Social (Collaboration Tools)
Manufacturing companies have started using collaborative tools in the last few years, though in a very ad-hoc way. Investment in social collaboration tools is not seen as priority right now for manufacturing sector, with the tradition of very few ‘knowledge workers' needing collaboration as opposed to administrators, blue collar workers and machines.

While there have been specific collaboration tools to ease communication flow in the supply chain, using a truly ‘social' approach is as yet not on the radar. This will inevitably change with the introduction of more intelligence in the supply chain, in manufacturing processes, and disaggregation across the value chain- all of which would lead to a higher need for ‘social' collaboration as opposed to directive information-sharing.

Mobility
The adoption of mobility is still low within the manufacturing sector. The impact would vary throughout the manufacturing value chain - product design and engineering may have a very low impact; sales, customer service and installation may have a very high impact.

Most enterprises are hesitant as the ROI from mobility is still not clearly established. Mobility just doesn't mean providing mobile devices to employees, but entire ecosystem need to be build and integrated to get true benefits of mobility. This includes connecting shop floor to production department, inventory management and even with sales and customer service. This can enable real-time information flow throughout the supply chain, with production managers, sales team can get real time information about the inventory, can supervise the shop floor remotely.

Though the benefits of mobility are clear in terms of reducing costs, bringing in efficiency and productivity, the challenges remain in terms of a clear cut strategy which can really work. There are multiple devices and platforms, and integrating them together as well as enabling machine to machine and man to machine communication would be a challenge.

The other challenge is to drive ‘consumption' that is to derive meaningful usage of reports, statistics, workflows and analytics using the mobile platform, so that such details are always available with managers and decision-makers of the company at all times. As competition in the consumer market grows, and government policy and infrastructure turn into enablers rather than disablers, we should see the need for speed and agility come to fore, and result in a strong ‘pull' for such services in all manufacturing industries.

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