3 Technology Trends Shaping Manufacturing Performance Management

Periodically, new technologies are developed that rapidly become pervasive because of the compelling benefits they offer, and as they mature they drive the price/performance ratios to be enticing for companies looking to improve the bottom line.

Effectively measuring and impacting the business performance of industrial enterprises poses many challenges, but also new opportunities for deploying new metrics programs, processes, and technologies that can make a real difference—often in real-time. The best practices in performance management require new types of leadership to create engaged, cross-functional teams that are armed with the right information and insights enabling them to make the appropriate impacts as part of their roles in their respective manufacturing enterprises.

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In this post, we’ll explore the impact of three prevalent technologies that are rapidly changing and improving the way in which manufacturing performance management currently operates, and how it will be approached in the future.

1. The Impact of Mobile Technologies on Performance Management

The use of Mobile devices and applications have removed the restrictions of required on-site access, enabling workers from every level of the enterprise to access the performance and decision support information applicable to their respective role, including:

• Executives
• Plant Managers/Supervisors
• Plant Operators
• Technical/Quality Personnel

Facilitating access to all these roles via mobile devices creates an entirely paperless manufacturing environment, and also allows information to be shared between suppliers and customers via similar mobile capabilities.

2. The Role of Cloud Technologies in Performance Management

Though many business leaders still have reservations about the cloud for manufacturing applications, the space is advancing rapidly to address major concerns around connectivity and security, as well as other issues, while making the benefits of cloud adoption too attractive to ignore. Due in part to automatic updates and outsourced IT functionality, cloud platforms will lower the cost of ownership for implementing manufacturing performance software over the long run and decrease the time to implement. Additionally, cloud platforms can make it easier to integrate and compare performance information across multiple plants/facilities and systems.

3. The Coming Effects of Enterprise ‘Big Data’ Technologies on Performance Management

The most recent of these three major trends, Big Data, will be less likely to have the instant “a-ha!” moments of cloud or mobile technologies, because while the latter two create instant abilities where none existed before, Big Data is about harnessing a collection of massive amounts of structured and unstructured data from across the enterprise.

Nevertheless, as time moves forward, previously unknown interrelationships between data will come to light that will have important impacts on creating new performance management insights, such as:

• Enabling better product/production forecasts that tie to consumer trends
• Improving interactions with suppliers based on dynamic sourcing needs
• Providing faster customer service and support - harnessing knowledge
• Better understanding customer requirements for new products
• Better correlations of performance across multiple plants
• Better understanding plant performance across multiple metrics
• Performing predictive modeling of manufacturing data
• Enabling real-time alerts based on analyzing manufacturing data
• Correlating manufacturing and business performance information together
• Mining combinations of manufacturing and other enterprise data to uncover new improvement and business opportunities

Take the ‘Metrics That Matter’ Survey to Gain Access to the LNS Research Performance Management Library for One Year!

We’re interested in hearing how you and your company are using programs, processes, and technology to drive performance management and improvements. In exchange for 20 to 30 minutes of your time, you’ll be granted access to the outcomes of this new manufacturing metrics survey, in addition to our Performance Management Library for one year. The library also contains valuable research, including:

• The LNS Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) Best Practices Guide: This guide establishes a framework for companies to align people, architect systems, and streamline processes to achieve market leading performance in a rapidly evolving space.
• Enabling Operational Excellence with Manufacturing Metrics:  This Research Spotlight examines the role that metrics can play in continuous improvement programs and gives business leaders a framework for identifying which manufacturing metrics have the most impact on measuring progress.
• Pursuit of Performance Excellence: This comprehensive report focuses on the role of plant performance metrics programs, improvements, and IT applications. It was originally published in February, 2012 as the primary results of the previous MESA ‘Metrics That Matter’ research project.

Click below to take the survey and access all of this valuable information in addition to the results of this year’s survey.