In Mind Cloud Blog

We have to be honest: the month of May passed by in a flash. With the annual SAP SAPPHIRE NOW conference happening in Orlando, Florida in a week, we’ve been too preoccupied preparing for our different sessions: from our customers, Netafim and Mindray, talking about digitalized sales and business innovation, to our CEO, who will be discussing our own solutions offered on the SAP App Center during the partner summit.

This is the first in a series of Industry 4.0 posts that aim to help manufacturers take advantage of the power of innovations in manufacturing. To receive the next post in the series, sign up for our newsletter. 

In the world of manufacturing, it can be tough to get started on digitalisation due to legacy systems, skill gaps, and other complexities. Even as data becomes an important part of decision making in the future, only about half of industrial manufacturers are actively focusing on data today, per a PwC study. This means that there are plenty of bumps in the road for manufacturers who are looking at Industry 4.0 solutions, but have not been able to start on their digitalisation journey.

To provide some help, we have collated 3 spectacular success stories that every manufacturer should read:

Singapore — May 18, 2018 — In Mind Cloud today announced that SAP has recognized it as 2018 Winner of the SAP Hybris ISV Solution Partner of the Year category.

In the world of smart factories, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Industry 4.0, it can quickly be confusing to see the difference between advances in technology. Even in the world of machine maintenance, we’ve seen robots, machine learning, and other technologies and service models appear in the span of the last few decades.

It is hence important for us to differentiate between all the terms floating around in the realm of maintenance, to ensure that manufacturers stay on the same page as technology providers. After all, if you shortened it, the abbreviation ‘PM’ could now refer to Preventive Maintenance, Predictive Maintenance, or Prescriptive Maintenance! It’s time to break down the differences between the three. 

There are many benefits to having multiple sites and sales regions: for enterprise manufacturing businesses, local sales offices and production sites make for lower costs and quicker time-to-quote.

However, the process of setting up sales offices and production sites in different countries and regions tends to create silo-ed factories and offices: most of them don’t find a need to be connected to other sites on a day to day basis, so they aren’t. Even when sites are in the same region, they may not be aware of each site’s activities, from productivity levels to sales activities.

Life-Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA), or Life-Cycle Costing (LCC), is a common concept in the world of procurement and manufacturing: It refers to the need to analyse all ‘costs of production, installation, usage and disposal, aiming at the minimum of the total cost’, as per a 1998 research paper, ‘Product Life Cycle Costing Applied to Manufacturing Systems’.

Instead of focusing on the cheapest cost price, LCC looks at a material’s entire life cycle (hence the term), and the need to include installation, operational, maintenance, and end-of-life costs to the overall buying cost of a material.

 Were you at the Hannover Messe this past week? If you were, you would have seen some stunning innovations and technological leaps, courtesy of Industry 4.0. Moving into May, we’re thinking about our Labour Day holiday, but also excited for how companies will handle all the Industry 4.0 news below…

“Manufacturing” as a category might make up a huge part of a country’s GDP, but when you break it down, the types of products made can range from the smallest screw to the largest forklift. There are automotive manufacturers, medical equipment manufacturers, contract manufacturers, engineer-to-order and make-to-order businesses…the list goes on.

It stands to reason that sales processes can differ dramatically according to the type of manufacturing as well. In this article, we will be looking at the ability to expedite the industrial B2B sales cycle for a section of manufacturers.

First things first, we are big fans of the Novus CPQ Podcast. Frank Sohn, CEO of Novus CPQ established this format to bring valuable knowledge and industry insights about all things Configure-Price-Quote related to his audience. 

With Good Friday right around the corner, March ends on a holiday high. Let’s look back at the most interesting Industry 4.0 stories from this first quarter of the year, from supply woes to automotive innovations.