As part of the process-driven manufacturing industry, your company should always be looking to streamline your approach for maximum efficiency and output. Your employees need tools to make their jobs easier, and you need a reliable way to track what goes on every step of the way. Mobile apps help your company become better, faster and more productive.
Benefits of Mobility
Successful manufacturing requires tracking vendors, invoices, materials, pricing and much more every day. Mobile apps enhance key elements of your business to keep everything running smoothly.
Employee Productivity
Communication is the core of productivity in manufacturing. Mobile applications put the information employees need for efficient work right at their fingertips, eliminating time wasted on calls or emails exchanged between departments, vendors and clients. Inventory and pricing data is available onsite and in the field, enabling faster closing of deals and instantaneous updates when new orders are placed. Universal data sharing minimizes data entry errors and ensures every department has access to the same information.
This free flow of data facilitates fast delivery of quotes on build-to-order items and allows you to provide automatic status updates to clients throughout the fulfillment process. Combining mobile apps with a CRM platform brings this information together to simplify customer management and motivate employees to be diligent in meeting deadlines. When clients can check on order status and receive important notifications any time, employees are free to concentrate on working instead of being interrupted by requests for order information.
Mobility solutions can also be used to track employee timing and productivity to help supervisors identify team members in need of additional training to improve output. Put employee monitoring and training side by side with order tracking to increase fulfillment accuracy and improve client satisfaction.
Resource Management
Tracking the manufacturing process from beginning to end with customized mobile apps reveals areas where resources can be better allocated and how processes can be improved to increase productivity.
Going mobile simplifies traceability throughout the supply chain so that you always know where parts are coming from and how they’re being used. This clarity helps prevent the time and money lost when scrambling to order essential parts at the last minute. It also ensures the integrity of your supplies at all times. This is especially important if your company maintains specific environmental or ethical standards. When you promise a certain level of responsibility in these areas, transparency in supply sources is essential to preserve client trust. Mobility tools not only show the source of each part but also give you clear digital records of your entire supply chain. If something goes wrong or standards fail to be met, you can quickly locate the problem and start working to correct it.
Machinery is one of the most important resources in manufacturing. It takes your carefully sourced parts and assembles them into the products your clients need, but sensitive processes can break down and cause delays if you’re not diligent about maintenance. Use mobile apps to track machine performance and alert the right engineers and technicians when something is amiss. Keeping machinery functioning well and in compliance with local and federal regulations prevents a breakdown in the manufacturing process and helps your company avoid potential legal issues.
Decision Making
Implementing mobility solutions helps manage the constant flow of data within your company. With proper manufacturing intelligence in place, you’re able to monitor information, updates, production processes and employee performance in real time. If changes need to be made, you have the tools you need to facilitate communication between employees and executives, leading to more timely decisions and promoting positive results.
Client communications are also improved, so service calls are handled better and problems are resolved more quickly. Mobile solutions can be used to combine important information regarding the type of service requested, what parts are needed and how much the job is going to cost. You can find the best technician for the job in an instant with visibility tools showing you the locations and availability of staff members at any given time. This simplifies every service call and cuts down on the time needed to decide which employees to send and gather the tools necessary to make the job quicker and easier.
Difficulties to Consider
Implementation of mobility in manufacturing comes up against some common obstacles:
- Integration with existing company software
- Unpredictability of certain processes
- Difficulty balancing data from humans and machines
To improve the success of mobile apps, software must be able to communicate effectively with your ERP and CRM systems, delivering accurate data in real time. Integrations must also be flexible to handle the changeable nature of the manufacturing process. Minimizing human error by providing a streamlined way to merge human and machine inputs is also crucial to the success of mobility.
For mobile apps to benefit your manufacturing business, employees at every level need solutions tailored to their specific tasks and connected in ways designed to facilitate communication throughout the company. Let PhaseAlpha make everyone’s jobs easier with customized cross-platform mobile apps designed to meet the needs of your company. Call PhaseAlpha today to get started with the software you need to move your company into the modern age of technology.