing manufacturing. They also realized that embedding this into applications that solve real business issues would boost the customer’s value. So, for the past few years, it has been building and acquiring manufacturing applications to address manufacturing challenges, including production speed, connected supply chain, skilled workforce, climate change, and cybersecurity.
Their research showed that increased agility in production would be paramount to manufacturers’ success. Acquisitions have fueled the depth of the company’s applications and geographic spread of manufacturing-savvy people and customers:
- CalcuQuote: Purchasing automation software for electronics manufacturing service companies or contract manufacturers based in Dallas, TX, USA
- camLine: MES and advanced SPC-based quality for semiconductor and high tech industries that originated in Germany
- TenForce: Environmental health and safety (EH&S) software company out of Belgium that is strong in chemicals
- sedApta: Supply chain planning, execution, and intelligence solutions with strength in food and beverage and customers in process, batch, and discrete industries out of Italy has Elisa as a minority owner
[post_title] => Elisa IndustrIQ Combines Advanced Analytics into Established Applications (Insight)
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[post_content] => It’s exciting when you see a company reinvent themselves to take on an important, unsolved problem in the industry. That’s exactly what Actify has done. We’ve been following them from the time of their early, very successful CAD viewer product line SpinFire through their new evolution to create a holistic solution for automotive project management. What they’ve done opens up a new era of solutions for program managers working for automotive suppliers, and likely for other industries to follow.
I can hear people saying “there are already lots of project management tools on the market.” True. There are also lots of PLM solutions to manage data, cloud storage solutions to manage files, and collaboration solutions to manage…well…collaboration. But automotive program management needs all of those things, and all but the biggest companies have trouble implementing and integrating all of those capabilities. What Actify has done is build a solution that is tailor-made for program managers. It not only manages documents and collaboration - it manages these in the context of an automotive program. During the demonstration, we noted how the tasks maintain the context of the program, for example a DFMEA, so managing the schedule and the work to be done are joined in one place to avoid the need for program managers to manually connect status, schedules, and work objects.
Top tier automotive suppliers live and die by their OEM relationships and the profitability of their programs. To support this, program management has evolved as a unique and critical discipline. Actify has even coined a new phrase, “Make to Program,” that reflects the unique manufacturing style and processes they support in the automotive supply chain. It’s nice to see someone developing tools that are built to work specifically for them. Especially at a time with so many new programs and the dramatic change as the automotive industry electrifies.
Thank you Peter West, Bob Anson, and Charisse Dalton for spending time and sharing the progress toward your vision with me, Julie, and Michelle.
[post_title] => Actify Offers Program Management Solution for Automotive Suppliers (insight)
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[post_content] => How can life sciences manufacturers accelerate their innovation? One way is by recognizing and creating an operational digital twin that’s connected to MES. We will discuss:
- How digital twin of operations and MES support rapid innovation while ensuring high-quality, compliant, and cost-effective operations
- Why manufacturing matters through the lifecycle of life sciences products starting in R&D and clinical trials
- How digital twin and MES support the data-driven Quality by Design (QbD) approach regulators demand
- Benefits of recognizing issues earlier in the cycle
- Specific benefits of virtual and real views that stay in sync
For related research, read our Accelerate Life Sciences Innovation with Operations Digital Twin eBook.
[post_title] => Accelerate Manufacturing and Time to Market in Life Sciences
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[post_content] =>
Current economic conditions make service profitability and asset longevity more important than ever. How can service organizations leverage the IoT to transform service and improve service performance and profitability? This Buyer’s Guide offers seven ways that can help companies get started or expand on early efforts, apply lessons learned from initial projects, and drive repeatable value that they can grow over time.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full buyer’s guide please visit our sponsor, PTC (registration required).
For related research, view our Improve Service with Equipment Monitoring infographic.
