The manufacturing industry is increasingly shifting towards digital transformation, and many leaders in the industry are reaping the benefits of AI, ML, and AR/VR.
Leaders in the manufacturing industry are starting to understand the countless benefits of low code, and are opting to it for creating solutions that can help with digital transformation.
Let’s start by understanding why more and more people are choosing low code for the manufacturing industry.
Why Manufacturers Are Opting For Low Code Platform
Low code platforms allow non-technical business staff to collaborate with professional developers. This can result in better workflow digitization, factory automation, and improved field worker support.
Business staff can also become citizen developers through low code and can implement a better solution with visual model-driven development, drag-and-drop interface, and event-based triggers.
Staff like business analysts are already adept at doing so through Excel and other BI tools, and low code can help them execute more sophisticated business logic.
Low code platforms come with analytical tools in the package, allowing business leaders to enhance their logistics, inventory management, supply, and operations planning.
Business members and team leaders can also create and deploy solutions that will help their decision-making process by offering insights.
When both business users and professional developers join forces to create the right solutions for field services and core business operations, it helps factories progress toward digital transformation faster.
3 Low Code Use Cases For The Manufacturing Industry
1. Low Code ERP
- “Clicks not codes” approach for faster development
- Modular design for enabling citizen developers to update the app without IT involvement
- Built-in business logic with customizable modules
- Ability to Integrate analytical tools with the system for better insights
- Better security features for data protection with the platform’s security measures
2. Shopfloor Management
- Health & safety checks for all employees on time
- Shift handover controlled through schedule management of the app
- The ability for workers to submit improvement suggestions in defined formats
3. Assembly
- Standard operating procedures (SOPs) for establishing standard work
- Ensuring completion of daily activities on schedule and with precision
- Accessing tools for requesting emergency assistance
- Using data analytics, insights, and predictions for reducing machine downtime
- Increasing productivity of all staff present on the current shift
How A Low Code Platform Can Offer You Manufacturing Apps
Manufacturers deal with tons of paperwork for checklists and procedures. The entire operation can go paperless by creating a digital checklist software through low code development.
Investing in floor management automation can open up tons of possibilities for improving management and manufacturing quality for business leaders.
High-performance low-code platforms like Mendix can allow you to create industrial apps without writing codes manually.
When it comes to moving away from paper-based data collection and innovating workflow through digitization, Nothing can defeat the speed, efficiency, and accuracy of low-code platforms like Mendix.
A digital checklist solution can help track progress for all the other projects, and that should be the priority.
With Mendix, it’s easier to create a digital checklist that can be accessed from multiple platforms like desktop web browsers or mobile devices.
All data collected through the checklist will automatically be saved in the system where it will either be evaluated for improvements or be forwarded to other systems.
5 Reasons To Use Low Code In The Manufacturing Industry
1. Better Quality
Proper inspection of all manufactured products, recording defects, and identifying material issues require intricate knowledge of the manufacturing process.
When you’re using low code analytics and automation for data collection, it allows you to gather richer data and insights with higher accuracy.
The data can also be analyzed comparatively quicker with visualized data dashboards. With high data accuracy, it’s possible to achieve predictive analytics.
Predictive analytics can prepare your business for any upcoming maintenance and deal with potential material shortages through automated inventory management.
2. Ease of Supply Chain Management
With low-code or no-code development, it’s much easier to create a tracking solution to keep track of all required materials throughout every step of the acquisition and manufacturing process.
The apps can modified as well, so they can also check the quality of the materials, reducing the need for additional quality assurance checks.
3. Increased Efficiency In Warehousing
Low-code development can revolutionize warehouse management by enabling your business to create and deploy a warehousing solution for improving warehouse and inventory management.
With warehousing solutions for mobile devices, workers can use cell phones or tablets to instantly scan bar codes and record time/date stamps.
This allows manufacturers to know exactly when materials arrive in and depart from facilities.
4. Harnessing IoT Data
Data sensors are the future of the manufacturing industry, but sensing the data itself is half the work. To work with data collected through sensors, the data has to be made actionable.
Low code platforms can serve as an IoT hub that will pull data from various sensors, perform necessary analysis, and turn it into actionable insights with implemented ML models.
5. Solving Labor Shortage
The current manufacturing industry is operating in a space where human labor is highly priced yet hard to find. To interest and motivate younger workers to work in the industry, low code is a great approach.
Young millennials are more interested in working with software that allows them to create solutions to their problem and is also drawn toward visualized information.
Low-code software development platforms can offer the best of both worlds, and they allow a business to streamline their workflows while solving labor shortages.
How Mendix Can Be The Ideal Low Code Platform For Manufacturers
Mendix is a great choice for manufacturing industry leaders to take their business toward digital transformation.
Different Quality Assurance solutions can help by monitoring material quality. The production team can utilize the latest mobile features such as
- Photos
- GPS
- Bar code scanning
- Timestamp creation
- Voice recording
To capture data with high accuracy on the production floor. A built-in analytics engine can generate dashboards for tracking KPIs or gathering data for fast insights or root-cause analysis.
Mendix can build all the aforementioned solutions with ease by utilizing pre-built components and application templates and offering customization options for creating tailor-made solutions.
FAQ
While highly versatile, some complex, deeply technical requirements might need traditional coding solutions rather than low-code platforms.
Low-code solutions are designed to be scalable, allowing manufacturing companies to expand and adapt their applications as their operations grow.
Through applications supporting customer feedback, order tracking, and service requests, low code helps in improving overall customer experiences.
By enabling the creation of applications focused on resource optimization, waste reduction, and energy efficiency, low code supports sustainability initiatives in manufacturing.
Security measures like encryption, access controls, and regular updates ensure the protection of sensitive manufacturing data within low-code applications.
