Confronting Complexity in Manufacturing - Part II

Digital Performance Management: A Faster Track to Productivity

Lower your costs. Drive your productivity. Repeat. The universal cadence of modern manufacturing. We’re so familiar with it because it’s never changed. What has changed are the means available to us to pursue these goals. The physical world of the factory is being transformed by digital technologies and the impact on continuous improvement can’t be overstated. 

The Financial Impact of Continuous Improvement Initiatives

That impact is obviously manifested first operationally, as we improve efficiency and effectiveness by any of the various measures employed to keep track of improvement. But the metrics manufacturers tend to employ don’t necessarily link improvements clearly and demonstrably to the metric that matters most at the enterprise level: financial impact. How are your efforts improving your company’s P&L...and how do you know? 

A Common Language for Productivity

PTC’s new ThingWorx Digital Performance Management (DPM) solution brings more visibility and better control to you and your teams, with an innovative, uniform, and uniquely concrete approach to assessing and optimizing manufacturing throughput. It lets you solve manufacturing problems in real-time, leveraging a closed-loop system that relies on a single source of truth for the factory and enterprise. Because DPM captures and captures and measures operational performance using an absolute and business-oriented performance measure: production hours. One metric to rule them all. 

Is DPM Right for My Organization? 

As you consider investing in a DPM solution to fast-track productivity improvements, what are the realities of standing the system up? For what types of factories is DPM ideally suited? How do I get started, and what’s the time to value? When will I begin to realize a return on my technology investment? Let’s take a look at the immediate practical considerations involved in getting started, and gaining traction, with DPM. 

One Solution. Multiple Production Scenarios. 

Nearly every kind of manufacturing operation is amenable to the advantages of a DPM-driven approach to optimizing continuous improvement. The power of the system has been proven in both discrete and process manufacturing operations, and in high volume/low mix, or low volume/high mix environments - whether your cycle time is measured in seconds, minutes, or hours. 

Better Decisions. Stronger Results.

Discrete manufacturing processes in which the solution delivers the strongest advantages include, for example, parts fabrication and sub-assemblies; foundry operations and PCBA. In high-volume process manufacturing, DPM is an excellent fit for homogenization, granulation, and packaging operations. In every scenario, the system’s real-time, closed-loop problem solving capabilities mean you’ll zero in on critical production bottlenecks, smoke out root causes, and make more well-informed and effective decisions. The most compelling results will be the impact those decisions have on your business’s P&L – and overall enterprise value.

Many of the inherent advantages of a digital management approach, in particular when compared to current practices, are noticeable. All are covered in-depth on our ThingWorx Digital Performance Management solution page.