Four Tips to Improve Customer Loyalty in the Manufacturing Industry

whitePaper | June 20, 2022

The ultimate goal for composite manufacturing is the fully automated production of complex composite structures. This is being accomplished for unreinforced plastics and metals with modern Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies. Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) achieves automated thermoset composite lay-up but requires an autoclave or other post process.

whitePaper | November 28, 2022

Smart manufacturing is driving the manufacturing industry to modernize its software infrastructure. Whether you call it Industry 4.0 or the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), manufacturing is in the midst of a significant transformation. A key motivation in this push to modernize is that realtime data and dynamic decision making yield meaningful performance improvements for businesses.

whitePaper | November 23, 2022

American manufacturing is a quintessential industry and represents 11.39 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (the overall output of the American economy), contributing significantly: every $1 spent in manufacturing adds $2.47 to the economy.1 The sector makes a disproportionate economic contribution, too, including 20 percent of the nation’s capital investment, 35 percent of productivity growth, 60 percent of exports, and 70 percent of business R&D spending.2 Since there are almost 300,000 factories in the United States, the economy benefits greatly from manufacturers. To ensure these companies remain competitive, adopting new technologies is imperative. To that end, companies must also determine what tools and software will be necessary to most effectively leverage these new technologies.

whitePaper | January 10, 2023

Now COVID-19 has made it even more pressing to switch to digital, it is high time to say goodbye to manual, paper-based workflows in mass production factories. Digitization is the way forward to Industry 4.0. Because that’s the key to an Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) of world-class level (85%). In reality, most plants today have an OEE closer to 60%. We believe the solution lies in a digital manufacturing platform that supports all plant work processes and utilizes advanced technologies like Machine Learning, IoT, AI and mobile. In this whitepaper, we will show you how such a digital manufacturing platform could work by describing three manufacturing processes: Task Management, Deviation Management and Root Cause Analysis, and how digitalization of these processes can help you achieve an OEE of world-class level.

whitePaper | August 17, 2022

The need for true customer-centricity is impossible to ignore in the manufacturing world. Disruptive technology, instant availability of information, the expectation of to-the-second service in an on-demand consumer economy have given rise to a new power balance, in which the demands of the customer call the shots – rather than the way manufacturing businesses determine they should operate. In this redrawn landscape, intelligent automation (IA) can be the difference between success and failure. But what does it take to integrate IA into a manufacturing operation – and where are its benefits felt most prominently?

whitePaper | September 4, 2022

It’s the clarion call of today’s marketplace and the prime directive for executives in any business that designs or produces physical goods, no matter how simple or sophisticated. Fortunately, every product can be improved and made at less cost. But how quickly a company can satisfy such demands – before, say, its competitors do, or the market moves on to something new – is largely a function of the product-development cycle. Shorten that cycle, and you can improve the numbers across the board, from customer satisfaction to market share to profitability. However, one seemingly intractable barrier to faster product development lies within the traditional design process. That process starts with identifying a need in the market or within one’s organization; it ends with the manufacture of a finished product, whether a massive, complex assembly or one tiny part. In between are multiple iterations of designs and tests: engineers sketch out a solution, prototype and test it (or run a computerized simulation), and then go back to the design to address any shortcomings. But trade-offs complicate matters each time the cycle repeats: make a part lighter and it’s likely to become weaker, make it stronger and it will probably cost more, and so on. A workable, if not optimal, solution can usually be found. However, finding it often takes longer than the product-development timeline or budget will allow.