Four strategies to increase agility in manufacturing

1. Share information in real-time

People need information and they need it now. This could be about health and safety measures, new workplace practices, changing strategies and everything else that was impacted by the pandemic. The less accessible the information is, the more disorganised things become. Sharing information in real-time allows everyone to have the answers they need on demand allows for better communication.

2. Review data quality

Clean data is the initial point for scaling downstream operations. When data is missing, incorrect or out-of-date, it means unnecessary rework and manual review. By using automation to continuously review data and proactively act on inconsistencies enables all of the downstream processes that interact with that data to transition quickly and efficiently.

3. Identify information bottlenecks

The pandemic accelerated existing information bottlenecks in organisations and created several new ones. Analysing how internal communication works and how information flows through an organisation - identifies where these bottlenecks are and suggests how they can be resolved. Better access to information helps accelerate and improve decision-making.

4. Trigger a process to fix an issue

By automatically triggering an automated process to track and manage an issue allows teams to coordinate all of the required activities around issue resolution and provide visibility into roadblocks or delays in getting to a solution. When a new issue is recognised, it can be quickly and automatically assigned to the right owner based on area of expertise, business function or priority, which avoids multiple handoffs and back-and-forths to find the right owner. Upon being assigned, an automated process can keep both the submitter and escalation paths informed on the current status and expected resolution date.