Flexible reporting: Optimize information access

 

Product developers need to have the right data in front of them in order to make the most effective decisions regarding the creation of new products. A host of important activities depends on the accessibility of this key information; therefore, it’s necessary to have access to flexible reporting to facilitate the decision-making process.

No. 1 goal: Transparency and traceability

For product developers to have access to this kind of data, transparency remains the most important aspect of product innovation. Developers need to be able to dive down into the inner workings of their complete supply chain – looking at the data of partners from every part of their operations, including suppliers, logistics providers and end customers – not just for their own purposes, but also in order to be able to answer customer questions, according to SupplyChain247.

“A lack of ability to provide [important] information in the face of safety or environmental violations can create a negative perception of the brand that may require immediate remediation and could take a brand years to recover from, if at all,” said Mike Burnette, director of the Global Supply Chain Institute and a co-author of the study, Creating a Transparent Supply Chain.

Flexible reporting tools facilitate information access throughout the enterprise.Flexible reporting tools facilitate information access throughout the enterprise.

 

Information access depends on information sharing

In a recent study, researchers at the National University of Malaysia (Zahra Lotfi, Muriati Mukhtar, Shahnorbanun Sahran and Ali Taei Zadeh) stressed that organizations have four main questions to answer in order to improve information sharing activities:

  1. What information should you share?
  2. Who should you share it with?
  3. How do you share this information?
  4. When should the data be shared?

The answers to these questions will help organizations avoid redundancy, reduce sharing costs and improve responses, thereby improving information sharing operations and helping to facilitate transparency in the long run. For instance, the manufacturing industry has an especially important relationship with data, as it’s so closely tied to economic development, according to the researchers.

“To survive in today’s global economy, manufacturers need to definitely rethink their approach to cooperation and hence should provide ways to share up-to-date information within the enterprises,” wrote Lotfi et al. “However, providing the software and hardware alone is not sufficient. The members should have the willingness to participate in information sharing activities. Nowadays, enterprises do not operate alone; they have now been networked to many other partners.”

Essentially, the point that Lofti et al. are trying to make is that because of the important connection between the manufacturing sector and the global economy, manufacturers need to ensure their methods of sharing information between partners depends on not only the software involved – like enterprise resource planning tools – but also on human interaction and the willingness to build relationships.

Optimize information access

Flexible reporting tools facilitate the access to important information that product developers need for effective decision-making on a daily basis. This is why your organization needs fast, efficient reporting tools like the Inspirage Agile PLM Report Framework. Having the right data on hand is a critical part of making the best decisions possible.

Get in touch with the experts at Inspirage today for more information.

Jason Brown | Key Contributor

Jason Brown is a Manager of Solution Architecture at Inspirage. Jason is an expert at Oracle Agile PLM solutions and has over 15 years of experience in the industry.