The need for comprehensive digital collaboration has never been more clear within the manufacturing industry. Satisfied for years with basic communication tools, like chat and email, for their collaboration needs, manufacturers are finally realizing the need to confront the challenges of their industry and embrace digital collaboration fully. What’s caused this shift? As one McKinsey report succinctly put it, “An aging workforce, regionalization, and data proliferation are changing the composition of the manufacturing labor force and how work gets done.”
But a full embrace of digital collaboration will require the manufacturing industry to overcome the very challenges that have kept it lagging behind other industries. These include the difficulty of sharing technical product data with the right stakeholders, properly contextualizing it, and ensuring efficiency and security along the way. Despite these obstacles, the potential rewards are well worth it: that same McKinsey report values digital collaboration at an estimated $100 billion.
So let’s break down what digital collaboration really means in today’s manufacturing context, what its challenges look like, and how you can make it an indelible part of your business.
Digital collaboration in manufacturing once meant sending an email to another department asking for their input, or maybe attaching a screenshot or PDF of a technical document. For the most part, knowledge was kept in-house and could be shared via more traditional digital methods or, preferably, in person.
But this has changed. According to the National Association of Manufacturers, an estimated one-quarter of the workforce is 55 years or older. This means that much of the institutional knowledge manufacturers have long relied on is now in danger of leaving, requiring them to look further afield for the expertise they need. There is also the fact that rising transportation and labor costs have required many companies to relocate their factories so they’re closer to the customer, leaving them more geographically dispersed. At the same time, manufacturing technology has become increasingly connected, overwhelming workers with vast amounts of new data.
All this adds up to a new understanding of what digital collaboration now means in manufacturing. Rather than a supplement to standardized manufacturing workflows, digital collaboration has become something that must be deeply embedded into the end-to-end manufacturing process. What does this entail? For one, manufacturers should be making use of tools and platforms that facilitate seamless communication and collaboration. Instead of relying on tools like email and file sharing applications that remain disconnected from the flow of information, they should leverage solutions that enable them to work together, discuss issues, exchange data, and make decisions all directly within their process workflows.
As collaborative processes (such as engineering design reviews and quality planning) proliferate and become more integrated, the amount of data and the number of stakeholders involved will increase as well. Instead of just individual teams or departments, entire divisions and, eventually, downstream organizations (including suppliers and OEMs) will be working closely together to realize productivity and efficiency gains. This will require other digital collaboration tools such as work management platforms in order to help manufacturers coordinate between different stakeholders, track and manage orders, and plan complex projects – all while keeping data centralized, organized, and secure.
Ultimately, modern digital collaboration should make information sharing as fast and seamless as possible. Whether this collaboration is happening synchronously (all at once in real time) or asynchronously (separately, over a length of time), the goal is for everyone to be able to request, access, and use the data they need.
There may be no magic level of collaboration an organization should achieve. After all, every company will be different. Still, it’s important to take a careful look at your current capabilities so that you can understand where you should be investing your resources to avoid the hidden costs of poor collaboration. Here are some steps you can take to determine exactly what you need:
Which digital collaboration tools best fit your needs? Once you’ve finished your evaluation, you should be in a much better position to answer this. That said, it can still be intimidating sifting through the many different options and features out there, so here are some key capabilities that most manufacturers should be looking for:
Although the benefits of digital collaboration may seem obvious on paper, there can often be stubborn challenges when it comes to implementing and integrating these tools, along with the associated shifts in workflows that must come with them. These can be summarized by the following three main factors:
So what’s to be done? There are a number of practical solutions that may help. For example, it’s important to preface any rollout of new tools or workflows by first meeting with the larger organization to get them on the same page and establish some clear objectives. These could be table stakes, such as improving productivity or enhancing communication, as long as they get everyone on board. While you’re at it, it’s also a good idea to gain buy-in from leadership as well.
As you introduce new digital collaboration tools, it can be useful to pair them with ample training and support. You want to strike a balance between easing new users into new habits without overwhelming them with too much information at once. A good way to do this is by offering a mix of traditional training sessions alongside self-guided resources like tutorials and help desks. Make sure to include clear guidelines and policies in this training that detail how these collaboration tools should be used. This way, you can ensure security and compliance from the start.
However, all this will be beside the fact if the digital collaboration tools in question don’t meet the needs of the organization. This is what makes it so essential to properly evaluate your collaboration needs and choose tools that have the right capabilities.
Anark’s solutions are built to address the collaborative needs of modern-day manufacturers by connecting teams to the product data and input they’re looking for – all while enabling them to collaborate in context and have the conversations they need to make better decisions. Let’s start transforming the way you work and collaborate. Request a demo today to see what Anark can do for you.
Rather than supplement standardized manufacturing workflows, digital collaboration must now be deeply embedded into the end-to-end manufacturing process. This means using tools and platforms that facilitate seamless communication and collaboration so that users can work together, discuss issues, exchange data, and make decisions all directly within their process workflows.
A great place to start is by first identifying any bottlenecks or other sources of inefficiencies, as these might be indicators of where you can introduce collaborative processes. From there, you should consider how messages and information circulate around your organization, paying particular attention to where people are getting their technical data. It can also be useful to take measure of how much cross-collaboration is occurring between different divisions and partner organizations.
Some key capabilities you should look out for include real-time data sharing, collaborative editing and annotations, third-party integration (such as with PLM and ERP systems), robust security and data privacy features, and the ability to automate repetitive tasks and workflows.