Managing Automation - January 2009 - (Page 21) changes that are forcing increased agility, manufacturers said (see charts). But, according to the survey, many manufacturers are struggling to streamline business processes fast enough to cope with the accelerating pace of change they face. Only 13% of manufacturers responding to the MA poll said they have substantially improved agility over the past year, while 25% said their agility has remained the same over the past 12 months. A similar recent survey of CEOs by IBM showed that 83% expect their business to face substantial change over the next three years. But only 61% said their companies had demonstrated the ability to cope with rapid change in the past. costs and quality results across plants, so it was unable to make educated decisions about where in its plant network to fill a given order. Nor could the company MANUFACTURERS HAVE THE BEST INTENTIONS FOR isolate best practices. BECOMING MORE AGILE So, a couple of years ago, Saint-Gobain Sekurit made a maQ: Is your company interested in becoming jor change, deploying common a “more agile” business, one that can respond to customers faster, develop practices, such as cost accountand bring products to market more raping, as well as common systems idly, and adapt to changing business conin all of its plants. Today, the ditions with greater flexibility? company uses Apriso’s FlexNet Yes: 93.8% MES applications to gather data Don’t know: 2.1% on yields, scrap, downtime, and productivity in all of its plants No: 4.2% three times each day. The data is fed into the comKEEPING UP WITH COSTS pany’s SAP ERP system where For many manufacturers, the first step toward it is combined with transportaimproved agility is better, real-time visibility tion, logistics, and other cost Q: Does agility have a greater focus for into what’s going on both inside and outside of information. Then it is moved to your company today than one year ago? the business. Perhaps not surprisingly, a recent an SAP Business Warehouse Yes: 59.6% Don’t survey by Aberdeen Group showed that mansystem, where cost analysis and know: 12.8% ufacturers with visibility into in-transit shipcomparisons are run daily, and ments, order and supplier events, and trade results are distributed globally No: 27.7% document status are significantly more likely to via scorecards showing key perbe able to do things like redirecting in-transit formance indicators. orders to locations with higher demand and “Now we are able to decide changing routing instructions to make sure before starting production where Q: Over the past 12 months, to what extent finished goods arrive on time. we should produce a given orhas your company improved its agility? One manufacturer that has become more der, given up-to-date cost inforImproved somewhat: agile in recent years by improving real-time mation and the saturation of 53.2% visibility into production costs, quality, and production lines,” Ober says. other metrics is Saint-Gobain Sekurit, one of Remained the same: Saint-Gobain Sekurit’s ability the world’s largest manufacturers of glass, to make those kinds of deci25.5% mainly for automotive applications. Even besions dynamically, based on acImproved substantially: fore automotive markets worldwide went into curate, current information, will 12.8% a tailspin last year, Saint-Gobain Sekurit was only become more important in Don’t know the near future as 6.4% Without accurate visibility, Saint-Gobain the automotive inAgility has declined: Sekurit had no way to compare production dustry continues to 2.1% contract. With fewcosts and quality results across plants. er orders, Saint- Percentages may have been rounded and may not equal 100%. under intense pressure from car makers such Gobain Sekurit will have more as GM, Ford, Renault, and Toyota to continfree manufacturing capacity and more freeuously lower prices each year. The problem dom to move production around in search of was that, with 45 plants spread across nine the lowest cost and best quality, Ober says. countries, each using different plant systems Like Saint-Gobain Sekurit, mid-sized irriand processes, Saint-Gobain Sekurit didn’t gation equipment manufacturer Fresno have a clear, up-to-date idea of what its costs Valves is becoming more agile by gaining were on each order produced. better up-to-date visibility into cost informa“We were not sure to have accurate figures tion. Fresno Valves’ business is largely enbecause the way of calculating costs differed gineered to order and, until recently, the from one country to another,” says Pascal process of putting together a quote for a cusOber, manufacturing competency center ditomer project was manual, time-consuming, rector at the company. and subject to out-of-date cost information. It Without accurate visibility, Saint-Gobain often took up to a month to turn a customer’s Sekurit had no way to compare production request for quote into a complete, approved January f ma pollocus 21 2009
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