Director of Product Marketing, Plex Systems
About the Author
Stu Johnson served as Director of Product Marketing of Plex Systems from June 2014 to March 2020.
How to Become a Preferred Manufacturing Supplier
Becoming a preferred supplier is a status most manufacturers want to attain and keep. To achieve this, you need to keep a close eye on quality performance while managing all the work involved with proving compliance. After all, your customers use compliance as a way to weed out lower performing suppliers so the two go hand in hand—even though compliance presents a whole set of headaches for you…
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What Are the Benefits of Going Digital for Manufacturing Companies?
Every business has its challenges. The challenges you, as a manufacturer, face today include fluctuating customer demand, supply chain planning, inventory cost control, compliance requirements—and a major technology evolution in the form of Industry 4.0....
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How to Determine ROI and Long-Term Value for a Manufacturing ERP System
Modernizing your ERP is a major investment in the long-term success of your manufacturing business. And like other manufacturers, you’re probably worried about the cost, the potential disruption to your business, and the kind of return you can expect from your investment....
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Digitize, Connect, and Comply: Manufacturers Need a Risk-Based Approach
Manufacturing industry standards have undergone significant changes in recent years in an attempt to respond to quality issues in products that resulted in personal injury, and deaths. You have likely seen the rise of the trend toward risk-based quality compliance that focuses on mitigating quality risks through prevention versus the more traditional approach of detection, or catching quality…
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Modernizing Your ERP: What Every Manufacturer Should Know
If your company has an ERP and you’re struggling with lack of visibility into your manufacturing processes, lack of trust in the data, increased downtime, and rising costs—it may be time to modernize. Consumer demand is harder than ever to predict....
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Manufacturing Chaos to Calm: Operationalize Quality
When it comes to quality management, our friends at the fictitious Edge Manufacturing are grappling with lack of visibility and control. Edge manages quality control on paper. So, it’s hard to verify whether quality procedures have taken place in a timely manner or whether operators just check boxes to move materials onto the next step to avoid production halts. ...
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Manufacturing Chaos to Calm: Gaining Control Over Inventory
Edge Manufacturing is in a bind. Their largest customer, ABC Corporation, just ordered 210 solar-powered attic fans to be delivered by the end of this month—ABC’s biggest order ever. Edge’s inventory manager, Jim, isn’t sure the warehouse has enough raw material to fill that many orders. And, there’s only one way to find out: pull up spreadsheets....
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Automotive Manufacturing Suppliers: Have You Made the Transition to IATF?
I attended the Automotive Industry Action Group’s (AIAG) Annual Quality Summit in September and the topic of urgency was the required transition from the ISO/TS 16949 quality standard to the new IATF 16949:2016 specification championed by the International Automotive Task Force (IATF), www.iatfglobaloversight.org....
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Why It’s Critical for Manufacturers to Embrace Digital Transformation Now
Running a manufacturing business is not easy: complying with strict industry regulations, consistently producing quality products, and responding to a rapidly fluctuating customer demand. And your IT team (or person) doesn’t have an easy job, either. Their days are spent fighting fires, manually consolidating from paper-based processes, keeping point solutions running, creating reports, and…
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Mistake Proofing in Manufacturing by Eliminating Manual Processes
If you are still relying on manual, paper-based processes, quality is difficult to sustain and It’s likely you don’t even know exactly how much it’s costing you. The fact is, you rely on your quality control managers to ensure that operators are performing checks when and how they’re supposed to at appropriate intervals. ...
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