OpenText EIM Helps Enable the Connected Manufacturing Enterprise

Summary

Manufacturing has changed dramatically over the last decade. Developments in IT and the internet have enabled companies to transform from regional manufacturers into global, connected enterprises that provide better products at lower costs. These companies leverage collaborative, global design teams to develop new products faster and global suppliers and contract manufacturers to gain labor and logistics advantages. Their products are also configured, sold, and serviced in global markets by a complex network of dealers, distributors, and logistics providers.

Transforming a company into a connected manufacturing enterprise requires new processes, new skills, and investments in new technology. Most importantly, the organization needs an information management platform that can provide timely, complete, accurate, and consistent information to every entity in the manufacturing ecosystem.

Based on a series of recent briefings by OpenText executives, ARC Advisory Group believes that OpenText EIM meets many of the information management needs of modern, connected manufacturing enterprises. This report summarizes the highlights of these discussions. ARC also wrote a separate whitepaper that discusses how OpenText EIM addresses connected manufacturing enterprise information needs in five critical lifecycle phases: product design and engineering; supply chain; manufacturing; retailing and distribution; and, aftermarket products and services.

OpenText EIM Enables Connected Manufacturing
Applications like enterprise resource planning (ERP), product lifecycle management (PLM), and supply chain management (SCM) have helped manufacturers optimize individual business processes. But this is not enough for a successful, connected manufacturing enterprise. Today, manufacturing organizations are driven as much by information as they are by workflow. They need information access and sharing that is not encumbered by departmental boundaries and static business process assumptions. Implementing manufacturing applications on a common, enterprise-wide information management platform can help.

OpenText EIM is an integrated portfolio of enterprise information management products that addresses the diverse needs of today's connected manufacturing enterprise. The standard capabilities in this product align well with the major hurdles that most companies encounter in the transformation to a global, connected manufacturing enterprise:

• Enterprise Content Management – Companies need to manage unstructured information regardless of origin, form, and use with proper support for global compliance requirements. Cloud access through tablets and mobile devices anytime and anywhere is essential. Powerful, semantic discovery capabilities are critical to support rapid access by all users.
• Business Process Management – Flexible process automation and case management is a prerequisite for managing a complex ecosystem of global partners. BPM also helps organizations overcome traditional hurdles like master data management, application integration, and interactions with diverse, internal business processes.
• Customer Experience Management – Websites for product sales and aftermarket services are major drivers of global sales. Management of the associated assets must be convenient and centralized and cover all types of multi-media files.
• Information Exchange – Reliable, trustworthy, global information exchange is the lifeblood of connected manufacturing enterprises. This includes all kinds of documents including FAX, EDI documents, secure mail, secure MFT, and FAX-to-email so that even the smallest manufacturing partner can participate. Rapid, convenient onboarding of new partners is also essential.
• Analytics – Agility and continuous improvement is fundamental for global manufacturing enterprises. Analytics on the information flows enable companies to recognize and respond to trends in key areas, such as consumption patterns, production rates, etc.

Conclusion
ARC believes that OpenText EIM can provide an appropriate information management solution for modern, connected manufacturing enterprises. It is designed as a standalone information management platform that can be implemented as a cloud-based solution. This positions it well for use as a global information hub. As many manufacturing organizations already use OpenText EIM in conjunction with SAP and Oracle solutions, integration with existing manufacturing applications should not be an issue. At the same time, users can interact with critical business information independently of underlying manufacturing applications. This should provide the flexibility they need to rapidly adjust business partners and processes as new threats and opportunities arise.

For more information and to download a full copy of the white paper please visit the OpenText manufacturing resource center.

All signed-in ARC Advisory Group clients can view this report in pdf format at this Link

If you would like to buy this report or obtain information about how to become a client, please Request ARC Info

Keywords: Enterprise Information Management, Digital Manufacturing, ARC Advisory Group.