How Will Manufacturing Industries Benefit From Mobile Applications?

Let’s sit back and count the ways in which data storage and management aren’t working these days. With the digitalization of all the industries, it’s time to extend a hand towards the manufacturing sector to make their work and output easier. There is a significant increase in the output, no doubt. But can we say the same things for data storage? Do we compromise in the quality and budget to make sure our data is stored completely? Is that the only problem?

The secondary sector or the Manufacturing industries go through problems of various kinds such as transportation glitches, communication glitches, data related to work orders, inventory management etc. It is high time that these enterprises go paperless and get assistance from mobile application developers in solving the problems that they don’t need to face anymore, as the solutions are already available in the market. The technological advancements have enabled the general population to make their daily tasks and lives easier and more immediate. There is no problem for us in believing that our lives are being run by an actual ‘Tars’ for every individual entity.

There are multiple challenges that the manufacturing industries are being faced with. According to Deloitte, there will be about 2.5 to 3 million unfilled positions of skilled labor. This puts the manufacturers under threat as they now need a highly skilled set of labors to maintain the digitization that they are going through. The jobs of the unskilled labor will be replaced by the automation which needs to be utilized soon as it will increase the dexterity and output for the manufacturer. These digitizing facilities are heavy on cost-cutting and, hence, are being employed largely by the manufacturing industries.

It is a difficult task for the customers or all the parties that come in between manufacturing and end consuming, to put forward a query, track their work, or make a request. In this tech-driven age, manufacturers can actually provide the end customers with inquiry logs, FAQS and a way to reach them without much haggling. They can provide the subcontractors with a log for their projects, tracking of capital etc. for which nobody has to wait in order to to get their problems resolved. Furthermore, the information can be stored in the digital format and help the manufacturers vastly in making changes and becoming better.

The employes under the firm or the customers of the firm, both expect the running of the software smoothly so that the work can be done immediately without any glitch or delay. The Softwares used these days often lag a lot if not updated frequently and fixed of bugs regularly.

How can the Mobile Applications help Manufacturing industries?

PwC’s Global CEO Survey states that mobility has become a necessity for the manufacturing industries, since 2015, rather than being an option to remain competitive and strong. The first significant progress that comes on the way is the abandonment of paper which leads to two good things :

1. The elimination of any chances of human error.
2. Saving trees.

This will help reduce expenditure immensely and increase productivity.

Tracking work and workforce in real-time gets easier. Cloud-based mobile apps allow one to look over the work single-handedly and review it simultaneously without each process taking large chunks of time to be completed. What the workforce is doing can be examined side by side and there will be no delay as everything is being monitored online.

Ever followed your Uber driver through the screen of your phone? Or your Postmates guy bringing in food? GPS tracking makes both the provider and the consumer parties aware of exactly what is happening with the product and where. It is a tool that helps workers track their tasks, maps and routes make dispatching and keeping track of work easier, as well as allow manufacturers to keep track of the employs. Mobile applications allow manufacturers to use date and time stamps, along with photograph and video, to help ensure the inspection of material meets the regulated requirements. These organizations are saving exorbitant amounts of money by switching to mobile apps from manual labor.

The machines employed under the manufacturing sector need to be under constant supervision of expert detectors. Certain apps can step up solely for this particular task giving the operators or checkers real-time updates. It also keeps the fleet in check. The transparency factor that arises between the producers and the consumers will be less distanced and more clear to both the parties. The manufacturing and the tertiary sector both have a distance between them that hampers the chances of collaboration to make the services of each other more valuable.

The cloud services are making it more accessible and easy to use the power of mobile apps that give a 360-degree view of the current situation in the manufacturing industry at any point in time.

Barcode Scanning

Though only recently utilized, QR scanning helps you buy things or pay online. Now let’s consider QR codes as tangible identities that objects have. If QR codes were assigned to all the capital that arrives for the manufacturing industry, the complete team will be aware of the exact arrival of every item. The data regarding this will be logged in by the help of Augmented Reality technology. QR scanning could be used to also distinguish between the discards and high-quality materials. A clear object distinction can be made using anybody’s mobile phones because the apps will be interconnected, and there will be no need for rechecking. There will also be a built-in inventory index at all times without the need of doing rounds and checking, which will save a manufacturing venture hours of work and help causes an increase in outputs.

Augmented Reality

Data management has been the bane of being in the manufacturing sector for a long time now. The involvement of Augmented Reality technology solves the underlying issue of space and calculations and makes it as easy as pouring a glass of water. It collects and analyzes data according to the information that it is fed. It learns and then, later on, applies it to bring formulated results as of the right product, the right amount, proper inventory, transportation details etc. The industry needs more and more employees running at hand completing the jobs that are more important than the menial and time-consuming, that has now been assigned to the AR. AR helps immensely in training and provision of basic data and profiling and keeping up to date. Conceptual learning takes a next-gen step and speeds up a myriad of processes for the better and faster output of products and services.

Central connections would help the AR to maintain the technological sanity of the workplace, detecting bugs, attending to data and keeping pace. It also helps with the prevention of predicted disasters that it predicts itself regarding the data that it is being fed. There is concepting, prototyping and then the capital-intensive process. AR enhances the task at hand and makes the tedious process easier by giving a final draw without it having to go through a million processes of rechecking and improving. ThyssenKrupp is incorporating AR into product designs and mobility solutions. It has digitally bettered the process across the multiple phases of production from the beginning to the end.  It’s the new kink in the market that is a must try for the manufacturing sector.

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Software

PLM software regards to all the information needed about the product from inception to integration, from prints to personnel, from sales to progress etc. PLM is one of the four most essential pillars of modern manufacturing. Customer relationship management, which manages their communication and relations with their customers. Supply Chain Management which keeps a track of their supplies. Enterprise Resource Planning, which manages the resources within the specific enterprise. The fourth comes to the Product Lifestyle Management which stores all the data related to the product, previous or current. It assists you in keeping track of your imagination, numerous drafts, and plans that come forward. It guides you through the development and the testing that happens after the product. It will then keep count of both stock and cavalry and then of products and sales. It next goes on to analyze, recycle and dispose to move forward to communicate it to the beneficiaries.

It is beneficial in multiple arenas. It reduces your analysis time needed to go to market. Its star job is to reduce the prototyping costs but does all the jobs with just as much precision. It reduces waste and gives out better quality products and in lesser time. Manufacturers benefit by the time it cuts on each phase of the product development process. It reduces the employment of homegrown data and engineering to set up the better and more reliable quality of the product. It is not something that is vendor specific and only subdues to the heavy or large scale vendors. It is available to even the small scale vendors and makes their work easier. PLM currently isn’t a mobile application but works on a different interface.

If PLM turns up on mobile devices, it will become a boon for the enterprises and the important information shall be on the fingertips and make the process easier.

Mobile apps bring to your fingertips the biggest things in the world, both tangible or intangible. To the manufacturing industry, the time and personnel occupied the information required is bound by the traditional methods of working. With the acceptance of mobile apps in the manufacturing industries, they finally have a chance of breaking off from old branches and actually concentrating on the things that human personnel is really required for.