How data can help reduce friction in the supply chain

It has been a dif­fi­cult few years for man­u­fac­tur­ers, sup­pli­ers and busi­ness­es that sell prod­ucts world­wide. Recent events high­light­ed the weak­ness­es in sup­ply chains. Raw mate­ri­als are in short sup­ply, push­ing prices high­er and mak­ing deci­sions more dif­fi­cult. Yet cus­tomer demand for new prod­ucts in a time­ly man­ner has not adapt­ed to the new cir­cum­stances. This means there is lit­tle room for error in every deci­sion made in sourc­ing, sup­ply­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing.

For years, the world ran on a just-in-time man­u­fac­tur­ing method­ol­o­gy – which worked in a time of plen­ti­ful, reli­able sup­ply. “And there weren’t as many issues impact­ing the flow of goods,” says Julie Driscoll, exec­u­tive advi­sor at aPri­ori. The com­pa­ny auto­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­ates prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ing intel­li­gence that helps man­u­fac­tur­ers col­lab­o­rate across the prod­uct devel­op­ment process to make bet­ter design, sourc­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing deci­sions that yield high­er-val­ue prod­ucts in less time.

Mis­takes cost time and mon­ey, mean­ing com­pa­nies must feel con­fi­dent in all prod­uct devel­op­ment deci­sions. “There’s a lot of buy­er demand for per­son­alised prod­ucts with a broad­er range of fea­tures. Com­pa­nies are try­ing to inno­vate faster and move from design to mar­ket as quick­ly as pos­si­ble,” says Driscoll.

aPri­ori recent­ly sur­veyed 24 man­u­fac­tur­ers about the pain points they have been expe­ri­enc­ing in sourc­ing and buy­ing prod­ucts. The key find­ing? “Cur­rent sourc­ing process­es have inef­fi­cien­cies due to incom­plete infor­ma­tion and man­u­al steps,” says Driscoll. Using data and tech­nol­o­gy to be more trans­par­ent about the prod­uct design, price, method of man­u­fac­tur­ing and poten­tial man­u­fac­tur­ing issues can help busi­ness­es col­lab­o­rate between teams, reduc­ing the time spent search­ing for infor­ma­tion and hag­gling on the phone or via email.

This is vital at a time when trust­ed man­u­fac­tur­ers may be unable to pro­duce at the scale they once did due to staff or mate­r­i­al short­ages. Busi­ness­es are hav­ing to find, befriend and bro­ker deals with organ­i­sa­tions they have not pre­vi­ous­ly worked with, intro­duc­ing fric­tion into an already strained process. “We’re talk­ing about reduc­ing fric­tion across your entire prod­uct devel­op­ment process,” says Driscoll. “From ear­ly design of new parts or new prod­ucts, we can help you speed up the process to get you to mar­ket quick­er.” aPri­ori was recent­ly used for a deep dive man­u­fac­tur­ing and cost analy­sis for assem­bly by agri­cul­ture and con­struc­tion equip­ment com­pa­ny CNH Indus­tri­al that eval­u­at­ed 104 unique part num­bers and fine-tuned the man­u­fac­tur­ing process, sav­ing the com­pa­ny $2.1m.

aPriori’s tech­nol­o­gy helps reduce fric­tion both while prod­ucts and com­po­nents are man­u­fac­tured and before they’re deliv­ered. More than 70% of a product’s cost is deter­mined at the design stage, but once set up and in pro­duc­tion, rework­ing prod­ucts mid-man­u­fac­ture can cause cost­ly waste. aPriori’s soft­ware helps iden­ti­fy any man­u­fac­tura­bil­i­ty issues ear­ly in the process, sug­gest­ing how an item can be made, how long it will take to make, how much mate­r­i­al it’s going to use, and what the car­bon foot­print of the prod­uct will be. “Automat­ing the prod­uct analy­sis and mak­ing the data easy to access and share are cru­cial to expe­dit­ing the process,” says Driscoll. “Prod­uct life cycles are shrink­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly, and there’s so much more glob­al com­pe­ti­tion.”

That puts pres­sure not just on the design process, but on the buy­ing process too.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, the push was that you had to go fast,” says Driscoll. “Now, fast isn’t enough. You need to be able to respond, because things might not go exact­ly as you want­ed.” Whether it’s a short­age of a key com­po­nent or shift­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing to an alter­na­tive at short notice, hur­dles exist every­where – and hav­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty for options can help you to avoid them. “Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion allows man­u­fac­tur­ers to move quick­ly and to be respon­sive to dis­rup­tion,” says Driscoll. “You don’t know when the next black-swan event is going to hap­pen.”

Of course, the sup­ply chain will not remain stalled for­ev­er – but the impor­tance of remain­ing nim­ble will con­tin­ue for years to come. “Even if the dis­rup­tion set­tles down, effi­cien­cy and time to mar­ket are going to remain impor­tant,” says Driscoll. “If you have inef­fi­cien­cies in your process, you are going to be a lag­gard.”

To see how real time data can stream­line your prod­uct inno­va­tion life­cy­cle, vis­it aPriori.com/contact or call +44 (0)78517 91322

Pro­mot­ed by aPri­ori