Digitalizing And Streamlining the On-Demand Manufacturing Industry In India

Authored by Sudarshan Naik, Technical Content Engineer, Karkhana.io

One lesson we all have learnt and accepted from this pandemic is to live in an on-demand world. Whatever you require can be created on-demand by businesses and not mass produced. This is a great option for customers as it allows them to express their traits by purchasing commodities that uniquely reflect their tastes. It also helps businesses to provide them with things they need without delay. Let’s further discuss why customers need on-demand manufacturing, how on-demand manufacturing is made possible, and the role of digitalization of the on-demand manufacturing industry.

The need for on-demand manufacturing

How would somebody approach if they want to outsource manufacturing of the parts? First, they have to figure out a list of vendors with a technical workforce of a particular caliber who can understand the project requirements and execute accordingly. Also, the vendor must have the required equipment installed at the factory to build those products. Second, they need to place orders in advance and buy a minimum order quantity (MOQ) as mentioned by the vendor. Thus, if somebody wants to outsource manufacturing of parts, then they need to start the above steps months in advance and order more quantities even if they don't need it. Contrary to this approach is on-demand manufacturing wherein goods are produced only when the customer demands and in the quantity required.

So, how is this concept made possible?

A person with decades of experience in the manufacturing industry can make this concept possible by acting as a consultant. The consultant has already done the steps shown in the above paragraph, has created a network of vendors, and captured real data like the caliber of technical workforce, number of equipment present in the factory, etc. Customers can thus manufacture goods whenever required. Let's move to the quantity of the product. The consultant can pool orders from multiple customers, provide them to a vendor and then sell the quantities required by each customer. However, there are two drawbacks here - 1) Difficulty to find such an experienced person and 2) The process is manual. The customer can't track the project's status, there is no transparency in the product's pricing, and the customer has to do physical visits. If all of these activities are available at the fingertips of the customer, all activities would be streamlined. Today's digital technologies can help in overcoming the drawbacks.

Digitalization of on-demand manufacturing

Today's technological advancements have helped overcome the first drawback by reducing the experience from decades to some years. A company with a few years of experience can also perform on-demand manufacturing. How? The answer lies in globalization. Due to globalization, slowly, the companies started moving from working in cities to working across the globe. An increase in the scale of operations led to an increase in data. Today, a company can't manually work on the data, and digitization is required. Once digitized, the on-demand manufacturing company can use digital technologies like Big Data, Computer Vision, AI, ML, etc., to establish trends related to each vendor. They can then build digital products which match the customer requirements to the vendor's capabilities. The digital product also brings the entire process of sending RFQ to product delivery at the customers fingertip. As a result, customers can have transparency in the pricing of their product and transparency in tracking the entire process.

Other technological innovations enabled by Industry 4.0 can also help manufacturers respond to customer orders and requests faster, increase productivity and enhance collaboration with customers and suppliers, thereby opening up markets for even small manufacturers to enter.

On-Demand manufacturing is the future and is becoming ever more popular now. But this does not mean that traditional manufacturing will become obsolete. On-demand manufacturing will complement traditional manufacturing. Those companies that have adopted traditional manufacturing can use on-demand manufacturing too in case a new product needs to be developed or they want to save time spent in building a new supply chain. Those companies that are using on-demand manufacturing now may transition to traditional manufacturing, once they scale their business and leverage their technical expertise. On-demand manufacturing in tandem with traditional manufacturing will open up new avenues for startups, SMEs and enterprises.