Aerospace and other manufacturing industries have accelerated outsourcing of manufacturing operations to increase efficiencies and reduce costs. However, moving some of the operations outside of the traditional four walls of the factory has created “dark areas” in the manufacturing visibility process. As a supplier to the world’s largest manufacturers, such as Boeing, Hobart was looking for ways to address these issues and become a better supplier by providing real-time production visibility to their customers in order to alleviate the fear of missing mission-critical deadlines. Hobart needed to track work orders through the different stages of manufacturing, and send real-time notifications on jobs that affect the quality or delivery schedule. Hobart needed these notifications automated as manual tracking is laborious, costly, and error-prone.

Requirements

To provide end-to-end, real-time visibility to its customers and internal operations, Hobart Machined Products needed to:

• Streamline receiving, inventory, shipping, and returns of raw material, parts, and finished products

• Simplify the creation of customer orders and shop-floor work orders

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