In an increasingly digital world, consumers' expectations have changed – the likes of corporate giants McDonalds, Amazon, Argos and Domino’s are setting the standards of providing more in-depth order status information. Comparing this to the Manufacturing Industry, this type of information has traditionally been limited. The Glass Factory® app allows businesses to have workflow visibility throughout - propelling both suppliers and customers into the digital era.
With Brexit supply chain shortages coupled with the effects of the pandemic, will software like Glass Factory® be vital for giving manufacturers, especially SMEs, the competitive edge as we see get to the other side of COVID 19?
Many B2B businesses and consumers can relate to long lead times, in addition to the lack of visibility of their order. In many instances this can lead to frantic chasing of orders and requesting dates of completion - that often don’t go to plan.
The Glass Factory® app created by HanaTech - specialising in Digital Process Improvement, aims to catapult the industry forward by bringing real time transparency of order status across multi-level complex supply chains. For the suppliers and customers, Glass Factory® offers the opportunity to improve efficiency and collaboration, all whilst keeping this affordable for SMEs and businesses alike.
For the supplier, the app provides real time workflow tracking throughout the supply chain to offer WIP transparency. It presents an array of benefits including operator and job timings, defect and incident logging and a standardised system for non-conformance resolution helping establish better relationships between supplier and customer.
As for the customer, they are able to drill down what stage their product is at through each supplier level via a real time, self-serve portal. With a compliments/complaints logging feature this aims to improve communication with ease throughout the supply chain.
Fellow Made in the Midlands member Frederick Cooper - Birmingham based powder coating business, have been one of the first manufacturers to try out the new application. From manually tracking orders, they now have full visibility via their mobile devices. Frederick Cooper can now tell customers like Rolls-Royce where their order is without jumping departments to find the answer. Jon Stone, Managing Director at Frederick Cooper, said:
"We have a number of very complex processes here at Frederick Cooper in producing some very difficult painted components with numerous process steps. It is often we are asked for detailed information from our customers to establish how many parts are at what process step at any particular time.
Working with HanaTech - we now have a solution to track parts through each process via the GlassFactory® App not only to provide our customer with WIP visibility at any time but also as a valuable tool for ourselves to monitor and track the progress of parts from start to finish. We have now started tracking real orders through our factory on the GlassFactory® App and we are already seeing the benefits!"