Tags: manufacturing, manufacturers, asia/pacific, supply chain, videoconference, plm, engineering
I have been traveling around the region over the last few weeks, spending time in Japan, Australia and Singapore. A common thread of discussion that keeps coming up is how to improve productivity. In Singapore's case, there is the need to see the next wave of growth coming from putting focus on improving the productivity of the workforce, rather than importing workers. In Australia and Japan, the focus is on the need to deal with the ageing workforce.
The key question is: how? Obviously technology is going to play a crucial part. Examples being cited include the use of mobile technologies to improve responsiveness. The use of PDAs in restaurants to speed up service byremotely transmitting the diners' orders to the kitchen, and to the cashier. For manufacturing, we will see a far greater emphasis on moving towards automation of the production line. Other tasks we will see getting automated include product tracking, either through barcode or RFID tags, the use of sensors in production machines to give feedback as to what is happening, reducing the number of operators required. We are also seeing this come to the fore in the product development space where companies are seeking to ensure that engineers spend their time engineering instead of doing administration. The use of videoconferencing is another technology that will find its place as managers seek to reduce the need to travel, in turn improving their productivity by being able to connect face-to-face with customers, partners and suppliers with minimal difficulty.
The key focus will be to ensure that people are used productively; the automation of the production lines, as well as the use of mobile technologies and sensors will be at the forefront as retailers and manufacturers seek to improvep roductivity within their operations.
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23-Feb-2010 01:12
Whilst watching the Americas cup which concluded last week, with BMW/Oracle winning back the trophy, I was thinking about the history of the boats that compete in the event, and how they had developed and considering this in relation to my recent post on productivity. Into the 90's we had the racing on 12metre rated yachts, which whilst being at the leading edge of technology, were still seen as being slow in terms of absolute speed. Compare that to the amazing machines racing in 2010, where in under 10knots of wind, these boats were hitting over 20 knots of speed! Obviously a key difference was the shift from a monohull to a multi hull, but also the change in the way the boat is sailed. The boats are fitted with a multitude of sensors, which give instant information on what is happening to the boat, the stresses, the strains, and when matched to the modeling, the sailors can trim the boat to match weather conditions - a shift to fact based decision making, where the boat is designed to operate at peak performance. Coupled with this is the shift to powered winches - in previous years, super fit athletes were employed to wind in the sails on a manual winch, now this is motorized with finger tip control, allowing precise trimming, without the need of a human muscle - again the use of technology to make the boat easier and quicker to sail. Finally, the helmsman has a heads-up-display, which feeds him all the necessary information on what is happening on the boat directly to him, without having to seek input from the other crew members. Taking this as a model by which industry will move forward, the use of fact based decision making, and automation allow the boat / company to be steered in the right direction, with real time inputs brought direct to the helmsman / management. All this is based on a product that has been designed to operate in a specific environment at the ultimate speed, with one objective - to go and win the race!
Chris Holmes