Smart manufacturing requires more than just investing in the latest IIoT solutions and technologies. Organizations that successfully incorporate smart manufacturing must experience a top-down shift from a process-first mindset to a culture-first mindset, effectively prioritizing the people side of the business.
When every level of an organization is engaged and invested, a company can truly move forward and join “industry 4.0.” The following are necessary focus areas for successful integration of smart manufacturing principles and solutions.
Empower People
Manufacturers that want to establish a culture of innovation must first realize the value of every employee. Implementing advanced technologies that can take over mundane tasks and enable employees to function at their highest levels enables these same employees to create high-quality goods more efficiently, boosting overall productivity and enhancing the bottom line.
Advanced technologies and connected, “smart” solutions that empower employees with data-driven insights to make real-time decisions that feed organizational agility. An agile organization is a profitable organization able to quickly adapt to shifting consumer demand, or fluctuating material and product specifications.
Create Effective Teams
Smart manufacturing requires managers to create and coach effective teams, ensuring departments work together, collaborating to quickly solve problems and make decisions when problems or abnormal conditions arise. Functioning teams must understand production and profit goals to make decisions that are best for the organization as a whole. Effective teams can avoid line shutdowns, reduce production lag times, speed time-to-market, and cut costs.
Connect Leadership
Smart manufacturing needs smart leaders that connect and motivate employees and teams, helping everyone adjust to change, understand the organizational vision, and feel empowered to play their vital part in the “new way of doing business.” Connected leaders engage employees to help reconfigure production lines, workspaces, and more to most effectively incorporate new, digital technologies and solutions.
Without connected leaders, collaboration fails, and cohesion between human capital and technology cannot effectively occur. Constant communication and a transparent coaching attitude in the C-Suite can determine the success or failure of truly modernizing your plant.
Manage Change Management
Incorporating new, advanced IIoT technologies and digital solutions on the shop floor will transform processes, employee roles, the way teams communicate and work together, the underlying business culture, and more. A top-down approach to managing these shifts, driven by board and company leaders, requires constant communication to guide the company, its employees and partners through transitional periods. Connected leaders must transparently illustrate the unique value of digital transformation and prepare every employee or team to adjust and overcome challenges as they arise.
Start with FREEDOM™
FREEDOM™ is an asset monitoring system that collects and analyzes important manufacturing data in real-time, arming your team with the data required to optimize utilization, improve quality and performance, root out inefficiencies, and maximize profit. By integrating with a wide range of business systems, FREEDOM™ helps companies identify bottlenecks, streamline processes, and improve operational efficiency and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
Today’s consumers increasingly demand greater customization in products. An organization’s ability to produce high-quality products and adapt to a shifting marketplace determines whether or not it can compete and succeed long-term. Advanced, digital IIoT solutions like FREEDOM™ are helping manufacturers empower employees, create effective teams, and effectively manage change, helping manufacturers create a true smart manufacturing culture from the shop floor to the top floor.
