Manufacturers: Obsessed with Customer Focus
Blog: Software AG Blog - Reality Check
In the early 1900’s Henry Ford famously said about the Model T: “You can have any color, as long as it’s black.” The quote sums up the almost total lack of flexibility in the past for traditional assembly line manufacturing, which has dominated the industry for decades.
Production was extremely efficient but customer requirements could not be introduced to the process. Today, and even more in the future, the focus will be on customers— while remaining just as efficient.
Digital transformation will fuel manufacturers’ ability to focus to innovate based on customers’ currently known— and not yet known—desires. This is also known as customer centricity, and we are hearing a lot about this trend in every industry from manufacturing to retail to supply chain logistics. The customer will drive business models going forward, and 2016 will be the watershed year.
The customer-centric trend will be empowered by the Internet of Things (IoT), smart sensor-rich devices which will help manufacturers to predict when important maintenance on home goods should be performed, or tell them when logistics supply chains might break down.
Using IoT devices will help them to shape their manufacturing value chains to adopt capabilities like mass customization faster than expected. Manufacturers will have vast quantities of customer and usage information than ever before which is better and more complete than any clumsy customer survey created.
Mass customization combines custom-made products with low-cost factory production, making it possible to deliver goods and services that are modified to satisfy a specific customer need. Some applications of mass customization include the ability for customers themselves to make and change characteristics of a core product. One enabler of this is 3D printing, where customers can order a product to their specifications and it is printed on demand at a manufacturing facility.
Most significantly, this customization will be coupled with demand-driven micro logistics networks that will push the finished goods closer to the customer. These smart logistics networks are agile and able to nimbly respond to customer demand.
The customer will be in command in 2016, and manufacturing will quickly adapt to make sure that what the customer wants, the customer gets. With apologies to Henry Ford, black is no longer the only color.
The post Manufacturers: Obsessed with Customer Focus appeared first on Reality Check.
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