In today’s disruptive manufacturing environment, the need for agility is front and center – whether ramping up production or changing production priorities while still ensuring consistency and quality. What we are seeing is that already having a modern established Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) system coupled with manufacturing simulation and Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) systems is key to manufacturers’ success and responsiveness.
We are being confronted with two immediate manufacturing challenge scenarios. One is that manufacturers need to rapidly ramp up production of existing products to meet spikes in demand. The other is that manufacturers must respond with new products and new processes to deal with and survive the current challenges. This is not an uncommon cycle and will continue to be a focus well beyond today’s crisis.
Manufacturers must respond with new products and new processes to deal with and survive the current challenges.
With the ongoing COVID-19 crisis we are hearing about manufacturers capitalizing on their agility to adjust production to the current situation. For example, we are seeing cosmetic and household products manufacturers rapidly change over production lines to make sanitizers – leveraging their MOM and APS solutions to make rapid adjustment in process and production schedules. We hear of medical supply companies ramping up production of protective gear – having to work around unforeseen constraints and changes in product demand. We see automotive companies ramp up production of ventilators in collaboration with medical device manufactures using digital manufacturing to share designs and processes, validate and optimize production schedules. Many industries are using business process management (BPM) capabilities in MOM to reconfigure production while retaining consistency and traceability across resources, both human and machine.
What is more clear than ever is that an effective MOM solution combined with APS puts a company in the strongest position to meet these challenges and enable agility and rapid responsiveness. Important aspects impacting effectiveness is the MOM solution’s ability to enable standardization, with efficiency and repeatability. Leveraging MOM business process capabilities ensure consistency in quality as volumes ramp and MOM governance provides scalability to deploy those same processes across factories – reducing time-to-market. MOM, along with APS can help manufacturers ramp up production of new product lines across factories while retaining manufacturing process integrity. This disruption will clearly bring new emphasis on modernization in manufacturing operations and planning.
For more information on MOM, APS and examples of how companies have become more agile and effective view any number of customer stories as well as visit DELMIA’s website.
