What challenges are industrial traders facing?
Companies from a diverse range of industries rely on not just the experience but the expertise of their skilled resources to provide quality automation products. Consistent quality and better performance of the products are required to meet existing and emerging challenges in order to achieve industry’s automation goals.
Top industrial challenges
Skilled Labour
The manufacturing industry is facing a looming labour shortage. In order to stay competitive and thrive in our worldwide economy, it is necessary to implement the best of technology and practices such as big data and 3D printing, to make operations more efficient.
One of the major problems faced by industries is that there is significant turnover of resources both at the white collar workers and the managers as well. This leads to a lot of wastage in terms of time to recruit again, training on specific processes and systems and also the money spent to get things back in place.
Project Management
Project management can help the manufacturers to produce better products, in a shorter span of time and at a lower / optimized cost structure. Eliminating excess materials and irrelevant processes can provide more flexibility to get higher quality products at a lower cost, sooner to the market.
Project management is not only about planning, but also tracking and controlling the project’s progress using project management tools. It is important to combine project management skills and lean manufacturing methods to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of processes and products.
Supply Chain Issues
The strategic supply chain management is an integrated management function that involves a number of areas. Effective supply chain management allows the industries to track the movement of raw materials, help create the products that are required by the market, optimize inventory levels, and to integrate with consumer demand. It also helps to avoid production stoppages by identifying those specific areas /bottlenecks. This helps in overall improved decision making that improves production levels and workers’ efficiency.
Product development
To understand the performance of the product in the market we will need to ascertain the level of products’ acceptance, their demand, sales numbers, and customer satisfaction. Industries are constantly searching for ways to revitalize, restructure and redesign their product development practices and processes for better results, and also to stay relevant over time.
Companies are focused in bringing innovative products and solutions at a shorter time to market, in order to beat their competition, before similar products get in the market.
Balancing Maintenance
With time and due to usage, the equipment’s tend to deteriorate. To get the desired results in maintenance operations, there should be planned development of skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled labour. Maintenance technicians must have confidence that they can depend on their storerooms to have the parts they require in time and not to encourage individual stockpiling of spare parts.
It must be noted that the maintenance and engineering departments must be certain that the cost of base lining an asset does not exceed the cost of replacing it. Maintenance if not practiced right, can lead to serious issues of over-maintenance or under-maintenance
Storage and Retrieval
How items are stored and retrieved is critical to the flow of products and goods throughout a warehouse. With greater automation happening across warehouses, facility managers are looking for ways to add intelligence to their equipment and systems to improve performance, and also to increase overall efficiency at their site.
Banner sensors, safety equipment, LED lights and indicators, and wireless products will help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of warehouse.
If suitable systems and practices that are implemented across factories / warehouses, challenges in industrial trading can be avoided to a greater extent. In addition, if you can maintain optimum / minimal inventory level of spare parts, and procure the MRO spare parts online when required, it can greatly improve operational profitability as well.
