Meeting the IT Challenge in Manufacturing Today manufacturing industry has to strengthen its competitiveness, especially through innovation and improvements in business processes, such as design and engineering.
Information technology is a key element in such a strategy.
As well as shaping future IT developments in the companies concerned, this 'user pull' lowers the development costs and risks for IT vendors. The competitive environment of Europe's manufacturing industry has changed significantly over recent years. The globalisation of markets, saturation of many market segments, shortening of technology innovation cycles, and the need to comply with social and environmental requirements have all emerged as business pressures. In such a business environment, speed and response to customer needs will be the most competitive weapons, and information technology is a key element in being able to deliver. The vision is to have standardised IT tools and systems available on the market which can be configured to meet company-specific requirements and are easily implemented in a company's design and manufacturing processes.