Reebok recently took the decision of bringing back some of its shoemaking capabilities back to the United States, revealing its near future plans of opening a new manufacturing lab at Wixom in Michigan in the next year. This lab, called ‘The Liquid Factory’, will mostly manufacture technical components using state-of-the-art technologies like 3D drawing and will make use of an innovative liquid material.

America has seen only 249,000 jobs since 2010 through the initiatives of reshoring and via FDI reports presented by Financial Times on March 29th, 2016. Manufacturers realized that the total cost of production when goods are produced in some states in America are slightly higher when compared to China and other nations.  They also want to efficiently protect the intellectual property which is being stolen by offshore countries.

It is not just the working class who has been affected by moving manufacturing capabilities to other nations but manufacturing leaders too had started thinking about bringing the firms back to America due to various reasons. One of the main reasons is that they want to keep the finished product close to the market they are serving in order to catch up the with the growing needs of the customer by reducing the order cycle.

The current economic and political developments are the indications that there would be fierce competition in the manufacturing industry as we move forward. There is an emergence of a new Technological wave which is bringing a new industrial revolution (4.0) where imposes a new challenge for the Manufacturing leaders. They need to quickly figure out how to transform their manufacturing capabilities to set the stage for rapid growth as a leader within their industry.

So given all the situations, what is the next big thing which manufacturers shouldn’t miss seeing?

Manufacturers can only stay competitive when their supply chain can bring new revenue and build a new business model. Yes, the supply chain will become crucial in bringing those new revenues by entering into new markets and leaders in the manufacturing industry shouldn’t miss seeing this.

IDC, the market intelligence leader in the information technology sector predicts 60% of manufacturers will shift their IoT initiatives from connectivity and sensors to platform and analytics.

This is one of the key predictions we can take from their Worldwide Operation technology 2017 prediction. The reason I am stressing on this prediction is that platform technology gives all the required tools to unlock the opportunities and potential from the supply chain.

IDC also asserts about the rise and importance of the 3rd platform technology in all of their recent predictions. I t is a platform which is built on four pillar technologies: mobile, cloud, big data and social business where other technology accelerators like IOT are dependent on.

And undoubtedly Salesforce is the platform which can help manufacturing leaders who wish to sustain and be competitive by embracing their supply chain. Salesforce “Customer Success Platform” is a business platform built on the same technology pillars which were mentioned by the IDC when they defined the 3rd platform technology.

Optimization of the supply chain is still a top priority for the manufacturers but it won’t give that edge to stand out as a leader in the industry. Platform technology gives that ability to make the supply chain agile by giving real-time insights to provide outstanding customer service and most importantly to know their customers and products and markets in a segmented manner.

Blockbuster losing to Netflix is a famous story which clearly indicates that if the supply chain is not embraced, then we might lose to our competitors. It is not necessary that  your immediate competitor might surpass you, but it can also be a new entrant in the industry who has something different and unique to offer.

Blockbusters’ story is the worst nightmare for any business leader and there are major chances of a similar thing happening again if they don’t attain that required transformation.

Hence, Business leaders started taking action to understand their current capabilities and state of their supply chain and the strategic action that they chose to implement was by integrating and collaborating with the  Salesforce “Customer Success Platform”.

Philips, GEaviation and Cisco and many other giant  manufacturing companies are already using Salesforce as part of their strategy which will enable to see new patterns, results, customer behaviors which can be extracted from their supply chain.

If you are a manufacturer who wants to boost up the supply chain to make it ready for Industry 4.0, I hope my blog has given a clear understanding of the predictions made by IDC and how Salesforce is the ideal third platform that you should embrace. Companies looking out for adopting to these groundbreaking Salesforce technologies can reach out to us at sales@appshark.com for Implementation, Integration, Custom Development, Administration and Support Service and as always, we, at AppShark would be happy to help!