How Consumer driven customization is revolutionizing the industrial machinery industry

Janifha Evangeline

A manufacturer must completely align their goods and services with shifting consumer preferences and market conditions in order to succeed. To more effectively meet customer needs and increase the value given to them, an overall perspective of operations and client interactions is essential. It's not as simple as it seems to enable production driven by consumers. The change of venerable manufacturing processes, and their close and ongoing alignment with customer demand are key components of the shift to a customer-centric paradigm.

The rise of consumer driven customization
The manufacturing ecosystem's trends in the industrial machinery industry, are always changing. Digitally powered connected factories are more prevalent as IIoT devices swarm the manufacturing floor. Today's manufacturers, both large and small, are putting more effort into Industry 4.0 and making significant changes to the layout of their factories in order to continuously raise productivity at all levels, optimise costs, and provide high-quality goods and services.

The majority of these initiatives are driven and directed by consumers. It has become crucial for manufacturers in the industrial machinery industry to get a competitive advantage over their rivals in light of the fierce rivalry. Manufacturers must have an agile and flexible manufacturing strategy in order to meet client demands and stay competitive. The key to consumer-driven manufacturing will be to transform the manufacturing processes and strategy to enable agility, flexibility, and adaptation.

As customers' awareness of the environment grows, businesses must also seek to strengthen their sustainability policies and make investments in the technology that will help them reduce their carbon footprint. Due to the increasing number of businesses offering 1-day or even same-day deliveries, manufacturers are under pressure to satisfy rigorous time-to-market deadlines.

Simply changing your product strategy will not suffice in the digital age to satisfy customer demands. You must put your customizations at the forefront of every business decision you make if you want to endure and prosper. Since consumers of today, regardless of the channel or device they use, demand personalization and a superior shopping experience. You must have a thorough awareness of their interests, inclinations, and finances if you are going to create distinctive experiences for them across all of your channels and touchpoints.

Digital technologies like IoT, AI/ML, data analytics, robotics, augmented reality, and virtual reality are becoming more widely used, which is helping manufacturing shift to a more consumer-driven model.

Legacy systems, isolated teams, and an excessive reliance on manual labour, however, represent a serious threat to regularly meeting consumer expectations. Manufacturers frequently struggle to achieve a single source of truth because legacy systems are not well linked, which ultimately affects the goods and services they provide to their customers. You must take certain actions and change your business model in many ways in order to effectively produce value. Some of the customer-driven customization strategies that help in revolutionizing the industrial machinery industry include:

Improving Enterprise visibility:

You must have better visibility into manufacturing operations if you want to meet the changing expectations of consumers. Lack of visibility can lead to little to no understanding of new risks, shop floor operational conditions, machine health, process inefficiencies, etc. Investing in equipment and software that offers real-time awareness of the entire production scene is crucial.

Breaking silos:

Owing to the inadequate integration between the various manufacturing systems, relying on numerous siloed data sets can limit your capacity to quickly and effectively respond to client requests. To create and maintain up-to-date records and logs of customer needs, you must integrate disparate systems with various control mechanisms and communication protocols. Departmental silos must also be broken for better departmental collaboration and communication of objectives, risks, and opportunities.

Modernizing systems:

You may be limited in your capacity to promote innovation by legacy systems. Therefore, it's crucial to update your legacy systems and address issues with ineffective maintenance, poor integration, and constrained predictive maintenance if you want to keep up with customer demands. The capabilities and performance required to increase process efficiency, improve visibility, and shorten time to market can be obtained by investing in modern systems.

Proactively tracking OEE:

To guarantee high availability, performance, and product quality, OEE tracking is crucial. Rework and wastage can be decreased by automating equipment monitoring and engaging in proactive quality control. Through improved asset maintenance, it can also raise the plant's general efficiency. Predictive maintenance may improve availability, utilisation, and performance while enabling visibility into asset health, helping you meet your sustainability objectives.

Enabling remote monitoring:

You must allow remote asset and process monitoring if you want to survive in the era of manufacturing driven by consumers. Such real-time remote monitoring can assist in gathering and harmonising data from various equipment, PLCs, and SCADA systems and building user-friendly OEE dashboards for enhanced offline and online condition analysis of machine cycles as manufacturing units are now spreading across geographical boundaries. Long-term, such analysis may result in scheduling production processes that are better matched to customer needs.

Every manufacturer today is focused on keeping up with the pace of consumer-driven customised manufacturing and allowing comprehensive customer experiences that are centred on the consumer.

However, preparing for this new manufacturing era in the industrial machinery industry calls for much more than just a larger product line. A full redesign of the production setup is required to comprehend consumer wants and exceed their expectations. This includes enhancing enterprise visibility, dissolving silos, modernising systems, proactive OEE tracking, and enabling remote monitoring.