Table of Contents
- Improving Service Profitability with Condition Monitoring
- Begin the Condition Based Monitoring Journey
- Set Your Business Targets
- Access Equipment and Equipment Data
- Communicate with Equipment
- Transform Data to Increase Value
- Analyze Data to Create Service Intelligence
- Share Actionable Service Information
- Implementation and Adoption
- Selecting a Strategic Partner
- Next Steps
- Buyer's Guide Checklist
- Acknowledgments
Condition Based Monitoring Drives Improvements
IoT Condition Based Monitoring Opportunities
Monitoring machines using the IoT offers significant business value including increased quality, manufacturing throughput, and service performance. Of these opportunities, transforming service has become a proven way to improve equipment performance and profitability in the field and in the factory.
Service transformation is a good target because service organizations have increased their maturity in the last decade and are now more sophisticated and data-driven. In addition, IoT platforms are now available to ensure companies get beyond a “proof of concept” to improve performance and profitability at scale. And as Dr. Yuri Hovanski, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Brigham Young University (BYU), explains, “Companies have been using predictive maintenance for decades. It’s not new, but the cost to deploy it 20 years ago was phenomenally expensive.” The barriers to adopt these platforms continue to drop as solution providers offer more configurable, predefined applications that are faster and less expensive to implement.
Improving Service Profitability with Condition Monitoring
Service is a Proven Value Driver The most common way that companies gain tangible performance gains from IoT is through improved service. The IoT lets companies transform service to generate more – and more profitable – service revenue. They do this by moving from reactive to proactive to predictive service. Service is an excellent opportunity to leverage advanced technologies like AI, machine learning, and big data analytics. The most common first step is reducing the cost of service through remote, condition based monitoring and is within reach for most companies. In addition, companies can improve performance through new service delivery processes like remote service. Use this Guide to Achieve Results This guide shares the tangible, practical steps companies can take to improve service through IoT condition based monitoring, how IoT platforms help deliver value, and how they can increase benefits with increased maturity. Then, the buyer’s guide focuses on the essential needs companies must consider to ensure a successful initiative. The requirements are intended to help companies frame their search process and efficiently find the right solution. The checklists go beyond software functionality to cover factors important to implementation, adoption, partner choice, and more. These are the factors that drive long-term business success from an IoT initiative.Begin the Condition Based Monitoring Journey
Start with the Basics Before looking at requirements, it’s critical to understand that improving service profitability is a journey. Condition based monitoring value starts with the basics of connecting equipment and collecting data. The first step in many companies’ journey is simply accessing equipment to understand its current location and status. Then, they can expand their benefits by gathering more complete machine data feeds to analyze performance metrics. “We learned you can’t just magically get to predictivity. You have to grow data maturity from descriptive to predictive to prescriptive. But you can get far more value from asset monitoring right away than you thought possible just based on alerts for above or below thresholds,” shares Todd Earls, VP IT for Digital Design and Manufacturing at Eaton. Grow Maturity over Time Expanding on the basics, companies can adopt advanced analytics to gain service intelligence to improve service operations by moving through increasing maturity levels. For example, one tangible objective is to recognize that there’s a problem before the customer or operator does. The key is to identify an issue, or a potential issue, in time to intervene to reduce the severity and impact of the problem. Grow Beyond Issue Identification to Remote Service It’s important to get started and then continuously improve over time. Then, as companies increase their service maturity, they can extend the value by remotely servicing equipment to further increase uptime and service margins.Next Steps
Recognize the Potential Leveraging the IoT can help companies improve service for themselves and their customers by reducing cost and transitioning to proactive and predictive service. Condition based monitoring allows companies to identify and resolve issues remotely, providing faster service and increased uptime for the customer while reducing the cost of truck rolls and putting service technicians on site. It can go beyond cost savings to improve sustainability or create new revenue from paid upgrades or remotely “unlocking” enhanced capabilities via a subscription. Get Started Now, more than ever, it’s critical to get started. Challenging financial markets make service profitability and increased asset lifecycles strategic. Service transformation has gone beyond the early adopters and is now becoming necessary to compete. Companies have to avoid “paralysis through analysis” and make tangible progress. As Danny Jackson of Autoliv advises, “Done is better than perfect, start doing some things. We lost some time trying to do it perfectly, then made more progress by doing things and learning from them.”
