TRENDS TO DOMINATE THE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY

Posted by: Pooja Arora, Head of Marketing Strategies

As the world’s largest democracy and the country with one of the highest number of scientists and engineers, India is a key political, social and economic player that will shape the course of the Fifth Industrial Revolution.

Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0, as it is popularly called, revolutionised the manufacturing world by providing manufacturers with opportunities to utilize advanced tools and technologies throughout the product lifecycle. It enabled manufacturers to increase operational visibility, reduce costs, expedite production times, and deliver exceptional customer support.

However, now is the time to shift our paradigm from Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0 . Where the focus of the fourth industrial revolution focused on using technology to optimize the means of production, the 5th industrial revolution is all about connecting man and machine — that is, collaboration between humans and smart systems.

The year 2022 will revolve around how to effectively operate amid challenging health guidelines.

Even though the global pandemic presents multiple challenges to manufacturers, there are some innovative technologies that will continue to dominate the landscape.

For a manufacturer to become more efficient and effective, the focus needs to shift on innovation and technology. Developing strategies to build the company’s reputation has become significant especially at a time when the digitization of production has become a necessity.

For the manufacturing industry, new opportunities are opening up enabling the manufacturers to coordinate their global programs, gain speed of execution and better collaborate internally. Those who wish to not just survive, but thrive, must leverage the latest technologies and trends. 

Employee Safety- a Forte! 

It would not be wrong to say that employee safety has become the most significant trend for all the manufacturers heading into 2022. In the wake of current pandemic, workplace safety has become a priority for all. In addition to the basic safety precautions, such as practicing social distancing measures on the production floor and ensuring that workers sanitize their workspace, it has become the utmost responsibility of the manufacturers to closely and carefully monitor who enters and exits their facilities, and which individuals or equipment they interact with. For this reason, many  manufacturers are forced to in-source facilities maintenance and management and have placed increased emphasis on traceability, which requires manufacturers to reclaim internal equipment data from OEMs.

With the renewed focus, the technicians will need to be more prepared for each job so that they can quickly complete open work orders. It is also predicted that this trend will have a direct effect on supply chain visibility, as manufacturers demand greater transparency from suppliers as they work to track issues and claims throughout the manufacturing process.

Shifting Attention from B2B to B2C

Recently, multiple manufacturers have chosen to shift their focal point from the traditional business-to-business (B2B) model to a business-to-consumer (B2C) model. Transitioning to B2C model offers a number of appealing benefits such as:

Increased Profits: Getting an exposure to B2C will enable the manufacturer’s to get the retail price (MSRP) rather than wholesale prices for their products.

Faster Market Time: In comparison to the lengthy traditional retail sales cycle that required the manufacturers to lock-in product development far ahead of order and delivery, now the manufacturers can quickly test and push products to the market, offering to them a distinct competitive advantage.

Brand Control: Being in contact with the customer, the risk of manufacturer’s brand being diluted or misrepresented by third parties is minimised.

Price Control: Manufacturers are empowered with a better opportunity to reinforce their MSRP.

Better Customer Data: Selling directly to consumers enables manufacturers to collect customer data resulting in better products, stronger relationships, and increased sales.

Selecting an ecommerce platform with strong operations to support the B2B and B2C platform is also a necessity as it will enable one to sell directly to consumers. It will have to deliver on order fulfilment and tracking, secure payments, customer service management, and sales and marketing activity tracking while providing a 360° view of all your B2B and B2C customer interactions.

Planning a COVID-19 Exit Strategy

The unprecedented situation of COVID-19 has made certain products and manufacturing companies to disappear in the marketplace. Those manufacturers that do manage to survive will have had their strategy slate wiped clean, meaning there’s no time like the present to start planning a pandemic exit strategy.

The post-pandemic planning framework can be broken into three-phases:

Phase 1: Immediate and urgent actions are needed to keep people safe and essential business functions. 

Phase 2: Reopen, rehire, re-budget and resupply to create a plan to restore a scalable state.  

Phase 3: A strategic and durable execution across the organization, using learning and emergent patterns will set a new foundation to renew a business.

Apart from the above mentioned techniques, organizations ought to reduce or retire operating models that have been pushed to the point of breaking. Organizations thrown into chaos due to sudden surges in demand can expect demand to return to pre-pandemic levels in the near future.

In addition to it, manufacturers have to figure the scalability of their products and plan the development strategy, readjust forecasts, assess impact to business, and determine where to retool, rescale, or draw back accordingly.

Assimilate Green in Manufacturing

Presently, the manufacturing industry showcases 54% of the world’s energy consumption and 20% of global emissions. And thus it has become inevitable for the manufacturing industries to go green. Nevertheless, opting for environment friendly resources will offer benefits such as recovering and repurposing materials and resources, switching to renewable energy to power factories and tracking every step in the manufacturing process to lessen waste. Specifically, in the sectors like building materials, manufacturers are heading towards more sustainability. Given the rapidly growing demand, the global green building materials market will continue to expand in 2021 and is expected to reach $425 billion by 2027.

A Buoyant Supply Chain

Industry 4.0 faced many challenges owing to the difficulty in procurement of materials that were needed to operate. The supply chains across the world were hampered and obstructed because of the excess burden, resulting in many companies without the materials to operate.

With a progress in the market, companies are focused on building more resilient supply chains to avoid similar crisis scenarios in the future using techniques such as expansion of supplier list by moving from single sourcing to multi-sourcing, digitally monitoring the supply chains with Artificial Intelligence that can inform and alert the companies of potential disruptions, identifying suppliers closer to home, and using additive manufacturing (3D printing) to manufacture supplies in house. In addition to the afore mentioned techniques,having access to emerging technology and digital networks will strengthen certainly supply chains.