This is the third post in Aberdeen’s Digital Transformation Blog Series. It focuses on the organizations that are achieving their revenue targets but failing to meet their time-to-market, quality, and cost targets. It also outlines the steps they can take to improve their operational effectiveness and become top performers.

Manufacturers and engineers thrive off innovation. Modern ideas can breathe new life into products and services that exceed customer expectations. But developing a great concept is different than executing it. Amidst high market demand for more complex products, some manufacturers struggle to optimize their performance and ensure they are minimizing operating costs, sending out high quality products, and meeting their deadlines.

Aberdeen defines the following groups in our latest analysis of survey responses from 262 manufacturing and engineering leaders, based on their performance in time-to-market, quality, cost, and revenue:

Unlike those who are falling flat with revenue, those who are missing the mark are in tune with what the market wants. They are achieving their revenue targets by developing products that meet the complexity, price, and functionality demands of their customers. However, they aren’t executing as well internally. Poor quality products are resulting in greater costs from warranties and recalls, and they are behind others in their improvements in development time and cost per unit.

These manufacturers who are missing the mark need to reevaluate their design and production processes to determine areas for improvement. The range of challenges these organizations face require short-term solutions to address the day-to-day issues affecting their operations in conjunction with long-term solutions to establish time-to-market, quality, and cost excellence for years to come.

Short-Term Solutions: Expanding Communication and Change Management Capabilities

Communication is key when it comes to refining manufacturing and engineering processes. Production and design teams need established channels to communicate requirements and initiate change orders when necessary. Technology that supports communication, especially in today’s remote work environment, is critical to keeping internal operations running smoothly.

In comparison to those who are missing the mark, other companies are 66% more likely to collaborate with suppliers for feedback on manufacturability, 56% more likely to standardize processes for requesting engineering change orders, and 23% more likely to establish cross-functional continuous improvement teams to improve manufacturing operations. Manufacturers who are missing the mark should take note of the technologies and processes their competitors have implemented to ensure seamless communication across the enterprise.

Long-Term Solutions: Increasing Visibility into Operational and Customer Data

Fixing the day-to-day problems by strengthening collaboration is the first step in working to improve achievements of time-to-market, quality, and cost targets. But keeping the weight off is often more difficult than losing it in the first place. Manufacturers should look to increase visibility into their operational and customer data to gain control over their processes and make data-driven decisions to ensure the organization continues to meet products targets. Currently, those who are missing the mark are falling behind others in their adoption of real-time visibility into customer orders, operational and financial metrics, and global operations.

Real-time visibility into customer orders allows manufacturers to leverage customer data to determine which products are the most popular and which are barely selling, and they can use these insights to inform new product introductions, volume production increases, and end-of-life for certain products. Linking operational and financial metrics helps business leaders identify when targets aren’t being achieved, and then they can take action to make improvements. This agile, integrated approach to manufacturing ensures the business can quickly make adjustments and continue moving forward.

The biggest gap for those who are missing the mark lies in their visibility at the executive level. This indicates that their leadership may be unaware of the fact that they frequently miss their time-to-market, quality, and cost targets. Without executive support for operational improvements and digital transformation initiatives, plant managers and product development directors struggle to advocate for resources to be allocated toward process improvements. Empowering executives through the collection, integration, analysis, and visualization of real-time manufacturing data is critical for ensuring process improvements have a lasting impact.

Deploy the Right Strategies to Optimize Your Manufacturing and Engineering Processes Today

To find greater success in time-to-market, quality, and cost, organizations should look to:

  • Promote collaboration and integration across the organization
  • Prioritize agility and visibility to respond to changes in customer demand and market disruptions
  • Support data-driven decision-making to take advantage of opportunities for continuous improvement

By keeping these three strategies in mind today, manufacturers and engineering leaders can make the changes necessary to improve operational effectiveness.

Becoming a Top Performer and achieving operational and financial targets takes time, so if the short-term and long-term solutions explained here seem farther down the road for your organization, that’s okay! The last post in this blog series will focus on Laggards and the steps they can take to achieve their time-to-market, quality, cost, and revenue goals.

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