Sustainability and Survival in Manufacturing: the Importance of Accelerating Digital Transformation
Insight from Thomas Leeson, Industry Marketing Strategist at OpenText:
Accelerating digital transformation in manufacturing to ensure business resiliency
“COVID-19 has been a wake-up call for many manufacturing companies, with over half (53%) of employees in this sector having no experience of home-working until the pandemic. In addition, the current situation has highlighted how poorly digitised many plants and supply chains still are.
The magnitude of the disruption is forcing companies to focus on resilience and adopt new ways of working. Manufacturers have little choice but to digitally transform and accelerate cloud deployments to react to an uncertain trading environment – needing to scale quickly and reliably, empower and secure a remote workforce, and provide supply chain flexibility.
A cloud-based integration platform, for example, can not only connect with suppliers and partners on a global scale to enable the real-time flow of information, which increases supply chain flexibility and robustness, but also ensures that remote workers can securely get access to and collaborate on business information to maintain – and even increase – productivity.
Business continuity management has never been so important, and any company that does not re-evaluate their IT infrastructure to create a more resilient business will ultimately fail. The good news is that manufacturers are up for the challenge – just look at how quickly a premium car company like Mercedes can turn itself into a medical device supplier.”
Why an increased focus on digital transformation and cloud technologies will enable more sustainable supply chain models
“In addition to the economic, competitive, and regulatory pressures they have already faced for years, manufactures around the world have a new one on their list: the drive for more ethical and sustainable supply chains. In fact, an OpenText survey revealed that 92% of manufacturing companies consider their CSR reputation to be important for their overall reputation in their respective markets, which is why many organisations are already looking to digitise supply chain processes as part of environmental and social initiatives.
Delivering a sustainable supply chain requires extremely high levels of transparency and visibility into an organisation’s multi-tiered network of suppliers. Only by creating digital processes can important supply chain areas be properly monitored and managed at scale, such as workers’ contracts and conditions, the provenance of materials, environmental performance and financial processes. In addition, new digital tools offer the potential for organisations to quickly source new suppliers that meet their sustainability standards.
The value of using a cloud-based platform can drastically improve a manufacturer’s ability to be flexible and collaborative with its trading partners, maintain visibility into its operations and to capitalise on key data insights within its operations. Manufacturing companies that seize the opportunity of the cloud through its agile and flexible architectures can achieve a stronger market footing against competitors and continue to deliver, operate, and excel amid global disruption.”
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