Servitization is more commonly associated with discrete manufacturers, but process manufacturers are also embracing this change in business strategy. Servitization only applies to discrete manufacturing? Many people think of servitization as only being applicable to discrete manufacturers who have products that they can service and supply spare parts to, or manufacturers who can easily change…
Accurate forecasts are the panacea for food manufacturers, Is artificial intelligence getting us close to a solution, are we near to finding the forecasting Holy Grail? I was at a director’s dinner recently, discussing the use of AI in today’s food manufacturing companies, when I suggested that artificial intelligence would provide the ultimate solution to…
The process industry has spent billions of dollars on robots and robotic automation, but are these monoliths flexible enough for today’s manufacturing requirements, will they eventually take our jobs and will the human-less factory really become a reality? its not new now its just different Robot and human workforces are not new: Robots The earliest…
Near Field Communication and e-Labels will drive a new revolution in product information. The war on plastics will escalate to unprecedented levels. Retailers will demand that manufacturers join more sustainability schemes: 2019’s biggest industry trends will all be about manufacturers proving their authenticity, transparency and sustainability. And if it all sounds a bit heavy, don’t…
For many years the world has seen organizations founded to drive progress in environmental sustainability. The list is long, and increasing with new schemes and governance organizations being announced almost daily there are even organizations for ‘eco friendly concrete’ and ‘the sustainable phosphorous alliance!’ What was once a fad that many companies paid lip service…
Do the changes in BRC 8 bring increased focus on traceability, risk management and cyber security? Traceability, recall and risk Hardly a day goes by without another recall or food scare, today it’s farmed liquid egg white, yesterday it was scotch eggs and kebab rolls. In fact, in USDA market research they declare that there…
Over the years there have been many paradigms that claim to optimize production and save the world—bottleneck, forward and backward, finite and infinite scheduling models, DDMRP, Kanban—and almost all failed in some way to deliver manufacturing nirvana. One such stratagem was the Theory of Constraints (TOC). But could a fresh approach to TOC, combined with…
Artificial intelligence (AI). Internet of Things (IoT). Augmented reality (AR). These are the technologies companies in the industries IFS serves want to implement because they can transform their businesses. These two- and three-letter acronyms (TLAs) are what most of us think about when someone utters the words ‘digital transformation’. While AI, IoT and AR are…
Are we seeing the end of ‘single-use’ plastics? Process manufacturing companies need to review their business strategies now. What started as an eco-issue has rightly gathered pace and manufacturers need to rethink their product strategy, the way they manufacture and the way they package their products as the pressure on providing alternative solutions has already…
Imagine going forward in time 10 years. How will the technologies evolving today change the way we work? What will enterprise resource planning (ERP) in 2028 look like? Production planning for most process manufacturing companies has always been one of the most difficult problems for ERP solutions to solve. There has been much effort over…
