Managing Automation - January 2008 - (Page 22) OUTLOOK: 2008 a ma pollgility TIME-TO-MARKET PRESSURE NOW CHIEF AGILITY DRIVER Q: What’s driving the need for business agility? 11.3% 16% 12.2% 13% 6.3% 38.5% 44% 46.7% 42% 49.2% 50% 57.2% 56% 49.2% 43% 47% 51% 42.6% 43% 31.6% 28% 2008 2007 2008 2007 2008 2007 2008 2007 Competitive factors Reducing time to market Cost reduction 7% 8% 7% Changing market requirements Low = Medium = High = THIS YEAR, PRODUCT DESIGN HAS MORE AGILITY FOCUS Q: What degree of emphasis is management placing on the following activities in relation to becoming more agile? Ability to understand and respond to demand signals 8.5% 8% 14.5% 51.6% 50% 42.3% 49% 52.6% 57% 61.9% 62% 50.5% 54% 50.9% 51% 39.9% 42% 43.2% 37% 31.9% 30% 24.3% 27% 36.6% 36% 35.8% 36% 2008 2007 2008 2007 2008 2007 2008 2007 2008 2007 2008 2007 Ability to design products 13% 15.5% Managing the supply chain 13% 13.6% Allocating labor 10% 13% Production, assembly 11% 13.3% Logistics, fulfillment 13% Low = Medium = High = Percentages may have been rounded and may not equal 100%. nies would put a moderate degree of emphasis on it this year. This glass may be half full. Relatively good news can also be found in attitudes toward technology budgets. This year, again, a majority of survey respondents, 54.9%, indicated that their companies’ technology budgets would increase, compared with 57.8% saying so last year. And those expecting their budgets to be pretty much at the same level as 2007 came in just about 2 points higher than last year, to 30.4% of the survey group. At the top of the purchase intention list again this year are such technologies as wireless, manufacturing and business intelligence software, e-commerce technologies, RFID, and product lifecycle management and ERP applications. Agility, a business idea about which Managing Automation has been asking for the past two years, may have lost some of its luster as a “hot” management concept and could be settling in for a period of implementation and digestion. Although the percentage of respondents indicating that business agility is a high priority for their companies in 2008 actually slipped to 37.7%, compared with 45% last year, an overwhelming majority of companies said that it is clearly on their agendas as a business activity. But the drivers for agility are apparently shifting and reflect the degree of emphasis that was seen vis-à-vis growth and cost reduction. Last year, poll respondents said they most closely associated cost reduction with agility. But this year, respondents said that while cost reduction remains very important, reducing time to market has become even more important. In the new poll, 49.2% of survey respondents said reducing time to market is the most intense driver related to agility now, compared with 43% saying so last year. As a factor, cost reduction slipped slightly, to 47% of respondents from 51% last year. The inadequacy of most manufacturers’ IT infrastructures to support agility, clearly in evidence in the MA polls over the past two years, remains true in the new poll, but what’s encouraging this year is the percentage of companies saying that they are modernizing those infrastructures in order to advance the discipline. This year, 41.6% said modernization efforts are under way, up 8 points from last year’s survey. Sustaining management’s focus on agility as a key business discipline, which has surfaced as a more pronounced challenge in this year’s poll, may ver y well be tested as the months of 2008 unfold and the growth pattern of the economy materializes. Should Fed Chairman Bernanke’s predictions pan out, manufacturers may shift their attention yet again back to cost reduction. s ma 22 2008 January
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