Manufacturing Home   Achieving Visability   IDC Research

 

 

Superior Plant Floor Visibility Key For EMEA Manufacturers

More than 65 percent of European manufacturers said they plan to invest in plant floor visibility technology in the next three years as part of a push toward operational excellence, according to a recent IDC survey of more than 240 manufacturers.

In a report on the survey, IDC outlines the most critical initiatives for manufacturers during the next three years and the "extraordinary advancements" in technology that will support those efforts – RFID and 2-D barcodes in the short-term, and IoT (Internet of Things) in the near future.

Download the Full IDC Manufacturing Survey

 

European manufacturers are getting back to basics. They are realising that their direct involvement in manufacturing operations is essential to fostering innovation and to achieve superior customer fulfilment.

 
Pierfrancesco Manenti, head of IDC Manufacturing Insights

Contact Us

 

Factors Driving
Operational Excellence		 Challenging Plant
Floor Area		 Maturity Levels of Plant
Floor Visibility		 Evolution of the Maturity
Framework

 

Factors Driving Operational Excellence

  Plant Initiatives     Average rating on a scale from 1 to 5

Gain more plant floor visibility

European manufacturers believe that the most compelling approach to achieving operational excellence is through gaining better plant floor visibility. This means enabling plant floor personnel to have a better understanding of the status and performance of plant floor operations in an optimal timeframe.

  
1 2 3 4 5
46%

Invest in Factory Automation

Manufacturers will continue investing in factory automation to standardize production, increase quality, and reduce operational costs. Automation will also enable enterprises to gather essential data from their plant floors in real-time.

  
1 2 3 4 5
45%
Embrace green manufacturing principles: reduce, reuse and recycle.  
1 2 3 4 5
42%

Improve Manufacturing Flexibility

Making the plant floor more flexible will require manufacturers to completely rethink their plant floor in a way that it can be quickly reconfigured to fulfill frequently changing customer needs.

  
1 2 3 4 5
42%
Improve maintenance management / assets utilization  
1 2 3 4 5
41%

Invest in plant floor IT

Manufacturers are realizing that investing in modern IT that can create a real-time decision making environment for plant floor employees will play an essential role in achieving better levels of operational excellence.

  
1 2 3 4 5
41%
Remove unnecessary / non-value added activities  
1 2 3 4 5
39%
Increase sourcing from low labor-cost countries  
1 2 3 4 5
39%
Attract younger generation to work on the plant floor  
1 2 3 4 5
39%
Implement or extend existing lean / six sigma or other continuous improvement initiatives  
1 2 3 4 5
39%
Improve visibility along the supply chain  
1 2 3 4 5
38%
Improve quality  
1 2 3 4 5
34%
Outsource manufacturing operations  
1 2 3 4 5
30%
Reduce plant floor workers  
1 2 3 4 5
29%

Back to top

Challenging Plant Floor Areas

 

All plant floor areas are still considered challenging

Inbound/Outbound
European manufacturers have a growing awareness of the importance of inbound and outbound processes which have traditionally been considered of marginal importance. Poor management of these processes may lead to excess inventory and poor customer fulfillment.

Manufacturing
The excess of WIP (work-in-process), which is the result of suboptimal and disconnected operational processes, particularly material flow and production, is of notable concern.

Maintenance & Quality
Ancillary processes such as maintenance and quality are considered a challenge in the modern manufacturing enterprise, as they are typically poorly coordinated with manufacturing operations processes.

Back to top

Maturity Levels of Plant Floor Visibility

1. Limited

This is the lowest level of plant floor visibility definition where we positioned manufacturers that do not recognize or expect a particular impact of plant floor visibility on business performance. The key operational driver for these companies is merely cost cutting. These companies therefore have a very reactive attitude and would not invest in IT to support plant floor visibility. They would see this as a mere cost and in fact tend to still use manual data collection processes, supported by spreadsheets.

