Collaborative Manufacturing
Someone forwarded me a link to a white paper entitled “Collaborative Manufacturing Explained” by MESA International. It was an interesting read and I couldn’t help but see the synergies in this paper with Response Management.
The basic premise of the paper is that market conditions have made it such that companies need to excel at collaboration in order to thrive in today’s environment. The paper says “companies are competing as supply chains, not individual entities.” It goes on to say that “to maintain a competitive edge, manufacturers must make a major shift in strategy to effectively synchronize activities among functionally and geographically dispersed groups.”
The paper also points to the need for business process changes. I’ve seen this happen, but typically with Response Management software this comes as a second step. Our Response Management software is all about empowering people throughout the extended supply network with the information and tools they need to make quicker and better decisions. Thus, the first use is typically in support of existing business processes–helping people execute them more crisply and effectively. Over time, organizations see that this enhanced ability to sense and respond leads to clear opportunities to improve the core business processes that drive the business. Once the organization has improved its supply chain agility and supply chain collaboration capabilities with tools like Response Management, business process improvements are achieved.
As the paper says, improved decision-making capabilities and faster response times enable the organization to adjust to change more rapidly and take corrective action that improves both customer service and operating results.