Adopt a Pragmatic Approach
Companies have to get started, but they shouldn’t try to accomplish everything at once. Instead, it’s essential to adopt an incremental approach. Companies can organize their service and machine monitoring efforts in small, manageable, incremental “sprints” that will result in broader, transformational value. Each effort should build on the prior one. Companies should create a framework as they solve the first problem, focusing on operationalizing their capabilities and building repeatable solutions.
Extend the Value
As companies become more experienced and data-centric, they can increase the maturity of their service applications and analytics. They can apply results in their own facilities to improve how they service smart products at customer locations. They can extend to other use cases such as customer self-service, remote maintenance, predicting yield, optimizing manufacturing processes, predicting scrap/rework, or reducing process variability. There is a lot of value available across the enterprise and the value chain in addition to improving service.
This summary is an abbreviated version of the research and does not contain the full content. For the full research, please visit our sponsor PTC (registration required).
If you have difficulty obtaining a copy of the report, please contact us.
[post_title] => Seven Keys to Improving Service with the IoT
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[post_content] => Are the next steps of IT/OT convergence at hand? Siemens would say yes. IT and OT are blending more than ever in some new offerings under an umbrella of data-driven manufacturing.
Siemens just announced the expansion of their Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) framework into Industrial Operations X. Industrial Operations X includes Industrial IoT, Industrial Edge, and Mendix Low-code technologies. The focus is on making it easier to integrate manufacturing IT (such as MES, HMI/SCADA) and OT (such as PLCs, DCS, and other automation). Siemens aims to deliver more flexible, interoperable, scalable, and open solutions. If they succeed, it should lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
Software-defined automation for speed and ease of converging IT and OT is another angle. News there includes the virtual PLC, an S7-1500 controller with no hardware to install. Another breakthrough is configuring OT with modern IT tools such as GitHub and text-based programming. Beyond bringing their products together, Siemens intends to help transform manufacturing engineering processes. With the skills shortage, this may be crucial.
They also announced that the IIoT platform MindSphere will be called Insights Hub starting this week. Insights Hub is one domain capability within Industrial Operations X. The foundation for all other Insights Hub applications is an app called Monitor. Other apps include OT such as SIMATIC Energy Manager and Manage MyMachines as well as new ones in IT such as OEE, Quality Prediction (combining asset and process data to feed a machine learning model), and Asset Health and Maintenance.
Siemens explains that this set of announcements is the beginning of a journey. Clearly, it expands the ecosystem they started with Industrial Edge. New IoT-based applications are in the works both from Siemens and from partners and customers leveraging low-code capabilities. HANNOVER MESSE is always a big time for Industry 4.0 announcements, and Siemens always has a big presence. Thank you Jon Heidorn, Raymond Kok, and Roland Melzer for delivering us a preview of these announcements. We look forward to following the continued convergence of Siemens’ automation and software offerings to enable manufacturers to accelerate their success.
[post_title] => Siemens Advances IT/OT Convergence with Industrial Operations X (Insight)
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[post_content] => I was recently able to catch up with Oleg Shilovitsky for an update on OpenBOM. In addition to his high blogging productivity, he and the OpenBOM team have been even harder at work developing new capabilities and expanding their reach. I’ve enjoyed following OpenBOM’s progress because they take a practical approach to solving manufacturer’s problems, started small, but built on a modern cloud stack using graph database technology so their architecture is built to scale and handle very complex problems.
They obviously help manage bills of material, one of the most challenging aspects of manufacturing definition and communication, but that’s not all. The solution has been extended to become a “digital thread platform”. OpenBOM now offers PDM features and basic capabilities for inventory, order planning, and purchasing. They’ve also continued to support more mature, complex processes by adding more data / lifecycle management features like change management, revisioning and integration with ERP. They offer an alternative, or an add-on, for smaller organizations or small groups like prototype shops in larger companies to get away from spreadsheets to manage BOMs, inventory, and orders.
As I mentioned, they’ve been hard at work. Recent enhancements allow better adoption, such as the addition of user-defined commands using a no-code approach. They have also extended onboarding training, which is included in their subscription. This is on top of embedded support in the product.
