2023: The Year in Digital Transformation and Smart Manufacturing Software Solutions

Key Takeaways:

• Digital transformation is essential to unify manufacturing teams and insights and to thrive in today’s competitive markets
• Smart manufacturing software solutions help innovators reduce costs, address sustainability, and gain agility

The Full Article:

As we approach the end of 2023, the manufacturing industry remains at the forefront of a digital transformation (DX) era. Manufacturers are harnessing advanced manufacturing software solutions to create new avenues for continuous innovation, market growth, strategic success, and long-term profitability.

With 82% of executives recognizing the importance of DX for business longevity, advanced manufacturing software solutions play a critical role in maintaining a competitive advantage and gaining the scalability to capitalize on new opportunities. This article explores how digital investments, such as aPriori, have been reshaping manufacturing in 2023 and will continue to make an impact.

Digital Transformation: The Imperative for Manufacturing Businesses

Today’s global innovators embrace DX by integrating cutting-edge manufacturing software solutions into their product development process, from design to sourcing. By embracing digitalization, manufacturing companies can optimize their existing workflows, enhance stakeholder collaboration, increase time for innovation, reduce costs, improve product quality, and more.

Regardless of their current level of digitalization, nearly 50% of surveyed companies believe that keeping up with technical advancements is critical to maintaining a competitive edge in 2024. And more than 60% of executives expect a high return on investment (ROI) from digital technology in the coming year.

Successful Digital Transformation Depends on Four Major Pillars Today and Beyond

Manufacturing companies must align the following four pillars (organizational functionalities) to ensure successful digitalization, according to the Harvard Business Review (HBR):

• Invest in a Cloud-Based IT Uplift. In this initial step, organizations allocate funds toward digital initiatives, enabling the modernization of their existing IT and communication systems. Key performance indicators (KPIs) include cost reduction, increased capabilities, and enhanced employee satisfaction.
• Digitize Business Operations. Next, companies utilize digital tools such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), manufacturing software solutions, and the Internet of Things (IoT) to streamline existing business processes. KPIs include cost and time savings and improved customer satisfaction.
• Embrace Digital Marketing. Companies leverage data analytics and customer relationship management (CRM) software to enhance consumer acquisition strategies. Increased leads and brand awareness measure the success of these efforts.
• Start New Ventures. Finally, organizations can transform their business models, unlock growth opportunities, and introduce new products through digitalization. Companies focus on KPIs such as new market expansion, manufacturing management performance, and efficient new product introduction (NPI) processes.

Embracing Automated Manufacturing Software Solutions

Manufacturing software systems provide automated, data-driven insights that enable global innovators to design profitable and sustainable products quickly and confidently.

One such tool is aPriori, a manufacturing software solution that evaluates 3D CAD models stored in product lifecycle management (PLM) systems. Through an automatic assessment, aPriori provides actionable, real-time insights and data into product cost, manufacturability, and sustainability.

Now, let’s delver deeper into how aPriori’s digital manufacturing software solutions help organizations streamline their product development workflows:

• Business Intelligence (BI) and Accessible Reports. aPriori’s reporting solution, aP Analytics, provides a single interface for ad-hoc reporting and dashboards for the product team and senior stakeholders to access. Further, aP Analytics delivers insights at scale to identify crucial outliers, such as cost and sustainability. This allows for rapid, data-driven decision-making across manufacturing operations.
• Real-Time Collaboration and Project Management. aPriori’s aP Workspace co-working app unifies far-flung teams across cost, design, sourcing, procurement, and manufacturing. The module enables real-time evaluation of critical product data, improves productivity, promotes traceability, and accelerates decision-making at scale. Moreover, teams can easily assign tasks, post comments, and pose questions, ensuring everyone understands the project’s progress.
• Automated Product Analysis Based on Real-World Variables. Teams use aPriori to simulate and determine the real-world impact of alternative designs, production processes, raw materials, supplier capabilities, locations, and more. Further, teams can configure digital factories to reflect their internal production capabilities and suppliers down to the machine level. With these insights, teams can make informed decisions quickly, helping them reduce manufacturing costs and design high-quality, sustainable products while improving time to market (TTM).

Discover how aPriori’s Manufacturing Insights Platform improves supply chain management.

Real-World Results: Top Innovators Eliminate Bottlenecks and Improve Forecasting With aPriori

Global powerhouses like Alstom, Carrier, Danfoss, and Eaton are successfully achieving their profitability and sustainability goals through aPriori’s manufacturing software solutions. There are various examples of this, including:

• Carrier uses aPriori digital factories to automate should cost modeling and secure the best pricing on supplier parts. aPriori’s granular and precise expense forecasting saved Carrier $20 million on a select number of components.
• Alstom relies on aPriori’s simulation functionalities to model manufacturing costs for more than 20K parts annually. The organization collaborates with suppliers to configure aPriori digital factories that mirror their cost structure. This results in near-instant quotes without sacrificing accuracy.
• aPriori customers can expect a 603% ROI, a net present value (NPV) of $19.7 million, a 10% reduction in procurement spending, and a 70% increase in design efficiency. The recent Total Economic Impact (TEI) report by research firm Forrester highlights these findings.

Digital Transformation Paves the Way Toward Manufacturing Excellence

In today’s dynamic business landscape, an innovator’s competitiveness and profitability can depend on their digital technology adoption. To achieve continuous success, companies focus on three critical areas of DX: IT modernization, operational digitization, and exploring new business ventures.

Among the many digital tools available today, manufacturing software solutions provide real-time insights and data that manufacturers need to create more profitable and sustainable innovations. This enables them to stay ahead of the competition while unlocking new opportunities to enhance their bottom line.