Many of the manufacturing and product development companies I visit, big and small, struggle with similar challenges. Here are the five most common ones I have encountered:
#1: The employees in the design department spend a lot of time maintaining, supporting and providing product information to other departments at the company.
#2: The company’s development department lacks a structured way to manage changes. This increases the chances of things that have been decided never being carried out. In the worst case, this results in incorrect purchases, production based on the wrong documentation and delivering the wrong solution to the customer.
#3: The company sometimes finds it difficult to stick to cost targets and delivery times as it works in an unstructured and inefficient way and therefore has to duplicate a lot of work.
#4: It is difficult to get an overview and meet all the requirements that have been agreed with the customer, increasing the risk of not delivering the right technical solution at the right cost or the right time.
#5: When the customer calls and wants his or her products serviced, the company does not have full control of what has been delivered to the customer and can therefore not offer a quick and efficient service solution. In the worst case, this leads to a production stop for the customer.
I will be sharing my thoughts and experiences on each of these challenges. Follow Symetri’s blog
