Is it too far-fetched to say that manufacturers run the world? Without manufacturers like you, we wouldn’t have cars to drive, shelters to live in, schools to learn in, hospitals to heal in, or grocery stores to shop in. And it’s probably pretty safe to say that we wouldn’t have the products we use every day to not only enjoy life but to survive if it wasn’t for you.
Tim Minshall, Professor of Innovation and Head of Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, and author of Your Life is Manufactured, describes the importance of manufacturing this way:
Unless you are currently floating naked through space, you are right now in immediate contact with multiple manufactured products. Throughout every day of your life you will be wearing, consuming, being transported or sheltered by, communicating through or being restored to health by manufactured products.
Basically, your work as a manufacturer enables those of us who inhabit this earth to live. It’s a heavy responsibility that requires you to run your business efficiently, to overcome the many challenges that come your way, and to nurture growth in an ever-evolving economy.
The question is, how do you ensure your business has what it takes?
By building a tech stack that supports all your manufacturing needs, from inventory and warehouse management to communication and customer service requirements and everything in between. Here’s a look at what you should consider when searching for the right technology for you.
Manufacturing Needs You Should Expect Your Tech Stack to Meet
Your first step to building a powerful tech stack is understanding your business's technology needs. As a manufacturer with very complex processes, you must be able to manage each and every process as easily, effectively, and efficiently as possible.
This means the solution you choose must provide:
- Real-time production visibility, which ensures you see how well you’re converting raw materials into your finished product and getting that product into the hands of your customers.
- Integrated BOM and routing management so that every team member (e.g., designers, engineers, shop floor employees, etc.) has clear, concise, and updated instructions.
- Digital workflows for compliance, traceability, and quality assurance.
- Materials Requirements Planning (MRP) and supplier collaboration so that you can accurately calculate and schedule the materials and resources you need to produce your goods in a timely and cost-effective manner.
- An accurate and thorough Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) to understand the expenses (e.g., raw materials, labor, overhead, marketing, administrative, etc.) that go into producing your product, which should also include landed costs (or the costs associated with purchasing, shipping, insuring, and possibly getting your materials through customs).
In addition to these primary capabilities, your tech stack should support the vital and varied traceability, knowledge, communication, production, customer/partner, and scalability needs you have in the manufacturing space.
Traceability, Knowledge, and Growth
Within manufacturing, there are several manufacturing strategies you can employ. You may be a Just-in-Time (JIT) manufacturer, which means you produce goods based on actual customer demand and order your materials accordingly, thus reducing waste and warehousing costs. Or you may align with the Made-to-Stock (or Just-in-Case) manufacturing (MTS) strategy, which is production based on anticipated demand. Either way, your technology must be designed to support whichever strategy you choose.
Your technology should also deliver automated warehouse operations (including barcode scanning, location management, and multi-warehouse management within a single solution) to replace inefficient, costly manual processes and provide traceability of every item from start to finish; real-time stock levels for upstream and downstream inventory planning; and full support for bulk, kitting, and made-to-order processes so that your manufacturing business operates seamlessly.
Communication and Production
Whether you’re working with retailers or customers, transparent communication is key to success. The solution, or solutions, you select should provide tools, such as a B2B customer portal, that enable you to message stakeholders quickly and that allow those same stakeholders to respond just as quickly.
In addition to communication tools, your tech stack must help you remain EDI compliant, allow you to have access to and integrate with critical marketplace applications (such as Amazon, Faire, WooCommerce, and more), and provide your customers with pricing tiers, discounts, and channel-specific product configurations. These are essential production requirements that can make or break your business if not managed correctly.
Customer and Partner Experience
Like communication, your customer and partner experience is a major contributing factor to your success. Your customers and partners expect top notch service, and your ability to provide it means you need to invest in technology that supplies:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application that provides you with important quoting information, order history per customer, customer account hierarchy, and more at your fingertips
- Portals for partners/customers to easily place orders and check order status
- B2B returns workflows to make it an effortless, stress-free experience
- Configurable dashboards and reports for customers, ensuring they have personalized experiences as well as the ability to make data-driven decisions
- A way to collect feedback on product performance so that you can continually improve your product and service
Scalability
Finally, your success rests on finding and implementing a solution that can scale with you as you grow. Why is scalability important? Imagine for a moment that you have a “TikTok moment.” That’s when a product’s popularity surges because an influencer puts that product under the spotlight, and in response, everyone wants it—and they want it now.
Your TikTok moment could be due to signing a major retail contract or having a celebrity endorse your product, but regardless of how it happens, you must have a system that can handle a spike—or spikes—in orders without straining your resources or requiring heavy manual intervention.
Such a system has a cloud-based infrastructure with flexible capacity and automated order processing, procurement, and reporting capabilities, like Cin7.
Cin7: The IMS You’re Looking For
Cin7 is a single, modern, and cloud-based inventory management solution (IMS) that can help solve all your manufacturing challenges.
Suffering from inventory overload and inaccuracies? Cin7’s centralized inventory tracks your raw and finished goods in single or multiple warehouses. Tired of dealing with disconnected MRP applications and handling BOM manually? Cin7 has built-in MRP and BOM functionality.
Cin7 also delivers automated order, production, and warehouse workflows along with seamless B2B and DTC integrations, centralized order management, and integrated quote-to-cash management. And with Cin7 Pay, you can effortlessly collect payment via various payment types, including credit card, ACH, terms, invoicing, and more.
