Marketing to the manufacturing industry is often filled with terms, buzzwords, and trends. And we’ve been guilty of jumping on the bandwagon from time to time, too. Our world values the first page of Google and it’s necessary to check certain boxes to stay top of mind when people are looking for solutions to manufacturing and automation problems.

Nearly every vendor mentions Digital Transformation, Unified Namespaces, Industry 4.0, IT/OT Convergence, and broad concepts like Manufacturing Execution Systems. Beyond overarching trends, specific technologies like MQTT, OPC-UA, SCADA, and PLCs are commonplace in most modern manufacturing environments.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve noticed that while people are looking to solve specific problems their businesses are facing, technology is only one avenue for working through their challenges and meeting their goals. Our continually growing expertise in completing Ignition Conversions and industry-specific Power Packs have led to many discussions with business owners and employees about technology’s benefits in manufacturing.

Shifting Focus

To better serve the manufacturing world, we’ve decided to shift our focus. Of course, we will still post articles about technology, how it can benefit manufacturing, and when/where/why you may want to choose specific tools. But, we won’t discuss technology just for technology’s sake. We will not be writing technical articles detailing the inner workings of how specific tools work, or step by step tutorial guides on how to set them up. We already have a large collection of tutorials and guides on our website.

Instead, we will focus on sharing how to make sense of all the buzzwords, jargon, and options on the market—while explaining how specific technologies can fit into your overall strategy for growing your business, creating customer success, improving operations, and reducing costs. We want to show you how leveraging technology can let you rest assured that your operations will run as smoothly as possible.

This will be a subtle shift at first, however we think it will have a big impact on the manufacturing world by helping more businesses Automate their Bottom Line.

Why Automating the Bottom Line Matters

The market as a whole does a decent job of explaining what is on offer. For example:

• “Ignition can connect to any system you have and help you in your digital transformation journey.”

• “MQTT can connect edge devices to get the data and information you need for better decisions.”

• “Connected enterprises can use tools like Unified Namespaces to get a picture of the entire operation at a glance.”

Where the market falls short (including some of our own messaging), is that it’s not explaining why these technologies are important, or how they could improve your operations.

When we talk to people about their manufacturing challenges, a specific tool or technology is just the beginning of the conversation. After the first few minutes, we’ve noticed that technical details get sidelined. The rest of the conversation is often about the actual manufacturing challenges, and then we work together to determine a solution. And while the solution often involves an update to their technology stack, or a cultural shift in their organization, the solution is rarely only technology or automation.

Challenges in recent conversations:

• Improving product quality and throughput

• Reducing or eliminating production upsets/downtime

• Needing more data and information about the process to better understand deficiencies

• Production costs impacted by unknown issues with utilities, process inefficiency, or other problems

• Finding ways to better meet customer demand

These issues all converge toward the ultimate challenge: how to make products your customers want to purchase—while giving your business the most opportunity to profit.

Better Customer Service Through Automation

Many of the conversations we have uncover the ultimate goal of every business: how to better serve their customers while building a sustainable business that can scale. Helping our customers achieve this goal takes all of the technology we focused on before, but flips the messaging around!

The focus for change at manufacturing companies rarely starts with the question: “What tools and technology will help me do this better?” Instead, companies start with: “I need to better serve my customers, what are the best options to make that happen?”

While the answer will sometimes mean new technology, it will often call for changing how your company operates, or improving your company culture. Usually, the answer combines company culture changes, operational changes, and technology.

The idea of Automating the Bottom Line is to shift the focus away from specific tools and technologies, and towards communicating how to best utilize everything available to you to better serve your customers, and ultimately grow your business.

Wrapping Up

Corso Systems exists to solve problems. This requires us to continually learn about new tools, technologies, ways of thinking—and how to best support our customers.

Automating the Bottom Line is the next step in our growth process, and will allow us to better serve the market by helping people make sense of all the marketing jargon out there and understand the path forward for their manufacturing businesses.

What got us here won’t get us to where we want to go, and what you are doing now won’t get you to where you want to be either!

Let’s work together to improve your business and navigate today’s complex market. Corso Systems can help you make lasting changes to Automate your Bottom Line, ensuring you can best serve your customers well into the future.