Knowledge is power

Valuechain’s group CEO, Tom Dawes discusses the company’s smart manufacturing software and how it helps companies to improve productivity, streamline collaboration and generate market intelligence.

The most important thing is for companies to find a solution provider that’s right for them now and in the future. It is critical that businesses understand what they need from a system – over what they want!

For example, any production control system will help you streamline processes, reduce paperwork and simplify compliance. Most people know that, and most systems do that to one extent or another. But it also captures data across your whole busines process. And you need to make sure your system captures the right information for you to make smarter decisions. Especially in the current climate, this is absolutely critical.

The state of play

Where is there to start other than the current pandemic alongside the impending Brexit deadline? The House of Commons Transport Select Committee, stated in June that UK air travel has reduced by 97%, causing a revenue loss of c.£20 billion in 2020. Airbus has a major impact on success of the UK aerospace sector, however its orderbook has been eroded by 30%; impacting jobs for themselves and SMEs within the supply chain. These are truly extra-ordinary times.

However, digitalisation has been important for a few years, so these are just accelerators for digitalisation and helping to prove why it’s necessary. But the time really is now for companies to do it. It may be unpredictable and, in some cases, risky, but if businesses don’t act now to digitalise, they may not survive.

Manufacturers need to be more responsive and agile to respond quickly to demand, maintain quick turnaround times, and ensure positive delivery performance. If businesses have strong, reliable data about the business, they will be in a position to react quickly to changing demands and requirements. It’s not just about simplifying the process and taking waste out of the process, but having the right intelligence to hand when you need it most as well.

The pandemic, combined with Brexit, also identified over-reliance on overseas supply chains, where this may no longer be sustainable in the future. So, if companies can digitalise and build positive relationships by proving themselves to be reliable, maintain quality standards and be flexible through this period, there will be huge reshoring opportunities as businesses look for localised supply chains.

Positive and transparent relationships with your customers and suppliers are crucial, as it minimises risks for your customers/suppliers when working with you. While companies could previously rely on site visits to build that trust, this may need to be done digitally now. Digital tools can allow you to share Live WIP, quality performance, delivery performance, via dashboards or shareable reports. And, this can be a competitive advantage for your business too.

If you also have transparency with your suppliers, you can begin to operate as extended networks, so you’re not working in fragmented silos. Obviously in order to do this, you need a digital system. Otherwise you’ll need armies of people to just maintain data! So, to give your customers visibility, you need to good streamlined systems with good data integrity.

Phased approach

Aerospace is a highly legislated industry where traceability remains critically important. So, if you’re able to provide this traceability using a paper-based system - yes it may not be ideal - but there are risks in changing over too quickly.

All companies start somewhere, but you have to look at ways to transfer systems effectively. One method could be to run the offline systems that are known to work alongside the digital version. Checking that it works as needed and slowly taking the training wheels off before embracing it fully.

Having said that, with Covid-19 safety regulations, you’ll likely need to reduce the paper being handed around the factory to minimise person-to-person interaction. This is one area in particular where digitisation is being accelerated by the pandemic.

But any change has to be a phased approach; it can’t be a big bang where it is changed over very quickly. It requires alignment between OEMs, legislators and SMEs to look for ways to make this change simpler and easier. Because it’s what everybody wants.

It pays to plan ahead

For SMEs looking at digitalisation, the most important thing is that they have a strategy or a plan in mind. What do you want to achieve strategically? How are you going to get there? And how does this project fit in?

We have a broad range of solutions from Production Control, to Scheduling, CRM, Quality Management, Business Intelligence, and Supplier Portals, which is all modular. So, we can adapt to each customer’s needs. Over the last 25 years of delivering digital technology for manufacturers, we’ve developed the ability to really understand the customer’s problems, and align our software around their goals.