What should we look for going forward? OpenBOM will continue to support more complex scenarios including those in enterprise companies and more regulated industries. These include security enhancements to support SOC2 and offering more cloud deployment options. Lastly, they just announced a graph navigation capability that takes advantage of their core graph modeling capabilities to help companies explore their product data relationships more directly. Stay tuned for more on the opportunities that will offer.
OpenBOM is still small, but they are important. They are exploring new ways of working and filling an important need in the market. We expect to see them continue to grow and expand.
[post_title] => OpenBOM becomes a Digital Thread Platform (Insight)
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What are realistic expectations for a manufacturing execution system (MES)? Should you expect more from MES? MES has been available for decades. That is good news and bad news. Those with experience of older systems – and even many MES offered today – may have a limited view of what such a system can do. Today’s MES is an enterprise system that can drive business success in many dimensions.
You will hear from Thiago Martins, Managing Director at Accenture and Francisco Alameda Lobo, CEO at Critical Manufacturing working with MES daily as Tech-Clarity’s Julie Fraser talks to them about:
- Pre-publication highlights of a new survey on AI for Decision-Making in Manufacturing including the use and perception of MES.
- How MES can support a manufacturer in winning new customers, new contracts, and staying a preferred vendor.
- How technologies such as the industrial internet of things (IIoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and digital twins can enhance MES.
- What MES can offer to streamline frontline work for experienced and new employees.
- What is required for MES to keep up with ever-changing products and order mix.
- How integrated adaptive scheduling can improve OEE, on-time delivery, and cycle times to boost your standing as a supplier.
- The role of Low-Code and DevOps technologies in enterprise rollout and ongoing MES success.
- How much progress manufacturers are making on the many aspects of IT and OT data management required to use and analyze production data effectively.
How can manufacturing software accelerate life sciences innovation? By combining MES with an operations digital twin.
Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Dassault Systemes(registration required).
Table of Contents
- Rapid Life Sciences Innovation
- New Realities and Opportunities
- Manufacturing Must Keep Pace
- Digital Twins: Marrying Virtual and Real
- Operations Digital Twin Examples
- Digital Twin of Operations Accelerates Progress
- Twin Benefits in Operations
- Virtual Uses through Validation
- Virtual Uses Post-Approval
- Benefits of Virtual to and from Real
- Closing the Virtual-to-Real Loop
- Considerations for Useful Virtual
- Enterprise Transformation
- Clearing the Way for Acceleration
- Recommendations
- Acknowledgments
Rapid Life Sciences Innovation
Speed to Market Innovation has always been at the heart of life sciences companies’ success. Being quick to market helps both profits and patients. Of course, fast is relative, with most drugs and biologics taking 10-15 years from Phase I to approval, and medical devices taking three to seven years from concept to approval. The question is: Can life sciences companies accelerate this innovation process and make it more reliable? We have seen that they can by using current software and methods. It’s important to remember that innovation and supporting software serve not only R&D but also operations. Quality by Design Every aspect of innovation must increasingly aim for Quality by Design (QbD). For drugs, the EMA website defines it: “Quality by design is an approach that aims to ensure the quality of medicines by employing statistical, analytical and risk-management methodology in the design, development, and manufacturing of medicines.” Modeling and simulation allow a virtual test of a design against quality and regulatory requirements. This can result in improved product quality and patient safety before physical prototypes are built. In short, ensuring data-driven approaches early on can generate better outcomes at every stage of the product lifecycle. The chart below shows that concept. Figure 1. Accelerating Innovation Has Profits Benefits Throughout the Life Sciences Lifecycle
Recommendations
Recommendations and Next Steps Based on this research and our experience, we recommend that Life Sciences companies in biologics, pharmaceuticals, or medical devices:- Treat this as a transformational operations innovation acceleration initiative, not an IT project.
- Educate and create a vision everyone shares for a more agile manufacturing operation that accelerates innovation.
- Distinguish operations twinning from a Metaverse or gaming approach: it is for running the business, not training or purely visual representation.
- Carefully review your options to ensure the digital twin platform will support the organization now and in the future.
