04 Aug Driving Manufacturing Innovation During Uncertainty
Manufacturing Innovation is More Important than Ever
In a rapidly changing world, manufacturing innovation is more important than ever to adapt and keep your foot on the gas pedal. The recent advancements made in automation and data insights have changed what is possible in the manufacturing industry, and with recent disruptions in the market, innovation in manufacturing has to become a top priority for decisions makers.
Manufacturing Innovation Strategy
A Finnish innovation management firm offers these 5 steps for developing your manufacturing innovation strategy.
- Determine objectives and strategic approach to innovation
- Know Your Market: Customers and Competitors
- Define Your Value Proposition
- Assess and Develop Your Core Capabilities
- Establish Your Innovation Techniques and Systems
“Innovation is about creating new value people are willing to use and pay for, whereas strategy is the plan for harnessing for example marketing, operations, finance and R&D to support achieving the competitive goal.” The article goes in depth into developing an innovation strategy. Learn more.
We recently published an article on how to stabilize a small business during a crisis. One of the innovative tips we found to create new value and generate new revenue is to find new products to replace unavailable ones. This seems a bit obvious, but it’s important to get creative when you’re thinking about this.
Some simple ways to go about this that require little upfront investment include, offering online coaching, courses and tutorials, video series and ebooks. It’s also important to start selling your existing products online or improve online sales if you are already doing this. Learn more about how to stabilize a small business during a crisis.
Now lets look at ways to better harness from marketing, operations, finance and R&D to support your innovation strategy.
Data and Manufacturing Innovation
A recent article at ERPNews.com says that manufacturing innovation starts with “knowing what to innovate”. They say determining where the best opportunities are for innovation requires information from across the supply chain. Data from manufacturing, supply chain, product usage data and customer input should all be leveraged in determining your manufacturing innovation strategy.
Another innovative strategy to stabilize your business is to shift as much of your focus online as possible. Now is the time to up your virtualization game. Collaboration tools like Zoom, Slack and Teams are more critical than ever. In addition to these, some tech tools you can leverage to digitally transform your business from front to back office include, Desktop-as-a-Service, Software-as-a-Service, hosting for ERP and CRM.
Of course, many business are cutting costs to stabilize their business in the face of declining revenue, so the idea of implementing new technology might seem to be a nonstarter. However, with work from home requirements, businesses need to go cloud so essential front and back office staff can keep the business running. With resources already stretched thin, manufacturing IT teams can help the enterprise go cloud quickly with tailored hosting services for Enterprise Resources Planning, Customer Relationship Management, Virtual desktop and more. By outsourcing a cloud migration to a cloud service provider, IT teams will have more time to work on manufacturing innovation projects.
With virtual desktop integration hosting, you can quickly connect your data systems for 360-degree insights across the enterprise that is accessible from anywhere.
How Virtual Desktop Hosting Supports Manufacturing Innovation
Your path to data-driven, secure and compliant manufacturing starts with VDI.
- Easily adapt to changes and integrate new systems
- Optimize network resources
- Eliminate redundancies
- Increase efficienc
- Anytime, anywhere access
VDI cloud services allow you to do more with less, keep your business going and minimize on-site staffing with cloud hosting for VDI, ERP and other apps all in one place. Learn more.