Despite economic cycles and influences from international events, the manufacturing industry will continue to grow over the long term. These firms will also continue to face multiple domestic and internal challenges. Rising to these challenges will require experienced leadership and access to exceptional talent to guide their ship through these often turbulent waters.
How We Can Help
Technology Innovation
Manufacturers need to be able to adapt to change – including technology, in order to stay ahead in the highly competitive market. But, care must be taken in deciding where technology investments should be made.
Information Alliance consultants can develop and lead technology assessments, and then develop technology modernization roadmaps which will prioritize future initiatives, identify the order in which they should be undertaken, and ensure these initiatives support the company’s business strategies.
Efficiency Improvements
Manufacturers constantly struggle to look for ways to reduce material waste and become more cost-effective. The challenge is not to forego quality or productivity in this pursuit. Doing so will ultimately impact sales and customer satisfaction.
Through initiatives such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations, workflow automation, business process improvement / reengineering, waste reduction (LEAN), and streamlining supply chains, Information Alliance can help manufacturers achieve substantial efficiency improvements at their plants.
Inventory Management
Even today, inventory management remains a primary challenge in the manufacturing sector. In fact, many small to mid-sized companies still manage their inventory manually, which is prone to human error, inefficient, and can result in shortages or surpluses.
Information Alliance has specific experience with inventory management. We can help manufacturing clients evaluate and select the appropriate software/system for their needs, enabling them to keep up with inventory levels, receive alerts when levels approach a specified threshold, and reorder the right items at the right time.
Business Intelligence
Transforming huge volumes of data into useful information requires two important platforms. The first is a data management platform to gather the data, integrate it, securely store it, and serve it up quickly and reliable. The second is a business intelligence (BI) platform which, through customer queries, will answer questions, deliver visual dashboards, and offer important insights.
Information Alliance has implemented these systems for multiple clients. We have a demonstrated ability to transform data into useful information, facilitating enhanced decision making and improved operational performance for manufacturing clients.
Defect Reduction
Monitoring of performance metrics allow management to evaluate company performance at the corporate and plant levels, and in some cases, to department levels within each plant. Timely access to accurate information is a critical success factor for taking corrective measures. However, in many cases, the current processes for delivering this information are neither timely nor accurate, and rely on a significant amount of human intervention. Moreover, data is often inconsistent across plants.
With our understanding of industry best practices, Information Alliance can work with senior management, and, through process improvement and quality management software, enable them to zero in on root causes, take corrective actions more quickly, standardize processes and practices across all locations, and deliver results monitoring through targeted data analytics.