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by David O'Brien , Contributing Editor Posted on Tuesday, February 28, 2006 4:00:00 PM   | Abstract: | SMB manufacturers need to more effectively coordinate and integrate design, production, and promotion processes if they are to more quickly and profitably build and deliver products that meet market requirements. |
Innovation is the new business imperative. Product innovation, and the impact that product launch success and failure have on the bottom line of organizations, is everywhere around us. Innovation drives growth. Strategies for managing the business process framework around innovation, and the technology elements supporting these processes, have become a critical success factors for small and mid-tier manufacturers. What smaller manufacturers are finding is that success is increasingly not just about design, or manufacturing, or promotion. Rather, success comes from coordinating and integrating these disparate processes into a single platform to build and deliver products that better meet market demand. Success is also about becoming faster and more efficient than your competitors, ultimately making more money and improving shareholder value. This sounds good on paper, but it is easier said than done. The innovation environment is becoming increasingly more complex for a variety of reasons: globalization; a more demanding set of customer requirements; the growing and complex set of regulatory and compliance mandates; and pressure to produce more (and better) products, faster. Among small and mid-tier manufacturing organizations, these growing requirements are often complicated by constrained IT budgets and small IT staffs. [Click to continue] |