Automotive suppliers and OEMs are facing dramatic disruptions right now that will continually transform the industry and daily operations.

The challenges of today will result in a fundamentally restructured automotive supply chain in just a few years.

Increasing supply chain and inventory risk will require suppliers and OEMs to cascade best practices down the supply chain more than ever before. OEMs will give suppliers no choice but to comply with standards like MMOG/LE and IATF 16949 and to tighten cybersecurity.

Successful COOs will bring digital technologies to the shop floor and operations to improve quality and delivery and to ramp up the production of connected products and related services.

CFOs need insight and tools to make operational and information technology investment decisions with confidence and to adjust quickly to the uncertain business environment. They must also pay close attention to respond to ever-evolving compliance requirements.

CIOs will need to move from old, unsustainable, insecure systems to agile solutions, so that their company can rapidly adapt to the changing business models, to consolidation and to the turbulent external environment.

CPOs must become more strategic by improving visibility and applying best practices. That means moving from price-centricity to viewing and managing the complete supply chain.

How can QAD Help?

QAD has been a trusted solution partner to manufacturers in the automotive supply chain for four decades.

• We actively participate in global industry associations, like AIAG, Odette, JAPIA and others, in developing standards for quality, the supply chain and corporate responsibility. QAD incorporates the resulting best practices in its solutions.

• QAD Adaptive ERP provides a comprehensive yet flexible manufacturing ERP, supporting the unique needs of each manufacturer and offering excellent fit out of the box. It includes support for internationalization, IATF 16949 and MMOG/LE to address supply chain and regulatory requirements.

• The QAD Enterprise Platform, the application platform for QAD Adaptive ERP, simplifies the adoption of digital technologies for automotive customers. It also makes it easy to modify the ERP solution using a low/no code approach.

• QAD prides itself on fast and dependable cloud implementations and around-the-clock global support.

• QAD Adaptive Applications offers an integrated portfolio to support the distinct planning and manufacturing needs of automotive suppliers. It includes solutions for quality management, global trade management, scenario planning, demand and supply chain planning, production execution visibility, and others.

High tech manufacturers are facing disruptions today that will continually transform their daily operations.

Manufacturers are under pressure to deliver greater value to their customers via product tailoring and unique offerings. This requires effective management of every aspect of the manufacturing enterprise.

Customers expect deeper traceability of component usage data and as-built process knowledge to meet stringent customer regulatory and traceability requirements. This also provides a foundation for continuous process improvement.

High tech manufacturers need timely and accurate insight into the operational status of planned production across their global footprint.

Cost pressures and an expectation of immediate availability have put pressure on the entire supply chain. Fluctuating demand leads to significant challenges in managing the internal supply chain, coordinating the extended vendor ecosystem, controlling costs, ensuring quality, tracking production and optimizing inventory levels.

To enable continuous change, digital transformation will become a strategic initiative, which will eliminate manual and semi-manual practices like the use of spreadsheets. The transformation involves the adoption of new technologies, the improvements of planning and forecasting, faster time to knowledge and better decision making

IoT will increase access to the real-time status of high tech manufacturing progress, provide early warnings of potential issues and deliver large amounts of operational data into advanced repositories like data lakes. IoT capabilities will also highlight information across the entire supply chain through monitoring of smart industrial products. Machine learning will be applied to this data to enable analytics that delivers competitive advantages.

Successful COOs will bring IoT and other advanced technologies to the shop floor and warehouse to improve quality and delivery. They will also bring the needed focus of bridging the IT/OT gap through innovative integration methods that help their company respond to the considerable demand for new product variety.

CEOs need to ensure their company is agile enough to execute rapidly on key decisions – this impacts people, processes, practices, partners and solutions. The CEO will continually need to balance cost, innovation, risk and investment.

CIOs need to move from old, insecure systems with difficult to manage customizations to adaptive solutions. The IT organization needs to help the company rapidly respond to changing business models, to consolidation and to the turbulent external environment.

The VP of Supply Chain and related leaders have seen their roles become more strategic. Agile management of inventory mandates better planning and control of in-process materials and finished goods. It will also require better insight and collaboration with suppliers.

How Can QAD Help?

• QAD has been a trusted solution partner with high tech manufacturers for decades. QAD offers solutions that allow manufacturers to selectively apply financial, planning and operations capabilities to best support their needs.

• QAD Adaptive ERP is designed using industry best practices and provides a comprehensive yet flexible solution for global manufacturers. QAD has been delivering cloud ERP solutions for multinational manufacturers since 2007. QAD Adaptive ERP deployed in the QAD Cloud is proven, simple to implement, manage and upgrade, and frees up resources for strategic initiatives.

• The QAD Enterprise Platform, the application platform for QAD Adaptive ERP, simplifies the adoption of advanced technologies for high tech manufacturers to support ongoing digital transformation. Manufacturers can extend their solution using the platform’s low/no code development capabilities.