One of the first things we might do with a company is hold a Digital Productivity workshop that focuses on the end performance objectives and work backwards. Then it is a lot easier for us to increase client fitness. So, you need to consider what you want to achieve? What KPIs to manage that will help us achieve that? And then it’s a case understanding what data you need to capture to track those KPIs? Some information you may be able to capture manually, some of it you may not be able to at all. Ideally, all of it will be automated, so you don’t compromise data integrity and you can act on that information as quickly as possible. But you can work up to that.

In any business, technology is only one part of it. Businesses comprise of people, process and technology to make up the whole. And that’s true of software implementation or system changes as well.

Firstly, the company needs to be led by strong leadership. You need clear objectives and a strategy that is effectively communicated. So, when the decision is taken to adopt a new system, it’s part of a strategy and a vision for where the company is going that everyone has bought into.

The reason for changing systems could be almost anything. But at the moment, we’re seeing an increasing trend that they are upgrading their system to enable digitalisation or Industry 4.0 capabilities. So if this is the plan, then it needs to be communicated effectively.

We do a lot of work to help people understand why they need the change and to explain the benefits that digitalisation will bring, and building that strategy out. For example, alongside the recent launch of Fitfactory, we offered a Digital Fitness Assessment, which helps companies build their own roadmap for digitalisation, completely free. We’re also setting up digitalisation workshops to provide practical, hands-on advice to help businesses to take the next steps.

Once the strategy is in place, the real key to these changes being successful is communication. If the whole team is bought into the vision, where the business is trying to go, and understands the importance of changing the system, it will ease some of those natural tensions.

One thing we encourage our customers to do is to identify the key people that will be involved in actually delivering the project. It’s important to get them involved as soon as possible, maybe even in the decision-making process. It is these people that will be most affected by the change in terms of their time, their role, and needing to work with others closely on the change process. So they need to feel a sense of ownership with it.

Industry 4.0 integration

Data is central to adoption of Industry 4.0. So, we consider production control software as an enabler to the Smart Factory and Artificial Intelligence programmes. Integration is of course vital, because you need different data sources to communicate with each other and be analysed together.

Realistically, if you try to implement Industry 4.0 before you have the foundations in place capturing good, high integrity data from a variety of sources that are connected, then your initiatives will fail. This is because AI learns from the data it receives, but if it receives no data or only part of the data, then it will draw the wrong conclusions – in the same way that people will. So, of course getting accurate data should be the initial priority for businesses.

Understanding where to start can be a challenge. However, with the launch of our new Digital Fitness Assessment, we provide clear insight into where a company is in its digital transformation journey, as well as providing a roadmap for moving forwards. We’ve already helped a number of companies get started on their digital transformation or take their next step by using the tool. It can be a real eye-opener if you’ve never thought about it in this way.

Innovate to differentiate

There’s no point in having a best in class MRP system if you need to supplement it with loads of spreadsheets to accurately align to your processes. If you can define the intelligence you need to make business decisions, then that gives a clear idea of what you need from your production control system.

With the launch of Fitfactory a couple of months ago, we pivoted our offering to be an end-to-end Industry 4.0 solution provider focused on helping SMEs in high value manufacturing sectors. And this decision was made to meet the emerging needs of our customers.

We focus on understanding SMEs end goals and finding a solution that’s right for their business. This is where the new Digital Fitness Assessment becomes a key part of any discussion with customers. We work with them initially to ensure this project is aligned with their business strategy – which helps to define and clarify the goals and outcomes of the project. So, while they may come to us looking for a production control system, that might not be what they need if they are unable to manage their cashflow yet.

And, when businesses come to us with a clear knowledge of what they need in mind, then of course some of our strengths include how aligned our systems are to their business processes, how we provide end-to-end traceability for Nadcap and AS9100, and our modular, scalable approach to software that helps to enable Return on Investment.

However, where we feel we differentiate ourselves, is with tools like the Digital Fitness Assessment and our new Workshops that we will be launching soon. We can bridge the gap between a traditional software provider and large consultancy firms, to help SMEs embed the right strategy to support their digital transformation and deliver the solutions as part of that to help them be successful and grow.

www.valuechain.com