For decades, quality, low cost, and on-time delivery have been the primary demands of manufacturing customers. Recently, a new demand has been added to the mix—speed. Customers still want a quality product delivered on-time at a fair price. Only now they want it faster. If you can’t meet their requested turnaround time, they will find a competitor who will. Manufacturers are responding to this demand in many different ways, starting with these three trends.
Automation is the future of manufacturing. Production plants run almost entirely by robots are already operating around the world. These plants allow for a decrease in labor costs while increasing production. At the FANUC Corp. in Japan, robots work around the clock manufacturing more than 20,000 robots each month. For now, robot-run plants are an exception to the rule. But automation on a smaller scale is increasingly being embraced by manufacturers in the quest to get faster.