In the wake of the 2011 tsunami earthquake, Japanese companies were faced with the task of repairing their shattered global supply chains. The disaster’s global reach forced manufacturers to examine system vulnerabilities and propose recovery efforts aimed at restoring the supply chain – as well as develop contingency plans to curtail the effects of any future disruptions.

The recent April 2016 earthquakes put these plans to test —  with encouraging results. After initially suspending nearly all production in Japan, Toyota Motor Corp. began bringing plants online as early as April 25. Yet,  the aftershocks impacted the industry, leading other automakers including Honda, Nissan and General Motors to stall production as well, indicating that improvements can still be made.

Foundational Basics Needed to Mitigate Risk
The core tenants of lean production — which allow companies to operate without the need for large, costly inventories – are still valid. However, these processes need to be made more resilient to external disruptions to prevent operations from being crippled by power outages and other shortcomings in the local infrastructure. Some risk management procedures include stocking extra inventory to avoid bottlenecks or standardizing more parts across various models which will allow them to shift production elsewhere in the event of an emergency, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The manufacturing sector has long recognized that diversifying plant locations increases flexibility and mitigates risk, but equally important is developing a permanent task force on disaster readiness. Additionally, the ability to quickly disseminate design and operations data throughout the supply chain is essential to bounce back from an unexpected catastrophe. In other words, “portability” is required to speed decision-making in order to enable operations teams to respond in a timely manner.

The Need for Enterprise Intelligence
The formidable challenges associated with natural disasters and other catastrophic events are driving manufacturers to rethink their plant floor operations. Many manufacturers are making investments dedicated to making their facilities more resilient and improving plant floor visibility across their factory networks.

According to a whitepaper from IDC, “organizations need to be able to exploit all information sources to achieve the highest possible level of visibility and intelligence.”  This also serves to create environments that will support real-time decision-making, enabling operators to react quickly in the event of an emergency with minimal disruptions in production operations.

Effective Factory Management calls for standardizing production processes by implementing manufacturing execution systems (MES) to create greater visibility and integration with other IT platforms multi-nationally.  Traditional MES applications archive data relevant to operations transactions and align it with corporate IT. By aligning production assets with these applications — to include ERP, SCM, CRM and PLM — virtual orchestration of all plant floor level processes becomes a possibility.

However, “manufacturers still lack a direct link to transform real-time data from machines and plants into actionable information that can empower users higher up in the hierarchy.”

A Single Control Center
Deploying Operational Intelligence is an enterprise strategy that not only requires manufacturers to standardize their production processes across their factory networks, but one that is dedicated to improving visibility, coordination and orchestration. And, since this information is needed across the enterprise, IDC recommends investing in a single, unified solution for manufacturing operations management.

In manufacturing, a lack of visibility can have serious impact on your manufacturing operations. Manufacturing Operations Management includes a wide range of functions, but to make fully informed decisions you need a 30,000-ft view, and you need a Control Center for complete oversight – especially across the extended enterprise.

What is needed is a platform that provides full insight into manufacturing data across the entire supply chain. This allows manufacturers to identify root causes of failure and adjust processes in real-time, as conditions change. As these enterprise strategies are centered on the global plant floor, they should be agile enough to allow for variations in the production process, as well as accommodate disruptions in the supply chain.

The Road to Recovery
The recovery efforts of 2011 as compared to 2016 underscore the importance of “readiness” and the ability to quickly distribute information across the extended enterprise as this “portability” is crucial for disaster recovery in global operations.

To improve even further, companies can benefit from a single, unified manufacturing process framework and data with the capability to manage a global manufacturing model. Dassault Systemes’ Lean Production Run solutions provide real-time visibility, both in and across plants, providing the flexibility to adapt, synchronize and continuously improve product and process quality within a global manufacturing environment. This allows manufacturers to manage global material supplies, logistics execution and production across all global sites, helping them quickly react and recover from disruptions.

You can read more about Lean Production run here.