Delivering Efficiencies in your Manufacturing Processes – Why Cloud Technology Could Hold the Key

Manufacturing firms throughout the world are facing pressure to deliver products faster and at a lower cost than ever before, all whilst maintaining high quality standards. And what’s more, the products themselves are often becoming more sophisticated, necessitating complex production processes. Against this backdrop, today’s manufacturing firms face the challenge of achieving manufacturing process efficiencies that will help them gain competitive advantage.

A lot of talk in the industry press focuses on Industry 4.0 and the kind of massive, full-scale digital transformation that is frankly unattainable for most mid-market manufacturers. However, there are practical, achievable cloud-based technology foundations that your firm can implement that will have an immediate impact on your ability to deliver manufacturing process efficiencies.

In this blog post we will explore four ways in which cloud technology can hold the key to unlocking manufacturing process efficiencies at your firm.

Manufacturing Process Efficiencies

The right choice of cloud technologies can introduce significant manufacturing process efficiencies to your firm. Here are four ways in which the staged introduction of cloud technologies can bring big benefits:

• Prevent downtime. System downtime is the enemy of productivity. Cloud-based infrastructures can offer superior uptime and disaster recovery SLAs when compared to local infrastructures, ensuring that downtime is kept to an absolute minimum and optimal productivity levels are maintained.
• Scale to meet changing demand. Cloud technology enables the fluid increase and decrease of resources utilising an OPEX model, without the need to invest in new hardware that will become a depreciating asset. This allows your firm to be agile, scaling to meet changing business demands as and when needed.
• Make evidenced process improvement decisions. Smart manufacturing process efficiencies are achieved through the intelligent analysis of data. Cloud technology makes it easier to capture, store, analyse and report on data, enabling your firm to make evidenced decisions quickly and efficiently.
• Introduce manufacturing automation. Full-blown Industry 4.0 may seem a little far off for mid-market firms, but cloud technology empowers you to take the first steps towards introducing manufacturing automation. The enhanced interconnectivity achievable through cloud computing, along with the ability to begin to utilise robotics and the Internet of Things, are key drivers for cloud adoption in the manufacturing sector.

Cloud Technology Could Hold the Key

At Six Degrees we understand the pressures facing manufacturing firms to achieve process efficiencies whilst reducing costs and maintaining high quality standards. We believe that the intelligent application of cloud technologies can help mid-market firms – not just large, multi-national operations – achieve these process efficiencies in the short term, whilst forming part of a broader digital transformation journey.

To learn more about our work with manufacturing businesses, get in touch with us. You may also want to check out our report on minimising IT risk and attitudes towards cloud adoption in manufacturing.

In our next few manufacturing blogs we will dive further into the how cloud technology can help your firm prevent downtime, scale to meet changing demand, make evidenced improvement decisions, and introduce manufacturing automation. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to keep up with all of our latest content aligned to your business challenges.