Manufacturing is neck deep in data. This isn't a new phenomenon. As the industry has moved into its current era — often referred to Industry 4.0 — there has been a push for generating and collecting as much data as possible. Over the last couple decades much of the industry has bought into this paradigm shift and invested heavily in doing precisely that. The goals through all of this are the same things which have driven manufacturing innovation for centuries: higher efficiency, less supply chain risk, and more agility in responding to market needs. Yet some manufacturing operations find themselves stuck in limbo part way through this transition, heavily invested in this new future but struggling to realize the benefits. This article aims to help leaders and decision makers in manufacturing who are facing this transition struggle. Over the next five minutes we'll look at common issues faced, root causes, the missing paradigm shift piece, and the decisions that must be made to move forward.

Getting a single person to document a single thing as part of their job can be hard. Getting the people of an organization to pride themselves in how well they document things may seem like a beautiful if utterly impossible fever dream. But we at Urban Dynamics pride ourselves in doing things the right way both internally and for our clients, which is why documentation is one of our core company values. It's also something we've helped companies across many industries raise the bar on just by working with us on various projects and seeing what doing documentation well actually looks like.