10 Ways Modern Intranet Benefits Manufacturing Industry

With the fast pacing market trends, the external environment of manufacturing businesses is bound to change and so is the internal environment. Manufacturing sector is a good mix of a variety of activities, processes, and protocols like sales, production, HR, planning, finances, customer care, and deliveries. It needs to strike the right balance between managing and securing information, ensuring a proper channel for its access and subsequent employee collaboration for improved communication and enhanced customer service.

Manufacturing industry faces challenges such as delayed information flow, lack for central document repository with crucial manufacturing information, and a common dashboard for real time updates to handle emergencies and provide backups. To counter, manufacturers require modern digital workplace solutions and tools like an intranet for real-time information sharing, central storage, easy document collaboration & multiple channels for information sharing 

Are you wondering how an intranet benefits the manufacturing industry? Go through the blog, highlighting 10 ways a tailor-made intranet can benefit your industry.  

1. Allows a mobile optimized presence:

Intranets allow your sales and field employees to manage their work schedules using mobile devices. It fosters schedule management, communication with remote employees, note taking, access to the latest versions of material and case studies while on the shop floor or on-the-go. They can easily check-on the product availabilities, product descriptions, pricing, and quotations in real-time and demonstrate up-to-date details and successfully crack the deals.

2. Secure and unified collaboration:

Intranet binds the globally spread business operations, in turn, smoothening round the clock operations for a manufacturing firm. From top executives to the shop floor workers everyone can access anytime and anywhere the information, people, expertise for good communication, and eliminate counterproductive factors like common work errors, miscommunication, and data redundancy.

3. Streamlines documental procedures:

With digital, user-friendly forms and tools, the approval taking process has become simple and quick. The cloud-based functioning and the real-time availability of information, data and its user, raising approval requests, and receiving approvals for materials, testing procedures, reports, and quality checks become rhythmic. It dramatically shortens approval time, securely manages, and saves the data with the least probability of misplacement.

4. Automates complex procedures:

The manufacturing process is a combination of various complex sub-processes which require 24*7 supervision for avoiding discrepancies. Government and Regulatory compliance, testing and quality check procedures, formula management (for formula-based manufacturing), order processing, production processes, etc. are crucial to manufacturers, and intranets for manufacturing can seamlessly automate these processes. It allows setting task reminders, creating version histories, keeping production in line, and easy briefings on updates.

5. Synchronizes information exchange:

The employees of a manufacturing concern need to create and maintain multiple documents like request forms, order requests, reports, shipping documents, clients’ details, etc. With an intranet in place, they can create diverse document libraries providing built-in functionalities for versioning, co-authoring, sharing, and maintain change history. With a strong governance structure, you can secure and better organize these libraries.

6. Promote cross border collaboration:

When complete or interim manufacturing operations are located at diverse geographies, cross-functional team coordination becomes tough yet necessary. With a robust project management feature of an intranet, you can create separate project sites, supervise the projects and see them through task completions. It enables and offers the creation of a dedicated and secure library for maintaining project plans, metrics, budgeting, reports, etc.

7. Real-time production dashboards:

Intranets enable the factory floor workers to report work activities using forms, managers & supervisors to assess the production schedules and all the necessary information over a common dashboard. Ensuring everyone’s on the same page and generate production and worker reports as and when required. Plant supervisors can even conduct the performance reviews of workers. Giving a clear picture of manufacturing efficiency and order status, easing up estimate metrics, and helping in decision-making for the management.  

8. Manage HR processes:

Large scale management of HR-related data is expensive and time-consuming. Intranets provide several tools for effectively handling HR processes like recruitment, leave management, appraisal, policies, etc. The easy completion of these tasks allows core management teams to focus on strategic manufacturing supervision and goal achievement.

9. Knowledge sharing:

Intranets ease knowledge sharing among workers. The employees from any corner, domain, or hierarchical level can share new insights, data, manufacturing practices and industrial developments. Building intellectual abilities, market know-how, and generating scopes of personal and organizational growth.

10. Integration of diverse business processes:

Streamlining diverse core processes and systems (ERPs, QMS, CMS, marketing, operations, etc.) of business is another benefit of having an intranet. It consolidates the information from disparate systems, acts as a central access point, and reduces disruptions to their work.

Modern intranets are the most prominent and comprehensive solutions for common problems that any manufacturing concern may encounter in its internal environment. With an intranet managing operations you can easily notice the positive change in the people, processes, and organizations. Schedule a DEMO to learn more about how BizPortals 365 can take your business to the new heights.