Manufacturing Talk

Guest Post by
Srinivas Kamadi, Practice Manager, Manufacturing, Infosys

While we look at spaces with tremendous current potential for servicing clients and increasing business engagements, I believe what sets us apart is the conscious effort towards looking into the future and placing our bets in areas that are likely to see traction over the next few years. Big data management is such an area where I am seeing a lot of client intent that is backed by the willingness to shell out real dollar investments. The volume of data that is getting generated in today's digital world is staggering...

• 4 Billion - Bits of content shared every day on Facebook!
• 1000 Petabytes - Data stored by the US discrete manufacturing firms in 2010 and is the largest among all the sectors in the US. Government sector at 850 Petabytes,
• Communication at 720 Petabytes and Process Manufacturing at 700 Petabytes are other huge opportunities.
• €300 Billion - is the cost reduction that can be brought about by Big data management in Europe
• $60 Billion - is the potential play for Big data management in Social networking and technologies space...

Continue reading "Big Data" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest Post by
Anjali Yadav, Principal Consultant - Salesforce.com, Infosys

As once Aristotle said, Man by nature is a social animal, a man who lives alone is either an angel or a beast. 'Social being, social health, social pyschology, social marketing, social media, social customers, social enterprises'...The word 'Social' has never been exploited as much as it is being today. And there is an inherit merit in the exploitation.

There has been cultural shift in the way we live,learn, work and play. Organizations and individual alike are looking for 'Engagement' and social media seems to be best bet to accomplish this.

Let us look at a purchase cycle which starts with Awareness of needs, Assessment of alternatives, alleviation of risks, decision and achievement of results. Every stage of the purchase cycle is driven by customer needs. Organizations are tapping into the social media to understand customer needs, buyers are finding is easier to interact with other customers for assessment of alternatives rather than follow a product campaign, buyers meet and discuss their preferences with likeminded people on the web for better decision making and alleviating risks of a purchase. Traditionally the process was marketer generated, today, the buying process is user or customer generated.

Continue reading "Creating Next Gen Social Business" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 4:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest Post by Varun Chhibber, Associate Consultant, MFG-ADT Online, Infosys

 

Crisis management has been the biggest bane for the manufacturers in the recent past. Manufacturing industry suffered from one crisis after another last year. First it was Japan earthquake and then Thailand floods.

The Japan Crisis caused major supply constraints for global automotive industry resulting in poor capacity utilization of plants, long waiting times, cancellation of orders etc. Similarly during the Thailand crisis many manufacturers were forced to shut down production or cut back the output due to disruption in supply of critical parts.

 

Continue reading "Crisis Management in the Times of Global Manufacturing Supply Chains" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 7:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest Post by Jagmeet Singh, Principal, Manufacturing Management Consulting Services, Infosys Limited

Ok, so here is what the big deal is about. What type of vehicle has the lowest carbon footprint and is most eco-friendly. At first instance, it would look like electric vehicle is the best without a doubt. No tailpipe emissions and hence no harm to the environment. Well, this is not the complete picture. Rather this starts another interesting debate.

 

Continue reading "Electric, Hybrid or Gasoline: Illusion, Fusion or Confusion" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 4:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest Post by

Sajit Kumar C N, Principal Consultant, Manufacturing, Infosys

The trigger for this blog was from here- an interesting and animated discussion on Supply Chain Visibility and Collaboration between Atul Chandra Pandey from Infosys and David Johnston of JDA- in the Thought Leaders video discussion hosted by SC Digest editor Dan Gilmore.

According to them, now that recession-fears are behind us to a large extend, the organizations have started focusing more on top-line growth as against cost containment which was the focus during past couple of years. Not just growth-'profitable' growth. In order to achieve that kind of growth, the organizations have to be more innovative in managing their supply chain.

Continue reading "Supply Chain Visibility Solutions- Means to an End ?" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest Post by

Ketan Chinchalkar, Senior Project Manager, MFG-ADT Online, Infosys

 

Decision Intelligence leveraging search engine technologies and text analytics is the revolutionary and new approach of decision intelligence by exploiting the enterprise information assets and the unstructured web content. It started with the vision of addressing Business Intelligence platform limitations, but then it started redefining the field of decision intelligence by merging Business Intelligence (BI), Competitive Intelligence (CI), and innovative and new technologies derived from the search engine market. We all know that, BI encompasses a range of IT tools, usually accessible through a common BI portal that aids decision-making for enterprise analysts and managers, including financial performance reporting, monitoring of current operations, performance benchmarking, marketing analytics and sales trends identification etc. CI enables the enterprise to understand their competitors' strategies, and those of other important market players, and is particularly intended to identify trends and new and potential opportunities for growth, mergers and diversification.

