Bill of Materials management
These days it is not uncommon for organizations to operate globally. Product design might be done on one side of the world and manufacturing processes on another. As such, storing product information efficiently is vital. If your company has a good bill of materials (BOM) management system in place, you can mitigate risks and ensure that design and manufacturing processes run efficiently.
A bill of materials (BOM) is a comprehensive inventory of raw materials, assemblies, subassemblies, components, and parts, as well as the quantities of each needed to manufacture the final product. If it is not accurate or complete it can have dire consequences such as causing production delays, increases in production as well as operational costs and product returns.
It is known as a product’s recipe, citing all the ingredients and operations necessary to create a product. It is critical to production control, logistics and inventory management. Whether it is Modular, Configurable and Multi-level BOMs that best fit your products, ensuring you have strong a BOM management system behind your operations can be a complete game-changer this decade.
A Growth Mindset
You never embark on a new year, let alone a new decade, without evaluating your mindset or business plan. We are always striving for improvements and growth. You can optimize performance in order to thrive by adopting a growth mindset. Without one, your business may come to suffer.
Now, the key is to hold on to a growth mindset longer than January. You heard me. The important thing is not to do a complete overhaul of your business overnight or pursue pipe dreams leaving yourself vulnerable to sudden crashes. If you focus on improving an aspect of your business by just 1% a day, your business would have improved by 365% in a year’s time. They say steady wins the race.
Growth must have a solid foundation and be rooted in strategic thinking and calculated risk-taking. Adopting measures to streamline existing operations is a key part of running a successful business. The best New Year’s resolution that manufacturers can make is to focus on growing for the future and we cannot mention the future without talking about impact.
Sustainability
Whether the old, big sharks like it or not, the no-conscience, ‘profit at any cost’ approach to business is outdated. Entrepreneurs are driving a global revolution in working for sustainable supply chains and manufacturing. The business case for creating sustainable value has never been more solid.
While scaling manufacturers might have a better competitive edge than large companies and factories when it comes to their environmental impacts, we should all take steps to reduce our resources (energy, water, raw materials, and parts).
Manufacturing intelligently comes with great benefits and higher levels of trust and cooperation along the supply chain. It will also come with reputational benefits for addressing social and ethical challenges that customers truly value today. Improving resource efficiency has to be a component of any modern manufacturing business that is here to last.
