These days, customers are more demanding than ever. When they purchase a product, not only do they want to be able to choose from different variants, they also want to be able to have these product variants customized to suit their individual needs. Ideally, they want all that at the price of mass-produced goods. Is there a way to produce such a product cost-effectively? And what does it look like in practice? We set out to answer these and other questions using the variant configurator.
What challenges will packaging companies face in the future? What do the keywords climate change, climate protection and sustainability have to do with this? What do consumers expect from packaging? Our Sales Manager Matthäus Mayer reports on the three current trends in the packaging industry in his blog article—read for yourself:
When it comes to strengthening customer ties and standing out from the competition, one of the most important tools is efficient customer service. However, once a company reaches a certain size, it’s easy to get lost in all the service appointments, and resource planning becomes a gargantuan task. That’s where Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Customer Service and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Field Service come in. Let’s take a look at how these products can help.
How much should you produce of a particular product in one batch? How high can the stock level be? Does it make sense to increase the machinery capacity? Challenging questions like these can only be answered reliably with intelligent data utilization. Traditional models for batch size optimization (such as the formulas developed by Harris and Andler) produce initial indications, but they cannot provide comprehensive optimization taking into account all relevant articles, costs, and restrictions. The processes are simply too complex.
Planning plays a major role in manufacturing. Manufacturing and assembly are often divided into individual steps that have to be linked together in a multi-stage planning process. But good planning is not the same as fighting half the battle. After all, discrepancies can occur during production that influence the due dates, quality, or costs of the end product.
Cost transparency is the biggest factor in simultaneous costing. If you ask business owners in the machinery and plant construction industry, they’ll tell you that a lack of transparency is often the reason why no definitive information is available on profit margins. Without cost transparency, deviations go unnoticed until it’s too late to react.
Individual products go through a lengthy process comprising many steps and involving many departments until they are ready for manufacturing. In this context, it is often difficult to keep all employees up to speed, especially when external personnel are involved as well.
