There was a time when many manufacturers were satisfied with generic technology products from vendors that may or may not have had deep expertise in the core processes that were critical to specific vertical industries. In those days, generic was good enough because many manufacturers were just beginning to automate their businesses, starting with financial processes that weren’t necessarily expected to deliver significant competitive advantage.
Today, the opposite is true. As manufacturers automate more and more of the business, reaching down into the unique, core processes that define and differentiate them, generic is no longer good enough. Now, more than ever, manufacturers are demanding systems that conform to their specific industry requirements, whether than means tracking the ingredients in food products from the source to the retailer’s shelf or orchestrating the supply of the hundreds of thousands of parts required to produce an airplane.
And that means manufacturers need to find technology vendors that understand their businesses and offer products and services that deliver value in the context of specific vertical industries.
But who are those leading vendors? Recently, we at Managing Automation and Manufacturing Executive set out to answer that question. We decided to ask our manufacturing readers which technology vendors in a wide range of categories best understand their businesses, which vendor relationships they most value, and which technology providers they would recommend to their peers.