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Analytics solutions can utilize the massive unstructured data from various phases in manufacturing, enabling the manufacturers to streamline their processes.
FREMONT, CA: Manufacturing, like any other industry, has its own set of challenges. Increasing the yield while maintaining the quality of the products are the primary concern for all kind of manufacturing units. With technological innovations impacting industries throughout, manufacturing practices can gain immensely from tech innovations. With various types of data flooding the multiple stages of manufacturing, advanced analytics solutions can deliver greater insights to the manufacturers. Firms have massive unstructured data sets within the manufacturing processes that can be accessed, structured, modeled, and utilized to make improved manufacturing decisions.
In the present times that require dynamic supply chain management solutions, a slight error in decision-making may result in massive losses owing to a shortage in inventories or the pressure to sell the overproduced. Here are the primary ways in which analytics can optimize the processes involved in manufacturing.
Manufacturing Cycle Time
Manufacturing cycle time is the amount of time required to convert raw materials into finished products. The cycle time is influenced by various factors such as the segment of the manufacturing industry, location of the industry, the scale of the manufacturing operation, and the relative stability of supply chain supporting operations. The manufacturing cycle involves various redundant tasks that can be automated for better results. Analytics are crucial in the path to automation. Further, advanced analytics will offer a detailed understanding of the processes, thereby enabling a faster flow of the processes with a significant reduction in time needed to convert a customer order into a finished product.
Supplier Inbound Quality Levels
The inspection of raw materials that arrive at the facility from the suppliers to ensure that the items fulfill the quality standards is an extremely important aspect. Usually, the purchasing department negotiates with the supplier to ascertain that the best-priced products are received in a timely manner. While ensuring inbound quality levels is essential, it can be a challenge for a business dealing with diverse products. Thus, an effective inspection would require the firms to have effective analytics with various parameters covering the various quality aspects of the raw materials from the suppliers. Such analytics can offer an insight into which of the suppliers are especially beneficial to manufacturing as well as the production processes.
Production Yield Rates
The productivity of a process is usually measured by the number of finished products, cost of the materials, time spent in production, and other such factors impacting productivity. As the number of factors involved in productivity increases, it gets increasingly difficult to comprehend the efficiency element in the production phases manually. Thus, an analytics solution that encompasses various factors influencing the productivity phase can be vital incorporation by the firms eyeing a precise assessment of the effectiveness of their productivity phases. For instance, manufacturers involved with microprocessors, semiconductors technology, and integrated circuits are constantly assessing yield rates to understand their progress against the goals.
Perfect Order Performance
Perfect order performance is a measure of the effectiveness of a manufacturer in delivering accurate, undamaged orders to the clients on time. Perfect order performance involves various transactional metrics that reflect the efficacy of fulfillment performance. At the minimum, perfect order comprises of on-time delivery, in-full delivery, and proper invoices. Companies deploy analytics solutions to capture all the metrics through a single platform. For the manufacturers dealing with complex order fulfillment processes, greater analytics, and insights gained from monitoring and real-time integration can enable the achievement of higher perfect order levels.
Apart from the above, there are other use cases of analytics solutions that can optimize the overall manufacturing phases, along with increased productivity levels. Technological innovations in the future will certainly drive analytics to capture the finer details involved in manufacturing.