Technological advances are moving forward at breakneck speed, and they seem to come more quickly and be more effective every year. Manufacturing is often one of the first places where new technology makes its mark, and manufacturers have to be prepared to evolve with new technology, offering innovative ideas to entice customers and boost efficiency.
Here are three technology innovations that impacted the market this year and may pave the way for a complete rethinking of the way we deliver manufacturing services in the future.
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Condition-Based Maintenance
No matter what kind of machines a company manufactures, those machines will need their buyers to properly maintain them in order to get the best performance for the longest time. Today’s technology allows manufacturers to make proper maintenance easy by offering online real-time monitoring of the equipment they sell so they know when and what type of maintenance those machines need.
The manufacturer gets to offer maintenance services and ensure the long-term satisfaction of their customers, and the purchaser gets to rest easy with the knowledge that if an issue should pop up with one of their machines, they will be able to find it and take care of it before it becomes a problem that disrupts the whole operation.
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Cloud Networking
No matter how effective your marketing infrastructure is, it’s hard to do and know everything possible in your space. Good strategic partnerships have always been important, but with the growing popularity of cloud computing, it’s even easier to share data, information, and software with your strategic partners.
The scope of a shared cloud partnership must be monitored carefully, of course. You don’t want to give away trade secrets or turn a partner into a direct competitor, but diligent application of cloud technology to partnerships can reap huge benefits for manufacturers.
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Digital Efficiency
As some manufacturers find the demand for their products is not as great, they must find other ways to reach their profit goals. An increasingly common way to do this in 2017 has been digitizing operations. By moving more command systems to digital control and using digital methods to collect data, manufacturers can optimize their operations and produce products more quickly and cheaply, saving time and money while increasing output.
Manufacturers can also use digital marketing techniques to target customers, helping them find new demand for their products while cutting out wasted time marketing to non-motivated potential consumers.
These methods and other innovations like them are too effective for you to ignore. Getting mired in old ways of doing manufacturing business is a sure way to see that business reach a premature end.
While learning to take full advantage of today’s technological innovations may seem too complex, especially for industrial operations that have been doing things the same way for decades, a few months of growing pains can pay massive dividends and keep a manufacturing company going and even growing in the years ahead.