- Get started with twinning high-impact areas and build on the success to get maximum value and momentum.
- If you don’t have enterprise-capable manufacturing planning, scheduling, S&OP, and execution software, be sure those investments are in the plan.
- Be sure the top executive team sponsors and fully resources the program – including dedicating some of your best people and incenting everyone.
- Set an expectation that the twin will become a crucial aspect of daily operations: you will see what happens as things change and conduct what-ifs to gain speed and confidence in decisions.
- Keep the end in mind: virtual and real, constantly driving quality, innovation, improvement, and speed.
[post_title] => Is the Digital Twin Attainable?
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In these competitive times, continuous improvement is crucial, but it’s not always easy to pinpoint where the biggest benefits lie. How can you prioritize manufacturing improvement opportunities to ensure maximum value to the business? This Buyer’s Guide points to an array of software characteristics to support such decisions. You need digital means to support greater confidence in your decisions about which projects to fund when.
Please enjoy the summary below. For the full buyer’s guide please visit our sponsor, PTC (registration required).
For related content, A New Era of Continuous Improvement, shares results from manufacturers, consultants, and associations to validate the continuous improvement (CI) notions in the white paper; our eBook, Getting Beyond Percentages to Insights with OEE, shares insights on how your overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) metrics could accelerate improvement; and find out the difference between a typical continuous improvement program and one that's better in our Improving Continuous Improvement infographic.
Table of Contents
- Evaluation Criteria
- Urgency to Improve Manufacturing Productivity
- Current Situation
- Prioritizing Manufacturing Productivity Opportunities
- Functionality for Prioritizing Opportunities
- Analytics for Clear Action
- Technology Considerations
- Evaluating Software Partners
- Implementation Factors
- Software Investment Priorities
- Maximum Value for Productivity Projects
- Recommendations
- Acknowledgments
Urgency to Improve Manufacturing Productivity
Staying Competitive Most manufacturers are in competitive markets with supply chain challenges. With so much out of the company’s control, it’s vital to leverage production resources such as facilities, equipment, people, materials, and tools effectively. Today’s environment of great uncertainty makes this more complex and crucial to success. Needs Expand with the Move to the Digital Enterprise Productivity is all about minimizing losses – and time is the obvious way to measure those losses. The impacts of lost time are not just on the production operation itself. Time losses can be quantified in terms of impact on profit and customer service. Capacity-constrained companies can sell as much as they can make, so it’s a top-line issue for revenues. For these companies, it also determines when they can promise and deliver orders to customers.Even when not capacity constrained, time losses can impact costs and customer satisfaction. In some cases, companies could lower materials, assets, energy, quality, compliance, and payroll costs. Continuous Improvement Yet, calculating where to focus to stem those time losses is not straightforward since many sources of waste contribute to throughput and productivity losses. Continuous Improvement (CI) is a common process manufacturers use to identify and eliminate waste to improve performance. It may be called Lean, Six Sigma, Operational Excellence, or other names. In these trying times, CI programs can feed success – particularly if they have balanced characteristics and digital support.Prioritizing Manufacturing Productivity Opportunities
Helping Focus As the term prioritizing suggests, what is new here is that the software is not just measuring performance but ranking opportunities for improvement. By seeking prioritization, you get support to focus resources and attention, which can be challenging with traditional manufacturing intelligence, OEE, or dashboard software. Readying for Action In addition to prioritizing opportunities, seek out software that provides a reason drill-down for each problem. This ability to deliver deeper insights into root causes can transform challenges into opportunities One Application, Many Roles Seek a software system that can support multiple user profiles:- Executives and Managers for comparing plants, products, and investment in CI programs
- CI leads for plotting priorities and tracking progress
- Supervisors for focusing on how to improve in their area
- Operators and Technicians to focus, buy in, and see what’s working and how much time they can save
This summary is an abbreviated version of the research and does not contain the full content. For the full research, please visit our sponsor PTC (registration required).
If you have difficulty obtaining a copy of the report, please contact us.
[post_title] => Confidently Prioritize Manufacturing Improvement Opportunities
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