A decade ago, consumers accepted waiting a week for their product but now with the infusion of companies such as Amazon and Alibaba, consumers are making their purchase decisions based on how quickly they will receive the product. In order to stay competitive in the marketplace, companies are turning to 3D printing to create their products quicker.
Analyst Insight: Global, web, mobile, catalogs and trunk shows are only a few of the channels by which we sell and buy today. Retailers are investing billions of dollars to upgrade their tech infrastructure as well as their fulfillment processes to respond to customers as well as threatening and clever competitors’ moves. But omnichannel is not just for retailers. - Ann Grackin, CEO, ChainLink Research
Oracle Corp. has added two new products to the Oracle Supply Chain Management (SCM) Cloud: Oracle Planning Central Cloud and Oracle Manufacturing Cloud.
Mid-sized manufacturers show continued optimism about revenues and employment, according to the 14th edition of the Purchasing and Manufacturing Survey from Prime Advantage, a buying consortium.
Economists from the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation expect the construction supply chain to be a primary driver of manufacturing growth over the next two years.
Aspen Technology Inc., a vendor of optimization software for the process industries, has made generally available version 8.8 of aspenONE Engineering and aspenONE Manufacturing and Supply Chain.
After a long period of economic turmoil, manufacturers in the United States are finding reasons to be optimistic. Demand is up and companies are seeing improvements in productivity, along with increases in profits. For this upward trajectory to continue, however, industry executives and governmental representatives cannot be complacent. Production efficiency, energy costs, tax legislation and education access are integral to the success of the industry's current fiscal condition and need to be nurtured or reformed. If the current business environment is to last, there is still more work to do.
Speed of production may be an issue in these early days of deployment, but the possibilities for what can be produced with a 3D printer appear to be limited only by the imagination. With chess pieces, cars, small houses and medical equipment being printed, additive technology has certainly earned its considerable attention.
Large UK manufacturers lost more than £58m in 2013 following a raft of preventable supply chain issues, including firms' failures to deliver goods on time.