QAD Tomorrow: the Digital Road to Better Decision-making

The opportunities aroundDigital Manufacturingare as varied and broad as the interpretation of the phrase itself. As much as I love the advent of robots, automation, and technology around the process, there are so many opportunities in the way we manage the factory floor that don't require reinvention and huge capital investment.

Once you get to the factory floor the goals are simple. Manufacture the right stuff, at the right time, and as optimally as possible. Every day and every shift there are hundreds of decisions made in terms of achieving those goals.

The simplest of all examples is the decision on what to manufacture next. It can't get any more basic than that. Whether it is for an individual machine, an assembly cell, or a full-blown production line, we are making choices about what is up next. Several data points might help to make that decision. Let's simplify down to three important data points:

• Material availability
• Equipment/labor status
• Up to date order of priority in context with all the possibilities

This is the information that manufacturers need to make the best decision.

Unfortunately, our legacy systems and approaches fall short of decision support. Material status is hidden in a disconnected warehouse that doesn't readily share live inventory levels. Equipment and active order status wait for paper recording and possible post-shift data entry that provide no interim progress values. Customer order data and last-minute priorities are locked in spreadsheets that are only updated for Monday morning production meetings.

What is the impact of making sub-optimal decisions? Wasted resources setting up for jobs where I don't have the material. Excessive process inventory levels waiting on resources that are tied up on previous orders. The over or underproduction of orders that are misaligned with the real customer need. And on and on. All of these issues get exaggerated with the current supply chain and labor availability challenges.

Embracing Digital Manufacturing and Digital Transformation

So, how do we embrace digital manufacturing to move forward? Allow me to share an example of how one manufacturer did this. QAD has a discrete manufacturing customer that recently implementedQAD Production Execution. Production Execution is a set of operational extensions of ERP and material management that provides for live collaboration andactionable insightsinto all of this decision data. Material availability is live. Progress against orders and equipment status is live. Order priorities are updated at the pace of customer changes.

It's almost cliché to describe it as a single version of the truth but that is exactly what it is. It is important to remember though that the goal isn't this single version of the truth. The goal is better decision-making!

I want to share a couple of major takeaways that I learned in a conversation with this customer. First is a quote from the shop floor supervisor that was pure manufacturing magic: "First time in 20 years that I believe the information in front of me, and it has changed the way we make decisions." Decisions don't have to be based on hedges or gut feel. There is confidence in the data and cross-organization delivery on the multitude of goals.

The second takeaway is that the entire Production Execution project from start-up to live production took place in Northern Italy during the height of the pandemic. Not all digital manufacturing projects need to be big-budget, big bang efforts. We can all make real progress incrementally!

Join us on December 1st forQAD Tomorrow: Digital Manufacturing and learn about the innovative digital solutions manufacturers are adopting today to improve operational performance.