ANNUAL MANUFACTURING REPORT 2016

INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION, TECHNOLOGY
ANNUAL
MANUFACTURING
REPORT2016
11 To what extent did the introduction of ICT lead to an
improvement?
2012 2013 2014 2015
Productivity
Profitability
Whatever the challenge and whatever the
question, the measure of whether or not it
was successful is: did it work? Did it deliver
the improvements being looked for? This
year’s answers are rather positive – with one
possible exception.
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
60%
40%
20%
0%
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
A significant
improvement
A significant
improvement
A moderate
improvement
Energy/resource efficiency
A significant
improvement
A moderate
improvement
Inventory/stock levels
No
improvement
No
improvement
Unavoidable downtime
(whether routine or unscheduled)
A significant
improvement
A moderate
improvement
A moderate
improvement
No
improvement
No
improvement
A significant
improvement
A significant
improvement
A significant
improvement
A significant
improvement
A moderate
improvement
A moderate
improvement
No
improvement
Competitiveness/efficiency
Manufacturing costs
A moderate
improvement
Customer satisfaction
A moderate
improvement
No
improvement
No
improvement
No
improvement
Productivity tops the charts again this year,
and even more strongly than previously; no
less than 98% of respondents said that it had
improved either moderately or a lot. This is
a notable improvement over the past three
years, when the positive rating had hovered
around 80%.
Competitiveness/efficiency has also
strengthened; 89% said it had gone up
moderately or significantly, taking it back up
to 2013’s levels. Customer satisfaction is in the
same ballpark as last year’s level, with a slight
improvement to 86%.
Profitability looks to be the big gainer. It has
always struggled to get into the high levels of
overall improvement reported for Productivity,
Competitiveness and Customer satisfaction
but it really sails into their territory this year,
with a total of 80% positive rating. More than
a quarter (27%) of respondents said that the
improvement had been “significant”.
Bottom of the heap, with 42% reporting “no
improvement”, is energy/resource efficiency.
Even though a majority (56% in total) said that
they had seen improvement and the negative
rating is lower than we have ever recorded,
there is still some ground to be made up.
The collapse in oil prices and consequent
lower energy costs has probably assuaged
disappointment but there is no guarantee that
the situation will continue. Either operators
have to make their requirements clearer or
vendors have to pull their socks up.
We changed “required downtime” to
“Unavoidable downtime” this year, in order
make the question stronger. A total of 31%
of respondents are still disappointed with the
absence of any improvement but, again,
that is the lowest negative level that we have
ever recorded.
All other categories report generally positive
results, and more so than in previous surveys.
Performance in inventory (72% improvement)
and manufacturing costs (77%) are much
better than last year. It looks like it has
generally been a good year for ICT vendors
and their customers.