Manufacturing is Transforming. Will you be a part of the movement or will you be left behind?

The manufacturing sector is in transition. Companies face unprecedented operational pressures to shorten product development lifecycles, increase productivity, along with organizational pressures to collaborate and innovate. How can you meet all these demands?  To dig deeper into this transformation and what you can do to stay on top of it, Infor wrote a six-part blog series to look at the “Power of Change” in manufacturing:

Part 1: Defining the power of change and its impact
Part 2: Technology that supports and fuels further change
Part 3: State of manufacturing in the US, according to the NAM
Part 4: The benefits of being an early adopter

The whole series can be read on Infor’s “Manufacturing Matters” blog page http://blogs.infor.com/manufacturing_matters/, but we’ve also included Part 1 below for your convenience.

Defining the power of change and its impacts

Do you view change as a positive force or are you one of the many who resist deviations from your comfortable routine? Fear of the unknown keeps many individuals firmly planted in one-dimensional views of the future. The same is true of organizations and their C-level policy-setters. Some forward-thinking, agile organizations are eager to embrace each innovation; others are skeptical and prefer a “wait and see” approach to system change and adoption of new technology.

Change is inevitable in manufacturing-- a business segment closely tied to the state of the economy, consumer spending trends, shifts in the global supply chain, and volatile costs of raw materials such as fuel. While change may be an ever-present force, recent technology changes have reached unprecedented levels creating a bottom-line impact that is pulling more and more manufacturers into its vortex.

Technology advances in the operational side of manufacturing range from 3D printers and robotics to lasers, telemetry, and “lights out” factories. Looking behind-the-scenes to the IT infrastructure, change is more all encompassing and democratic in its reach, affecting the casual user on the shop floor as well as the C-suite executives. Modern advances include cloud deployment, social, mobile, and big data analytics, all areas in which Infor ERP solutions lead the way in providing functionality to manufacturers.

IDC Manufacturing Insights credits such IT advancements for helping manufacturers transform their operations from a "transactional business" to the more responsive real-time business model. In the recently published whitepaper “The Future of Manufacturing,” IDC analyst Pierfrancesco Manenti says, “To harness the momentum created by the manufacturing renaissance, manufacturers will need to transform today's challenges into opportunities. It won't be an easy task, and manufacturers will need to completely rethink their business model, organizational structure, and IT landscape.”