21 July 2022
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Welcome to the third article in our Vizlib Industry Supercharge series, where we look at how Qlik + Vizlib can bolster your industry. In this article, we’ll be taking a closer look at the manufacturing sector.
Manufacturing is a core aspect of the modern economy. Everything you and your customers use, from the device you’re reading this article on, to the coffee mug you use every morning, was manufactured.
Of course, with great power comes great responsibility – and with that comes the potential for large-scale challenges – such as the cardboard and semiconductor shortages during COVID lockdowns – that can interrupt the flow of goods and have wide-reaching consequences. These examples may be more extreme cases, but they’re incredibly useful tools for learning, and they highlight the critical need for optimised processes across this lynchpin industry.
Let’s explore how data analytics solutions, like Qlik Sense + Vizlib, can help optimise manufacturing processes.
Tracking KPIs at a glance with data dashboards
Manufacturing organisations are complex operations composed of various departments that need to work cohesively to create and fulfil customer orders. To support smooth processes and workflows across such an infrastructure, it’s key that your organisation has a well-designed data dashboard with easily-trackable KPIs for every step along the way, and across every department. A real-time view of your production or shipping queue, rated against past performance, is essential for keeping your business on track.
With the use of Vizlib Library for Qlik Sense, a powerful set of visualisation and User Experience (UX) components, anyone in the company can create compelling and easy-to-understand data dashboards to detect issues, visualise the manufacturing process, and even assist when forecasting production.
For example, floor workers might experience different issues in the manufacturing process to managers situated in another plant. Creating a data dashboard for each and every sector, such as OSHA Safety Compliance or Overall Equipment Efficiency, can help to streamline output with real-time analytics and ensure alignment across teams and locations.
Planning to succeed
Customers expect a high level of commitment from manufacturers to ensure that their goods are received on time. As a result, time frames and delivery dates are often non-negotiable. In an industry where seconds matter, it’s vital to have the time and project management tools in place that are easy to use, and well-supported.
By incorporating a project planning tool, like Vizlib Gantt for Qlik Sense, into your manufacturing pipeline, you can monitor crucial timelines for customer orders, resource sourcing, and delivery times. With this information at hand, it’s easier to manage bandwidth if, or when, any issues arise. Plus, setting up a Gantt chart in Qlik Sense is straightforward, and intuitive. Here’s a short video to help get you started.
Building the best possible products
In addition to managing processes and deadlines, product quality is critical to the success of any manufacturing business. From power cables or mining equipment, to cardboard boxes for ecommerce, products need to be of the highest quality to stay competitive in a global marketplace where customers have more choices than ever before. Helpfully, user-friendly data analytics can help alleviate some of the stress and hassle associated with maintaining quality standards.
The insights you gain from your Business Intelligence can drive product creation as you build for the customer. With highly-customisable analytics products such as Vizlib Self-Service, Library, and Collaboration, your organisation can build robust apps that monitor the quality of competitors’ offerings, feedback from customers, and the grade of the materials used. Your plant teams can easily uncover, explore, and share valuable insights with Vizlib’s low-code, creator-centric solutions.
Ensuring cost-effective plant operations
Cash flow can stall or streamline the manufacturing pipeline. Streamlining operations or continually ensuring high-quality products is key to success, but not when your bottom line takes a hit.
With Vizlib Finance, you can simplify your financial management. Vizlib Finance adds a visual layer on top of your financial reporting apps in Qlik to help you easily track expenses and acquisitions. The familiar spreadsheet-like interface ensures that all members of the finance teams can easily migrate their operations to Qlik Sense. Plus, the added visual power makes data more understandable and encourages more exploration and collaboration.
Supercharge the manufacturing industry with Vizlib
Perfecting your manufacturing operations is an ongoing process. And whether you’re operating a lean or robust enterprise, there’s always room for improvement. To succeed and grow your manufacturing business, it’s essential to have access to information that reflects the current moment. And traditional, passive BI wasn’t designed with that in mind.
Qlik embraces this ‘need for speed’ with its Active Intelligence approach. This modern viewpoint can help leaders easily surpass the limitations of traditional BI – triggering immediate actions and incorporating an intelligent analytics data pipeline for dynamic responsiveness.
Essentially, this could enable one plant to immediately adopt lessons learned from another. And by using Vizlib’s Writeback capabilities, you can further enhance your ERP data and update product line data on-the-fly directly in Qlik to boost supply chain efficiency and productivity.
To maintain a competitive edge, manufacturing organisations need to optimise business operations, find the right balance between people, processes and technology, and improve efficiency with the power of data.
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