Definition:

  

Expected Impact on Business Performance:

  

Operational Driver:

  

Frequency of Data Collection:

  

Type of Data Collected:

  

Enabling Technology:

Plant floor visibility is not considered relevant or required

  

Low Impact

  

Cost Reduction

  

Data is manually collected from time to time

  

Limited

  

Paper, spreadsheets

2. Basic

Manufacturers at this level of maturity have basic visibility of plant floor data. This is generally limited to production data from a few areas of the plant floor. These organizations have made or are making focused investments in plant floor technologies such as factory automation, ruggedized handheld devices and barcodes. They are essentially able to gather production data from "fixed assets" (e.g., CNC machines, PLCs, controls) on a time-based fashion (e.g. at end of each day or end of each shift). This data is integrated into limited in scope manufacturing execution systems (MES) or ERP applications.

Definition:

  

Expected Impact on Business Performance:

  

Operational Driver:

  

Frequency of Data Collection:

  

Type of Data Collected:

  

Enabling Technology:

Basic visibility of production data that is gathered in some areas of the plant floor

  

Low Impact

  

Cost Reduction

  

End of Each Shift or Day

  

Data from fixed assets (e.g. CNC Machines, PLCs, controls, etc.)

  

Factory automation, ruggedized hand held devices, barcodes, MES, ERP

3. Integrated

This level of maturity is an extension of the previous one and includes those organizations that are able to gather production data from across the entire plant floor, including inbound/outbound, warehouses and production processes through widespread automation investments and end-to-end MES applications. These companies see production data collection as a way to save workers from time-consuming data entry activities, reduce overall operational costs, and improve quality, timeliness and reliability of data input.

Definition:

  

Expected Impact on Business Performance:

  

Operational Driver:

  

Frequency of Data Collection:

  

Type of Data Collected:

  

Enabling Technology:

Production data is gathered across all areas of the plant floor, including receiving, warehouse, production and shipping

  

Medium Impact

  

Cost Reduction

  

Event-driven (e.g. at the end of batches, work orders, production phase, etc.)

  

Data from fixed assets (e.g. CNC Machines, PLCs, controls, etc.)

  

Factory automation, ruggedized hand held devices, barcodes, MES, ERP

4. Extended

Going beyond automatic gathering of plant floor data, organizations with an "extended" level of plant floor visibility are able to measure plant floor performance in real-time by measuring dashboards of critical KPIs. Those companies believe that plant floor visibility has a high impact on business performance and strive to increase productivity rather than just looking for cost cutting opportunities. These organizations have extended their plant floor visibility capabilities through the use of RFID or other location-based technologies that enable real-time gathering of information, particularly from "moving assets" such as bins, pallets, racks, parts, finished goods, tools, etc.

Definition:

  

Expected Impact on Business Performance:

  

Operational Driver:

  

Frequency of Data Collection:

  

Type of Data Collected:

  

Enabling Technology:

Real-time dashboards enable to understand the status of most critical KPI

  

High Impact

  

Increase productivity

  

Real-time

  

Data from moving assets (e.g. bins, pallet, racks, parts, finished goods, AGV, tracks, fork-lifts, tools, etc.)

  

RFID/Sensors

5. Advanced

IDC Manufacturing Insights created a set of five incremental definitions for plant floor visibility. Each definition describes a different level of maturity of plant floor visibility and supersedes the previous one in terms of business benefits (e.g., expected impact on business performance) and technology drivers (e.g., frequency of data collection, type of data collected). The five levels of plant floor visibility can be defined as follows:

Definition:

  

Expected Impact on Business Performance:

  

Operational Driver:

  

Frequency of Data Collection:

  

Type of Data Collected:

  

Enabling Technology:

Plant floor visibility is fundamental to achieve faster decision-making capability on the plant floor. This enables autonomic or self-healing processes, teams and production systems

  

Very High Impact

  

Increase productivity

  

Real-time

  

People knowledge and collaboration

  

Big Data Analytics, Social Business, Cloud, Internet of Assets

 

 Back to top

Evolution of the Maturity Framework

With an average level of plant floor visibility between "basic" and "integrated", the framework highlights how many European manufacturers are still immature in their understanding of plant floor visibility. But for how long?

In three years from now, the level of plant floor maturity will be significantly higher than today among European manufacturers. What are you waiting for?

 

Back to top

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter

New product highlights, informative case-studies, upcoming events

Subscribe