Why Mobile for Oracle Discrete Manufacturing Cloud?

Industrial manufacturers are turning to Oracle Cloud SCM to securely manage data while solving challenges in labor productivity and associated costs. Inventory management in the manufacturing industry has been historically siloed, with accumulated systems and manual processes that don’t speak to one another. For those seeking disciplined and streamlined technologies, Oracle Cloud has become a natural fit for many manufacturers. Following LEAN manufacturing processes that offers total security and master data management, Oracle provides complete traceability for discrete, process, and other manufacturers.

Why Mobile Technology is Critical

AUTOMATION

Discrete manufacturers need access to real-time information in order to manage operations and make proactive decisions. A  Boston Consulting Market Group analysis predicts that roughly 63% of manufacturers believe applying technology to their operations will increase profitability. Using barcodes and scanning to automate your processes allows you to operate your business efficiently while giving full control over your inventory. The data collected allows you to reinvest back into your business while providing flexibility to react to an ever-changing market.

Four areas where industrial manufacturers can realize great benefits from mobility are:

• Work orders, Purchase orders, Sales orders
• Receiving and Transfers
• Assembly Builds
• Counting

TRACEABILITY

Automation of your manufacturing processes ensures full traceability for your items as they move through the manufacturing process. Traceability is vital for two reasons:

• Quality Assurance: Quality management and auditing is key for successful manufacturing processes. Quality assurance is focused on providing confidence that the product being manufactured will fulfill the requirements for quality. Improving product quality over time is a goal that can improve your supply chain overall. Industrial manufacturers must have the ability to trace the entire product history in the case of quality issues or recalls. 
• Raw Materials: Especially for process manufacturers, there is a lot of important data to be collected from scanning. Recipes or batches require close monitoring to avoid contaminations or to monitor future recalls. Scanning allows you to capture all of that information so that it is updated in real time.

COST REDUCTION

There is pressure on discrete manufacturing organizations to reduce costs while increasing profitability and customer experience. Automated data collection can lower costs through: 

• Increased Labor Productivity:  In industrial manufacturing, your workers are skilled and performing a task that takes training and precision. However, they can be slowed down by inefficient practices or manual data entry. If your workers are keying in information to a computer instead of scanning, they are not spending time doing the job that they have been trained to do. The ability of workforce dictates productivity: if workers are busy inputting data, the productivity of your most valuable resource is significantly diminished.
• Reduced Materials Cost: Everything has a cost and data is the only way to determine labor and materials cost. At the end of the day, the only way to truly determine profitability is to be able to track the costs associated with all aspects of your business. Because you are able to track each material as it goes through the manufacturing process, you can adequately determine stock levels and reduce inventory costs.
• Unplanned Downtime: One large controllable cost for manufacturers is maintenance operations. Many organizations have made it a goal to eliminate unplanned downtime, as 98% of organizations report that one hour of downtime costs them over $100,000. Using predictive maintenance, some say manufacturers can reduce planned outages by 50%. Predictive maintenance can reduce unplanned outages and extend the life of your machinery by monitoring equipment performance through automated data collection. This process allows for proactive maintenance that can save time and money while increasing production performance and extending the life of your assets.

Industrial Manufacturer Finds Success with Automation

Titan International is a manufacturer of off-road and all-road wheels and tires. As an Original Equipment Manufacturer with an international distribution channel that includes aftermarket, Titan needed a mobile solution that would mirror Oracle Cloud in the manufacturing environment to provide instant visibility to inventory updates while eliminating all paper processes.

GOAL

Titan operations include moving large quantities of material from different areas of their plant. Beyond tracking material movement, they also wanted a solution that would provide production reports. Titan chose Oracle Cloud to unite their systems across the globe, reduce IT costs and provide company-wide visibility. The team at Titan also wanted to eliminate all paper processes and manual inventory updates with a mobile solution.

APPROACH

By eliminating paperwork and the associated delays, Titan has improved the speed of receiving processes. The improved efficiency has also reduced the amount of time spent working weekends, which is saving Titan on labor costs. RF-SMART has made tracking inventory movement through 1.5 million square feet easy, with Titan employees no longer spending time manually logging transactions and entering data.

Want to learn more about how RF-SMART can help your industrial manufacturing processes?