Manufacturing leaders today have opportunities to immensely improve and optimize operational efficiency and that is directly dependent on the technology they choose to adopt through the course of the value chain.
Different types of digital technologies are being adopted in the post-pandemic world by manufacturers of all sizes – from robotics, additive manufacturing, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and low-code. Manufacturers are especially beginning to more readily understand and adopt the low-code development technology that is drastically reducing their time to deployment.
Connectivity is already a pillar of efficient manufacturing. To stay connected, manufacturers must put technology to work to meet the increasing demands for rapid deliveries and heightened production. Around the world, 90% of companies are using some type of cloud technology. The manufacturing industry must adapt to these global changes in connectivity and computing. By 2023, software used by manufacturers will be almost half cloud-based.
New technologies are creating significant efficiency gains for manufacturers and producers. McKinsey’s recent research with the World Economic Forum puts the value creation potential of manufacturers and suppliers that implement technology in their operations at USD 37 trillion in 2025.
Heavy manufacturing and production companies have been turning to new digital technologies in their effort to increase the reliability and availability of their assets while keeping time and operational costs under control. And while a lot of conversation has been on the subject of digital tools for physical asset management, manufacturers are also implementing digital tools that optimize internal processes such as customer support tools, inventory management, training, job order dispatch, and field services.
Low Code development enables companies to start using digital technology today, without having to spend months designing, building and testing a custom solution from scratch.
How low-code worked for a sleep product manufacturer
A mattress manufacturing company, for example, introduced a low-code platform into its operations that allowed the product experience team to seamlessly integrate the company’s Shopify website, their customer and vendor database on PostgreSQL, and Stripe payment gateway, to streamline return management. Implemented in just 6 weeks, the company’s product manager launched a custom internal tool that supplements a seamless flow of data at speed – customer contact details, vendor and shipping details – at the fingertips of the representatives that has resulted in a marked decrease in time taken to resolve tickets leading to overall customer delight.
Low-code tools put app-building into the hands of the factory’s domain experts at a time when professional developers are expensive and scarce.
Without getting the engineering teams involved, the product experience manager of the manufacturing firm could single handedly stitch together the company’s existing tools and data sets and create a unified experience for the customer support teams. (to quickly resolve customer return, refunds, and pickups).
With low-code, what we’re seeing around in the manufacturing world is that some of the most advanced manufacturers not only are using new technologies but they’re also using their same workforce. The people are learning new skills and working in a new way building on top of their existing framework.
Manufacturers getting the most from low-code
Successful tools built with low-code are delivering value by increasing the efficiency of internal and external operations.
- Robust process automation tools – a warehouse manager could easily set up low-code automations for scheduling the maintenance job, that integrates with their inventory and triggers when new parts need to be ordered. Another automobile spare part manufacturer has successfully launched tools for their maintenance engineers who on arrival at the job get instructions on how to complete the maintenance job on their device. He or she doesn’t need a lot of training to do the job. If there’s something highly complicated, he or she will call an expert, and it will get fulfilled. Maintenance is done differently than before.
- Dashboards & analytics – One India-based stationery company has created a low-code sales and stock inventory dashboard that is fed with accurate real-time data using API integrations, creating a single source of truth. It’s in there, it’s correct, and it’s real time. If the management wants to drill down and understand something. On a fingertip they can drill down into the data, make meaning out of it, and solve a problem, which in the past, would have taken maybe two weeks until someone came back with an answer. Now it can be done right away.
- People feedback – launched a comprehensive process-redesign and capability-building effort to measure the impact of the approach and embed new ways of working into its daily operations
Key Benefits of Low-Code Development Platforms
- Low Skills Needed: Enable developers with different levels of software development experience, and especially those with very little experience, to create applications successfully.
- Time-to-Run: Enable accelerated delivery of value-driving business applications.
- Collaboration: Enable stakeholders from different departments and business units to contribute to the development of an application.
- Cost-Savings: Reduce the time, effort and costs needed to develop and deploy smart applications.
- User Experience: Improve and innovate the application development experience for your software development teams and stakeholders.
- Continuous Improvement: Give your people access to applications and intelligent data that will help them improve decision-making, optimize business processes and increase production results across your enterprise.
SaaS based manufacturing is the future
Cloud technology’s scalability and constant updates make planning for the future simpler. Of the three cloud based solutions (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) SaaS ranks as one of the simplest solutions to quickly integrate into a business and a SaaS low-code platform does just that. Benefits of low-code technology for manufacturers include facilitating better communication, managing products throughout their life cycles, tracking inventory and lots more by creating modern, more robust and interactive solutions on top of their existing digital assets.
Cloud or SaaS-based manufacturing is the industry’s future, and companies must lay the groundwork for it now by adopting the right technical stack.
