Manufacturing industries often fall victim to market unpredictability, an increase in production cost, and failure to comply with supply chain management. Inability to procure raw materials and deliver the finished goods on time leading to customer dissatisfaction also adds to the manufacturers’ problems. The uncertainty in the economic status across the globe, leading to uneven demand and supply chain, has generated a need for data capturing services.

Data capture is so important in manufacturing as it gives easy access to product information and product market performance data to understand consumer needs. It also provides accurate inventory data to prevent out-of-stock situations and make the supply chain optimistic. Timely data capture helps manufacturing industries predict market trends, make the right decisions and save time. Data aids in shop floor management control costs and ensure smooth production. It helps manufacturers detect issues in the manufacturing units faster and devise solutions with accuracy in a time-bound fashion.

Implementing effective data capture positively impacts operational functions including:

• Customer experience: Helps manufacturers be aware of the customers' needs and respond quickly to requests or queries.
• Asset optimization: Identifies bottlenecks in the production process and reduces the possibility of errors.
• Supply chain optimization: Helps shop floor managers make quick assessments, improve project management and deliver timely.
• Demand forecasting: Increases productivity of workers and enables them to juggle their roles more efficiently. It also aids in generating timely reports, which contribute to enhanced inventory management and improved quality control.
• Efficient shop floor management: Data on the number of employees, their salary, departments, projects they handle, working hours and related information allows the managers to keep a tab on the employee's skills. Managers can deploy them to departments or projects that are short on human resources.
• Product design: Accurately captured product data contains a lot of design knowledge, which brings new opportunities to enhance production efficiency and product competitiveness.
• Product quality: Data-driven product design is an effective and popular design method, which can provide sufficient support for manufacturers to make smart decisions about enhancing and improving the quality of their products.

5 key benefits of data capture in manufacturing

Let’s dig deeper and understand how manufacturers benefit from becoming a data-driven industry

Establishes a single source of production truth

Employees use guesswork and estimates if they can’t find the data they need. This leads to errors and mistakes. With a single source of accurate and accessible production information, there’s no need to guess. Employees work faster with critical information at their fingertips.

The absence of accurate data may increase the chances of miscalculation of various parameters in a production cycle. A production process includes the procurement of raw materials, making of the products, and delivering them to the consumers. It undergoes multiple stages that require data capturing to understand where the process is falling short.

Data capturing helps in tracking the complete production cycle, from procurement to creation and meeting the destination. Accurate data gives insights into the production rate. It helps in overall process improvement and increases the efficiency of supply chain management. It also helps to take - up timely maintenance services across the shop floor at a holistic level. Accurate and timely data capturing ensures smooth production.

Aligns the business from shop floor to the top floor

Manufacturing industries, small or big, heavily depend on machinery for production. Constant usage of machinery without considering the requirement for maintenance exposes it to damages affecting the production cycle.

Accurate data capture helps the unit workers to consider downtime and improve it to continue smooth production. Data capturing considers the time for jams, cleaning, minor slowdowns, and stoppages, thus enabling better shop floor management. Data capture also records change over time, which enables workers to prepare for similar situations in the future.

Accurate data capture enables shop floor managers to undertake predictive or prescriptive maintenance based on the type of machine breakdowns. Besides, the data provides an insight into the potential causes of the damage, thus helping workers to take timely corrective measures to minimize the damages.

Avoids wastage and spoilage

The lack of accurate data makes it difficult for manufacturing industries to predict the need for products. Manufacturing companies place bulk orders to produce goods in vast quantities. Some companies producing small batches of goods order raw materials in surplus to produce at a later date. Such surplus increases the chances of wastage and spoilage. This can be because of the nature of the materials ordered, lack of ideal storage space or the demand for the product suddenly drops leading to wastage.

Data capturing helps shop floor managers track the market, thus stopping them from over-ordering materials required to produce a certain quantity of goods. It gives insights into the time frame when the spoilage of the materials will begin. Accurate data helps managers in making correct estimates, and avoid wastage and spoilage of the materials.

Aids in timely delivery

Failure to order materials on time and mapping the time required to produce goods leads to unpleasant situations such as out-of-stock goods or delays in production. This leads to customer dissatisfaction and cancellation of orders, causing losses for the companies.

Data capturing helps in tracking the time required, from the production of the first quality piece to a finished product. It provides an estimate for the time required from receiving the orders until their delivery. It helps in tracking the number and the type of defects and time required for rework and associated tasks to improve product quality. Timely and accurate data capturing offers a detailed production history and helps managers keep production on track to meet established delivery times.

Forecast product demands

Product demands are susceptible to market requirements. Some products need to be replenished before the previous stock runs out because of high demand, whereas few demands for a few products might never see a rise again. Data capture helps in understanding the pulse of the market to forecast a product’s demand.

Data, when captured from the entry point and mapped till the exit, gives a complete view of the end-to-end process. It reveals the stages of the production process, the true cost of manufacturing a product and forecasting the demand for the products beforehand. This provides a clear view to the manufacturers to determine the product's lifecycle.

Cost-effective

Manufacturing industries and capital intensive. From machinery to the workforce, everything comes at a significant cost. If maintenance is not undertaken on time, surplus is ordered, wastage and spoilages are not avoided, it leads to heavy monetary losses.

Data capturing help in each stage of the production, providing insight into very minute details. This allows shop floor managers to take timely corrective measures. Ordering the right amount of materials to undertake timely maintenance helps to reduce cost, thus maximizing profits for the manufacturers.

Conclusion

Decisions made by the manufacturing companies affect the demand and supply system, thus affecting the company's image. Setting up a manufacturing system is both capital and resource-intensive and needs to keep pace with the demand and supply.

Accurate data capture benefits manufacturing companies in recording, referring to history, and processes, and assessing the best techniques to generate profits. It equips them with the ability to respond quickly to internal and external stimuli, provide satisfactory customer service and uphold the company values. This makes data capturing the key to the sustenance and stability of manufacturing companies.