Industry Survey Reveals Challenges and Opportunities for Global Manufacturing

 In May 2024, Supplyframe surveyed 60 senior professionals at six global manufacturers to identify the industry’s overall level of digital maturity. The industry sectors targeted were aerospace and defense, automotive and transportation, components, high-tech equipment, industrial equipment, and life sciences. 

The survey included companies in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the US. The Americas accounted for 78% of the companies that responded. Our full report maps the results to a new Digital Maturity Model, and a self assessment allows organizations to obtain their own unique results.

Key Takeaways From the Industry Survey  

The most significant number of respondents by industry were from high-tech companies, which accounted for 35% of the total number of companies participating in the survey. Automotive and transportation companies were the second largest category, accounting for 26%. Over 50% of respondents said they are ready to “Shift Left” and operationalize risk at the point of design. 

Supplyframe data indicates that 80% of lifetime risk is “locked in” during the design phase. According to a recent Supplyframe survey, only 16% of respondents said they engage in some level of collaboration and alignment between engineering and sourcing teams. 

The bottom line is that cross-functional collaboration is essential for efficient manufacturing. When teams don’t collaborate, the end-to-end manufacturing process breaks down, creating BOM issues and delaying the launch of new products and services.  

Another worrying statistic from the Supplyframe survey is that 75% of the companies surveyed still use an ad hoc spreadsheet process for sourcing. Spreadsheets are not a good fit for sourcing because they are static, hard for other services to collaborate with, and require constant refreshing. 

Because the electronics industry operates at warp speed, companies must use real-time intelligence and a single source of truth. Purpose-built solutions are crucial in today’s global manufacturing environment. They address the complexities of the electronics industry by focusing on key capabilities such as real-time component intelligence, automated RFQ processes, and risk analysis.

Why It’s Time for Manufacturing Organizations to ‘Shift Left’

Shifting left is a DevOps principle that moves testing, quality, and performance evaluation earlier in the product’s development life cycle. “Shift left” includes security testing, code quality checks, and verifying APIs. By shifting left, companies introduce real-time intelligence closer to the beginning of the product lifecycle, thus shrinking the timeframe and mitigating risk that usually appears much later in the product lifecycle. 

Over 50% of the companies Supplyframe surveyed focus on design for the supply chain by bringing greater awareness of operational risk into the design phase. Loss due to ineffective or failed internal processes, people, systems, or external events can disrupt business operations. These operational losses can also be directly or indirectly financial. 

Operational risk is the risk of loss caused by ineffective or failed internal processes, people, systems, or external events that can disrupt the flow of business operations. Operational losses can be directly or indirectly financial.

Reaching digital maturity requires changes at every level of the product creation. It combines the right skills, technology, organizational structure, and intelligence.

Download Supplyframe’s full report to see the survey results and learn how to accelerate your digital transformation using our digital maturity model.