The Manufacturer's Guide to Business Process Improvement

whitePaper | February 25, 2023

In the swarm of buzzwords surrounding today’s manufacturing sector, the “Smart Factory” or “Factory of the Future” buzz is especially prominent. In this white paper featuring experts from Siemens Digital Industries Software, we’ll unpack the meaning of the term, examine key considerations in understanding its value and explore a few important takeaways for how to take advantage of these technologies, including for small and medium businesses (SMBs).

whitePaper | November 10, 2022

Evolving Design Tools To Meet Increasingly Complex Demands Packaging machine designs evolve at a rapid pace. The emergence of smart manufacturing and the need for smarter machines is creating a challenge in electromechanical design, information management, and robotic adoption. New vision and sensor technologies provide increased capabilities at the component level, providing faster and more accurate insight into production quality and improving throughputs.

whitePaper | July 5, 2022

The manufacturing industry is constantly evolving. New technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, data and analytics, advanced robotics, wearables and connected devices, and other innovations are reshaping how manufacturers produce goods, engage with customers, and support employees

whitePaper | July 12, 2022

Modern manufacturers succeed when they balance the types of jobs they accept with the capabilities they offer, and maximize the value of both their equipment and their personnel. Shops that fail to optimize their capabilities and remove inefficiencies from their processes may be unable to produce at their real capacity and meet expected quality standards. To improve efficiency and reach their production potential, shops must discover ways to meet four main challenges, especially as highmix, low-volume (HMLV) production gradually replaces mass-quantity output in multiple industrial environments.

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.

whitePaper | January 13, 2020

Emerging technologies, such as advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, are transforming the world of production and creating new opportunities for industry, society and the environment. Data is critical, as is companies ability to manage it effectively. While manufacturers are making strides in this area, most focus on data within their companies and have difficulty maximizing their return on investment and driving innovation at scale.