Digital transformation trends in the manufacturing industry
AI. IoT. Digital Twin. Augmented Reality. These are some of the buzzwords of digital transformation or Industry 4.0. But what do they really mean for the manufacturing industry? How do you make them work for you in the real world, so that IT solutions really strengthen the business? These 5 business trends are examples among our customers and triggers for digital transformation in the manufacturing industry:
Transparent (global) supply chain
How do you get a high-quality product to the customer on time? From both sustainability and commercial perspectives, a transparent supply chain is crucial. Risks are increasing, partly due to expansionism and pandemics. What does it mean, for example, if the raw materials supplier of the component manufacturer goes bankrupt? How can you still continue to manufacture your end product and still serve the customer?
With solutions such as SAP Ariba Supply Chain Collaboration, SAP S/4HANA and SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP), we helped customers to excel in this area. Read more about our case studies and solutions for transparency in the supply chain.
‘Servitization’
The days of just producing your product are over. The manufacturing industry is increasingly selling services that optimize product performance. The focus on, for example, maintenance services, customer service or software licenses has a major impact on the end-to-end chain, from R&D to HR and everything in between. It requires real-time insight into the status of products, other capacities of sales people and service engineers and for extremely smart inventory planning and management.
Read more about 'servitization in the manufacturing industry', how, for example, we facilitate the Digital Twin with SAP Asset Intelligence Network (AIN), or how we improve the Employee Experience with McCoy HRX.
Mergers & Acquisitions
The number of mergers and acquisitions in the manufacturing industry continues to increase, prompted by globalization and expansionism. This offers opportunities for production and commerce. But it also brings risks, for example for transparency in the supply chain, or for the availability of the right people at the right location in the world. The diversity of products and countries makes global supply chain planning, forecasting and on-demand production planning complex.
Want to know more about our unique track record in Merger, Acquisition & Divestments? View the M&A page.
Co-innovation
How do you stay relevant in the manufacturing industry? Constantly reinventing yourself as a company is a serious challenge. Not only are new business models and servitization developing at breakneck speed, so are the products. Innovation is the key word. A clear trend is to do this together with other companies in co-innovation. In addition, we see more and more purpose driven co-innovations.
What can co-innovation look like? Where to start as an organization? What tools are available? You can read about it here.
Covid-19
Covid-19 obviously triggers the manufacturing industry as well. The balance between production and demand has always been fragile and certainly is now. Dependence on overseas suppliers is triggering a countermovement toward local supply chains. Time and money to merely experiment with digital transformations have become scarcer due to Covid. Choices need to be made faster and execution has urgency. This calls for a concrete roadmap with a number of strategic, digital use cases that directly add value to the business and contribute to agility.
To fasten the decision making process you can, for example, measure and improve process performance. How do we do that? Read more about our approach and solutions, such as Process Mining and Transformation Services.
McCoy and the Manufacturing Industry
Companies in the manufacturing industry do business with us because of our crucial industry knowledge. We have built this up through years of experience and a portfolio of proven successful end-2-end projects in the manufacturing industry. We know the latest technological developments in the field of SAP. We convert these into added value for our customers and their processes. What distinguishes McCoy is our in-depth process and organizational knowledge. We bring this in addition to our obvious knowledge of technology.