By Mariana Costa, Marketing Specialist at PackIOT
A study done by SYSPRO, a global provider of ERP software, is telling us that the covid-19 pandemic is accelerating the need for digital transformation among manufacturers. The study is called “The Inflection Point for the Factory of the Future” and you can find the report here.
The survey was completed by 144 respondents at different managerial levels across different regions: USA, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific region. It gives us an overview into how manufacturers and distributors handled the shift caused by the pandemic. These actors have seen, overtime, an increased need for collaboration, supply chain disruptions and emerging trends to keep up with. Sounds interesting!
Some key finding that are particularly interesting to look at:
47% OF BUSINESSES WERE UNABLE TO FUNCTION DUE TO OPERATIONAL STAFF RELIANCE ON-PREMISE.
This comes to show us how unprepared the industry professionals were for a scenario where most of the workforce would have to work remote. Well, a pandemic came, unannounced and not a lot could be done to prevent it. The global lockdowns saw the rise of remote workforce and 47% of the businesses were not ready… the operational staff reliance on on-premise was the limiting factor.
29 % OF BUSINESSES DID NOT HAVE THE AVAILABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY TO MANAGE CHANGES
The pandemic came and with it the necessity to implement changes almost immediately. It happened that 29% of businesses felt that their business systems didn’t have the capacity to provide them with the availability and accessibility to manage the needed changes.
60% OF BUSINESSES WERE IMPACTED BY SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTIONS
Besides all the above constraints already mentioned, businesses still had to deal with supply chain disruption as a consequence of the global lockdowns. For instance, 60% of the businesses were impacted by supply chains interferences. Consequently, this set of events affected the ability to supply their customers.
67% OF BUSINESSES COULD TRADE EFFECTIVELY DUE TO DIGITAL INITIATIVES.
Those companies and organizations that were impacted by supply chain disruptions now understand that there is a need to shift the mindset. The crises has brought a greater necessity to shift their operations and accelerate digital transformation journeys.
Actually, 67% of the businesses confirmed that due to initiatives such as e-commerce, digital supply chains and remote working, they kept trading effectively during the pandemic.
29% OF BUSINESSES WILL BE PURSUING A CLOUD-BASED SYSTEM MOVING FORWARD.
This new reality has awakened a higher need: business systems not only have to match functional requirements but also be the catalyst for digital transformation. These companies are now considering to adopt cloud as an effort to welcome emerging technologies and industry 4.0. In fact, 29% claim they will be pursuing a cloud-based system moving forward after recognizing that the current overall availability and accessibility were inadequate. Can we say that we are witnessing the inflection point for the factory of the future? Maybe yes!
This research revealed that the majority of the respondents were not ready to deal with a pandemic or similar scenario. After digging deeper, it was possible to verify that 38% of the businesses thought their already existing systems would be able to deal with the disruption as a result of the pandemic. While continuing the research, in fact, most of the systems lacked key instruments: accessibility, availability, insights and basic planning tools.
This is just a brief overview of the study done by SYSPRO which has a lot to investigate and analyze. Meanwhile, if you would like to go deeper into it click here for the report.
How interesting is this topic! Often times, the greater evolutions happen in times of big disruption and we are here experiencing industry 4.0 coming to the front of the manufacturing world. We are more than happy to help you minimize waste, improve process quality, reduce production time and overall costs!
