The Ledger
Curated content foranalytical business leaders
Visibility: Seeing is Achieving In Manufacturing
August 13, 2018
Manufacturing plants that align visibility with automation can move from mass production to mass customization – and easily develop personalized products at scale. Leading companies are rethinking their current manufacturing processes and transforming continuous production lines into flexible production cells that can move and operate with plug-and-play functionality. Creating “digital twins” of the shop floor, which provide critical data on what’s being produced next, means businesses can automatically route products to the next cell in the production process. As a result, companies can better manufacture the lot size of one to deliver customized sneakers. They also gain the visibility to improve product throughput, increase equipment uptime, and perform predictive maintenance before a minor issue turns into a major problem.
Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >
The Right Technology Can Save the Food Production Industry
August 9, 2018
According to the CIO at Maple Leaf Foods, Andreas Liris, the global food production is heading towards a crisis. The system is unsustainable, and things will only get worse unless a solution arises. That solution is potentially utilizing a technology that enables production supervisors to do on the shop floor everything they do in their offices, including keeping track of materials and inventory, making process orders, scanning labels, and staying in touch with others. The act of moving between the floor and office was an inefficient process for production supervisors and they had to decontaminate every time they entered the production area.
Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >
A Profitable Approach to Product Returns
August 8, 2018
Customer behavior after a purchase can be difficult to predict, which is why many large retailers have very lenient return policies. However, in recent years, these companies have noticed customers taking advantage of these policies and ultimately cutting into profits. Yet new tools and technologies make it possible to segment customers and impose stricter return policies on those whose past behavior warrants it. These predictive models are unique to each retailer, but the right tools will help retailers manage their returns profitability while delivering a positive customer experience.
Read More at The Sloan Review >
Forecasting Labor Costs for 2030
August 7, 2018
“Organizations around the world could add more than $2.5 trillion to their annual labor costs within 12 years as a result of the global shortage of highly skilled workers, according to new research from Korn Ferry. The report follows up on the recruiting and workforce management firm’s forecast that talent shortage could cost companies $8.5 trillion in unrealized annual revenue by 2030. The United States will face the biggest “wage premium” in 2030, at $531 billion, Korn Ferry says. The term refers to the additional amount employers will need to pay to secure the right talent, above the amount that wages would rise over time due to normal inflation.”
