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The manufacturing industry is overflowing with instability and uncertainty, from supply chain tension generated by a six-day traffic bottleneck in the Suez Canal to significant market shifts due to a global pandemic.

In fact, a recent PwC survey on manufacturing operations systems found that:

• 33% of respondents still use traditional pen and paper
• 33% rely on a stand-alone system
• 36% depend on email

This shows that much of the industry still relies on manual data collection, siloed data across disparate systems, and primitive legacy systems. If there's one thing we learnt from 2020, it's that manufacturers in all industries need to be able to respond and adapt quickly to changing market conditions.

For those with inconsistent tech stacks and outdated operational processes, these are difficult objectives. However, as Deloitte's Manufacturing Industry Outlook Report points out, resilience is contingent on a commitment to improve operational agility.

Introduction Mendix low-code application platform in Manufacturing

Every manufacturer aims for continuous development in order to accomplish manufacturing excellence. Continuous improvement in manufacturing is based on getting the help of present employees to solve problems. When you your employees about their concerns, they usually have a long list of problems to address and comprehensive ideas to propose. To meet today's manufacturing demands, such solutions necessitate the use of software-based technology. As a result, IT specialists are frequently required to participate in the design of such solutions, resulting in delays in the deployment of new IT-based solutions.

In this situation, low-code application platforms prove useful. The purpose of low-code platforms is to make it possible to develop software apps quickly without having to write code manually. The Mendix low-code Platform has long provided the tools, services, and support organizations need to develop custom, high-quality applications fast.

Low-code app platforms help manufacturing companies develop flexible and efficient applications for various device types, including smartphones, tablets, and workplace apps. This guarantees that manufacturers gets adaptive solutions that can be composed, customized, and extended — all on the Mendix platform.

Why use Mendix low-code application platform for manufacturing?

Low-code development platforms reduce the time it takes to develop apps and increase the speed with which commercial apps are delivered. As a result, a larger variety of individuals, particularly those with substantial knowledge of the business sector, may be able to engage in app development. Industrial engineers, for example, might use low-code application platforms to create apps for optimising shop floor processes in a short amount of time for manufacturing applications.

"Mendix for Manufacturing Industries is an ecosystem that verticalizes our Platform," says Raffaello Lepratti, Vice President of Mendix for Manufacturing Industries. “The idea is to make our technology more accessible and tangible for manufacturing-specific industries.”

Exclusively created for manufacturers, Mendix offers specific tools and components to better support app developers throughout the application development lifecycle. The following tools are available in Mendix Marketplace:

• App services: Share functionality between your Mendix apps. App services for manufacturers include a 3D Viewer, MindSphere IIoT for Makers, and more.
• Templates: Start building your applications with our library of templates, including blank mobile and web apps, Smart Warehousing for inventory management, and an augmented reality starter app.
• Widgets Customize your Mendix apps with configurable single user-interface elements, such as our rich text editor.
• Solutions: A collection of pre-built applications, including a Workplace Manager to facilitate COVID-19 capacity restrictions and a Marine Issue Manager to keep track of issues when on board.
• Modules: Add our manufacturing modules to your app to create new functionality with accompanying domain models and security options. Examples include Mendix Application Performance Diagnostics and Bizzomate Progress Monitor.
• Connectors: Integrate your Mendix apps with other systems. Connectors include Database Connector, Salesforce Connector, IBM Watson Connector Suite, and more.

Manufacturers also become part of a growing community of expert partners, global integrators, and over 250,000 makers.

What are the advantages of Mendix low-code platform in the manufacturing industry?

Using Mendix low-code platform for manufacturing industries empowers your IT experts along the entire value chain to solve operational challenges faster and better, extend capabilities of your IT and OT workflows, improve manufacturing automation, and intelligently connect data to drive agility in digital transformation. Low-code platforms is also being used by businesses to overcome the programming gap and speed up application development.

Low-code application systems have several advantages including lower costs and shorter development cycles. Several other advantages are as follows:

• Less training required for inexperienced developers
• The time it takes to deploy a new application is halved
• The ability to improve apps more quickly
• App testing and maintenance costs are cheaper
• A better allocation of IT resources

Conclusion

To build modern, digital-first applications at speed and scale, you need to evolve from one-off solutions and leverage reusable components like adaptable solutions, widgets, connectors, and domain-specific APIs. Mendix for Manufacturing Industries assembles all the vital pieces for building industry-specific solutions quickly, so you and your team can start solving more problems faster.

Get started with Mendix – a low-code platform that is able to create complex workflow apps with minimal code. Click here if you want more detailed information on Mendix Rapid Application Development platform or contact us for more details.