Industrial competitiveness is a crucial point in industry. However, we hear a lot about digitalization in manufacturing and production professions, even industry 4.0 or industrial transformation. In fact, digitalization and a company’s competitiveness are now closely linked. But what are these links? To answer this, we suggest that you define what digitalization is before evaluating what it offers, namely better responsiveness and the opportunity to optimize resources.
The 4th industrial revolution corresponds to a new way of organizing the means of production through the digitalization of industry. The objective is to obtain products manufactured in large numbers, perfectly meeting customer needs while being of high quality. The industrial challenge is, therefore, to gain in competitiveness, responsiveness, and flexibility.
What is industrial digitalization?
Industrial digitalization integrates digital technologies into the company’s activities. This goes through several levels:
- The processes
- The working methods
- The tools used
- The products created by the industry
- The relationship with customers
How do you carry out a digitization project?
For that, it is necessary :
- Carry out a diagnosis: analyze the company’s digital situation to obtain an overview of your situation at the moment and define possible improvements.
- Define a strategy with the aim of defining the new objectives of the company.
- Create specifications: thanks to this, you will be able to define which solution(s) best meet your needs.
- Implement new processes while ensuring the optimal integration of new digital tools in order to simplify the daily life of industries and enable greater work efficiency.
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Gain responsiveness thanks to digitalization
By digitizing your industry, you will save time at all levels. You need to identify which tools will allow you to do this. Here are some examples:
- CRM tools
- Production management tools
- Quality management tools
- Online storage tools
- Project management tools
- Recruitment management tools
- Online accounting tools
- Payroll management tools
- Web and mobile applications
ERP is also part of this digitization process. The true backbone of the company generally covers a large amount of these functions. But sometimes, particular needs for one of them can justify setting up an expert tool that would complement it. In any case, the most recent ERP solutions integrate the latest technologies and mobility. They are designed to provide industries with deep functional coverage, ease of use, speed of acquisition, and scalability.
Thanks to digitalization, you will work more efficiently, you will see information flows become more fluid and, therefore, more reliable, and you will see your teams communicate without wasting time.
Optimize resources
Digitalization will allow you to optimize your internal resources. Thanks to the different digital tools that can be implemented, you will be able to:
- Know precisely the cost price of your products.
- Control the manufacturing times of your products.
- Control the quality of your products.
Digital technology can also make it possible to know the status of stocks in real-time or to manage staff time and work.
Faced with increasing competition, companies must produce more and more while being more efficient while optimizing their quality and manufacturing costs. This is why digitalization has become an absolute priority for the industry.
Thanks to digitalization, an industrial company will obtain numerous benefits, such as:
- Improving customer satisfaction
- Better distribution of tasks
- Improving product quality
- Cost reduction
- Increasing profitability
- Performance optimization
- Improving resource utilization
In summary, as we have seen, competitiveness is a crucial issue for manufacturers. Thanks to industrial digitalization, your company will remain competitive while benefiting from new assets. It remains to be understood that this digitalization process takes place over time and within a considered strategy. In fact, a global strategic reflection will allow the company to bring the best options, to deploy the tools with a medium/long term vision, and thus to fully benefit from the advantages of this approach, which will probably impact all flows of the business.
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