146 F E ATUR E stuck in reactive mode. Even if their systems are best of breed, siloed data means they’re not able to make proactive decisions to overcome disruptions. Added to this visibility challenge are signals from external trading partners and real-world events whose systems don’t talk to each other, resulting in even larger end-to-end gaps in visibility. “As a result, manufacturing leaders are looking to build agile and sustainable value chains by using intelligent supply chain solutions that can help alleviate some of these stresses.” Microsoft Dynamics 365 is helping manufacturers to connect the dots – as Swiss manufacturer Jansen illustrates. Situated outside the European Union, but doing significant business in that region, Jansen’s supply chain and cross-border supplier and customer relationships were complex. As a result, the company needed a sophisticated solution to map multiple, independent divisions into one legal entity. It implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to resolve complex reporting requirements. Additionally, the company digitised the production process with Microsoft Power Apps and Power Automate. This robust ERP solution helps Jansen to tackle today’s major business priorities and positions the company to be ready for tomorrow’s opportunities. Meanwhile in the USA, water and process treatment services provider ChemTreat needed to keep pace with its own growth and increasing technological maturity in the markets it serves. It too adopted Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management to improve its processes and transform its operations. With implementation support from partner Alithya and the FastTrack for Dynamics 365 team, ChemTreat enhanced data visibility and insights, improved its inventory, manufacturing and distribution processes, and enabled itself to provide better, more intentional and proactive customer service. Just like these companies, a top priority for many manufacturers is to bring more flexibility and agility into the supply chain so they can quickly respond to market conditions. “By using cloud-powered supply chain solutions, companies can expect to have better end-to-end visibility across their supply chain network, automation to help streamline and improve processes, reduced inventory shortage risk, and the ability to sustainably improve long-term business performance,” says Sircar. “Dynamics 365 helps enhance the visibility of the supply chain, logistics networks and inside the four walls of the factory, to proactively manage the shop floor with a real-time view of the production and inventory,” says Sircar. “It provides a single platform where internal and external stakeholders can visualise the constraints across the value chain, analyse the upstream or downstream impact and collaborate in near real time across the multienterprise network directly. This means that the enterprise can truly blur the lines between planning and execution, creating a continuous digital feedback loop across processes and layers to enable the supply chain to adapt to the dynamic changes in a rapid fashion.” As research such as the IoT Signals 2022 report shows, manufacturers are already harnessing powerful cloud-based solutions to optimise performance across individual processes, factories and the wider ecosystem. As they do so, they are positioning themselves as enablers for a wider ecosystem – a truly visible, agile and resilient supply chain that is ready to deliver what the business and its customers need, when they need it. Six key trends 72 per cent of manufacturers are advancing their efforts to build smart factories 86 per cent consider overall equipment effectiveness to be the most important key performance indicator to measure the success of their smart factory strategy Over the next three years manufacturers plan to invest in automated control systems such as IoT and AI to automate manufacturing processes – a shift from their previous focus on quality control and condition-based maintenance for smart factory projects Eight out of ten manufacturers are dealing with skills gaps, particularly in data science, AI and cybersecurity, while 49 per cent face challenges in developing new software applications 76 per cent of manufacturing assets are now connected, with manufacturers moving workloads and applications to public and private cloud platforms By 2025 organisations that already sell connected IoT products plan to increase investments from 33 per cent today to 47 per cent, focusing on services like predictive maintenance and remote support Research for the IoT Signals 2022 report revealed six key digital transformation and IoT manufacturing trends:
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