 

Continue reading "How does Search technology boost Decision Intelligence?" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest Post by
Sachin Bery, Principal Consultant, Consulting & System Integration Unit - MFG, Infosys

After a great holiday season and chance to be with family, its time to be back with "business as usual". The only thing is that there is no "business as usual" today. It's the vagaries of various variables which have made the area of Supply Chain Management in particular a very dynamic one. While this is an opportunity for innovations to happen, it's a constant source of sleepless nights to our clients and us as well as we search for the solutions & not a sleeping pill.

Continue reading "Supply Chain Visibility and that too in the Cloud - Even Santa is at loss!" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest Post by
Ajit Mhaiskar, Principal Architect, Manufacturing, Infosys Technologies Limited.

Last week, I ran into an interesting post from MRP Systems analyst Derek Singleton titled "How Manufacturing Software Should Adapt to Support Lean Principles". As I pondered on the points mentioned in the blog, I got thinking about the various situations I have encountered in this context. In my opinion, the complexity of today's supply chains remains one of the biggest challenges facing manufacturing corporations across the world. The supply chain complexity is also one of the biggest hurdles in adopting lean principles fully across the manufacturing value-chain. The challenges posed to lean adoption also change based on the type of manufacturing.

• At one end of the spectrum, we have several large hi-tech companies with constrained production capabilities that are coming out with block-buster products (mobiles, tablets, music players, cameras etc) with short shelf-lives. The biggest challenge for them remains getting the product out of the door as quickly as possible with the best quality and into the hands of the super-eager consumer. Lean principles most likely take a back-seat in such situations where time to market becomes the single most important thing.

• In the middle portion of the spectrum, we have process manufacturers and resource providers where the nature of the process can pose significant challenges to applying lean principles.

• At the far end of the spectrum, we have automotive and aerospace companies who have relatively longer product evolution cycles and long shelf lives (with mature, evolved processes to boot). Lean principles mean a whole lot to these enterprises. In discrete/industrial manufacturing, automotive and aerospace sectors, strong focus on lean supported by appropriate software can be a big game-changer.

The right software has a big role to play in the adoption of lean. With almost all large discrete/industrial manufacturers already having embraced ERPs extensively, Going Lean the ERP Way can be crucial to ensure success in the adoption of lean. This change will entail process level lean initiatives as well as utilizing right tools and techniques offered by ERP packages to reduce waste.

Manufacturers can also make their supply chains leaner through integrated planning using the ERP and maximizing benefits. Manufacturers can also consider adoption of business platforms or bespoke application development to make the supply chains leaner.

Technology has massive potential to deliver lean improvements through digital manufacturing capabilities. My colleague ST Muthuvelan, Principal Consultant, Lean Manufacturing Systems and Engineering has an article published in Managingautomation.com, wherein he illustrates how technology can deliver transformational value through PLM implementing lean principles and that being complemented by Manufacturing Execution Software (MES) that also adopts lean principles. According to him, manufacturers can minimize wastage and address situations such as muda (non value-added activities, or waste), mura (uneven operations) and muri (overburdening workers) through MES and lean concepts.

Wishing all the readers a very happy new year and all the luck with your muda, mura and muri!

Continue reading "Thou shalt continue 'lean' ing in this new year" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 4:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest Post by

Yogesh Bhatt, Principal Technology Architect, Manufacturing, Infosys

 

Most manufacturing organization struggle when it comes to relating the business objectives to the day-to-day operational measures, until that gets too late in the game resulting in sub-optimal performance, quality of delivered goods and in ability to take right decisions when they had to be taken.

Continue reading "Integrated Manufacturing Analytics can provide higher profitability and customer satisfaction" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 4:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guest Post by

Ganesh Subramanian, Senior Consultant, Manufacturing, Infosys

Supply chain objective is to have the right material in the right quantities at the right time, at the right place and at minimal cost.  Supply chain network has to function with suppliers, internal organizations (Marketing, Sales, Planning, Manufacturing, Quality and Engineering change control), distributors, retailers and customers. These stakeholders may be locally or globally located. Having proper communication methodology is vital for supply chain success.  Someone said 'Change is inevitable' & another said 'The only constant thing in life is Change'. In High Tech industry, I believe that in a span of 18 months, a processor size reduces by half and its speed increases twice. For example, the mobile phone that I bought last year (latest model) is one of the oldest models today. It becomes more complex to meet supply chain objective when one or more changes occur in the value chain.

Continue reading "Sustaining supply chain by optimizing supply chain communication" »

Posted by Guest Blogger at 7:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)