Why Recession Is The Right Timing For Manufacturing Companies To Invest In OpenBOM

In times of economic uncertainty, companies often look to cut costs and reduce their investments in order to maintain profitability. According to multiple economic research, it is not surprising to see how manufacturing companies are looking at how to cut extra costs and do some additional savings. While this is true, there are specific aspects of the manufacturing industry and business that create an opportunity during the recession time. Guess what? In the regular manufacturing business, when the economy is thriving, manufacturing businesses need to build products and sell, sell, sell… this is the time to sell. However, when the time is not so well and consumer spending is going down, businesses are slowing down and have some capacity to invest in process improvements. I just came from PLM roadmap event and I see companies are busy improving their processes. 

If you build products actively, I’d expect the best engineers and operation people to be involved in direct business activity. Now, when things are slowing down, ask people to look around and think about process improvement. Ask them to think about data management, how planning is done, and how change processes are organized. All these things you don’t have time to focus on in the thriving economy, now you can actually think about them.

Why invest in PLM first?

Product lifecycle management is a business strategy that helps you to organize data and processes, optimize planning and ensure you have tools to run your company in an optimal way. Investment in PLM can provide long-term benefits that outweigh the short-term costs. Especially since you have people available during the recession and downturn.

PLM systems like OpenBOM enable companies to streamline their operation and manage data holistically, connecting different functions of your business such as design, and engineering with procurement and production planning. OpenBOM offers you tools and capabilities to streamline the operation, reduce cost and improve competitiveness.

Key Benefits To Implement OpenBOM

Here are some of the key benefits of OpenBOM that can be extremely helpful to improve your manufacturing business.

1. Improved collaboration: OpenBOM systems allow engineers, procurement, and other team members to connect and collaborate more effectively on product development. It substantially reduces the risk of errors and delays.
2. Greater efficiency: Manual processes is the root cause of mistakes. When it comes to data management, you need to automate processes. When it comes to BOM creation, changes, and many other repetitive tasks, manual operations kill you. Each hand that touches BOM adds a mistake. This is a well-known fact. Automate, automate and automate. OpenBOM can help you to integrate your existing design (CAD) systems and streamline operations and reduce time-to-market.
3. Enhanced quality: PLM systems provide tools for quality management, such as product testing and defect tracking, which can help companies improve the quality of their products and reduce the risk of recalls. Organizing processes to capture Quality processes and managing this information using OpenBOM can be a first step in your QMS activity. Checking some of our partner solutions for QMS can be the next option.
4. Better data management: OpenBOM provides a centralized repository for all product-related data, which can help you to manage the data more effectively and reduce the risk of data loss. OpenBOM gives you centralized storage for all files, items, product structures, revisions, and historical information. Stopping the loss of data and improving data accuracy is a step to improving manufacturing processes.
5. Improved decision-making: By providing real-time visibility into product development and production processes, OpenBOM systems enable companies to make more informed decisions that can lead to improved profitability and competitive advantage.

Conclusion:

Investing in PLM systems is traditionally considered an expensive and long project. OpenBOM is different here in both ways – it has the fastest ROI in the market and also gives you a modern way to organize information and processes without risking too much. Investment in OpenBOM during a recession can provide long-term benefits that outweigh your investment.

By improving collaboration, efficiency, quality, data management, and decision-making, PLM systems can help companies streamline their operations, reduce costs, and improve their competitiveness. Investing in PLM systems during a recession can provide companies with a competitive advantage over their rivals and position them for success during the recovery period.

However, one of the most critical and important things to invest in PLM during the recession is related to your people. When things are slowing down, your people have time to think about processes and how to optimize them using modern tools such as OpenBOM.

REGISTER FOR FREE and start your OpenBOM journey today.

Best, Oleg