Manufacturing resilience in the face of supply chain uncertainty

Industrial manufacturers are under constant pressure to manage costs and deliver strong margins on the products they produce. These tasks are even greater in today’s volatile economic and resource-challenged times. Rapidly shifting regulatory and economic policies, steadily rising material and energy costs, and a shrinking skilled workforce are threatening manufacturing resilience.

Amidst all this uncertainty, organizations need robust operational strategies that enable greater agility. With the right technology, businesses can do more than weather the storm. Smart, integrated, and connected systems provide oversight and insights across the production environment and supply chain. When combined with improved data and performance analytics, plus out-of-the-box automation for manual and repetitive processes, they can move with velocity to stay ahead of their competition.

Improving supply chain visibility for industrial manufacturing resilience

Industrial manufacturers rely on consistency to meet service-level agreements (SLAs) and production orders, but shifting trade policies worldwide have put supply chains in turmoil. As a result, manufacturers are struggling to deliver products on schedule, putting both their reputation and margins at risk. Without clear visibility into what materials, parts, or supplies are available, where they are, and when they will arrive—or whether manufacturers are getting the most cost-effective pricing—production planning becomes nearly impossible.

For example, in a material-dependent vertical like furniture manufacturing—where components such as screws, fabrics, and specialty finishes are essential—a missed shipment can delay production timelines and result in lost customizations. These setbacks can erode customer expectations, damage hard-earned reputations, and drain margins. Heightened uncertainty requires greater visibility, and that requires better tools.

Managing cost pressures with manufacturing analytics solutions

Beyond supply chain challenges, global trade uncertainty directly impacts costs, availability, and pricing structures. Manufacturers need to understand where materials are in their supply chain and how price fluctuations will affect their margins. In complex manufacturing businesses, where steel, concrete, raw materials, and specialized equipment and parts are essential inputs, even modest fluctuations in material costs can derail project budgets.

A spike in steel prices, for instance, doesn’t just affect one line item—it impacts bidding accuracy, contract profitability, build bill of materials, and supplier relationships. As costs shift unpredictably due to economic and trade changes, real-time information about pricing, supply, sources, and trade becomes essential, as well as the agility to update cost structures accordingly.

To do that, manufacturers must leverage the best enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools, artificial intelligence (AI), and analytics offerings on the market to track costs, manage contractors, suppliers, and projects, and efficiently navigate impending change. In fact, 80% of organizations agree that success depends on the use and adoption of new technologies, and 78% expect to increase technology investments by 20% or more over the coming years.

Compliance automation to navigate regulatory uncertainty

On top of supply chain and cost pressures, industrial manufacturers face an increasingly complex regulatory landscape. New and changing regulations make compliance more complicated than ever, requiring constant vigilance and adaptation. Businesses don’t have the time or bandwidth to manually process these changes day to day, or even hour to hour, but failing to do so can result in non-compliance, unfit or unsafe products, and costly fines.

Consider the plastic fabrication industry, where manufacturers must ensure compliance with everything from emission standards and safety regulations to data privacy laws and cross-border trade requirements. They need an integrated system with built-in security and compliance guardrails to keep pace with the speed of change, while avoiding violations and reducing the burden on their team.

Driving efficiency amid skill shortages with manufacturing automation

Amid this uncertainty, manufacturers face a hard truth: Institutional knowledge is lost as experienced workers retire, and skilled replacements are increasingly difficult to find. As veteran machinists and engineers retire, manufacturers struggle to fill roles that require technical skill and deep process knowledge. Experience is evaporating from the workforce, and businesses must find a way to replace it. However, finding new skilled workers is difficult, and hiring them is expensive.

Organizations need enterprise-scale technology that can automate core functions, preserve critical knowledge, and create new efficiencies that allow their limited workforce to focus on high-value activities. By leveraging AI and automation, companies can reduce their job costs by up to 40% and unlock new efficiencies and profits.

Integrated manufacturing systems to build long-term resilience

Infor™ is here to help manufacturers transform challenges into competitive advantages, ensuring our customers get ahead of these obstacles and then stay ahead of the next ones. Our solutions deliver the speed, visibility, and confidence needed to thrive in today's volatile market environment.

Infor CloudSuite™ solutions for industrial manufacturing are purpose-built for the industry to offer complete visibility and data connectivity for streamlining operations across global supply chains, production planning, workforce management, finance, and reporting systems—all in one unified platform. When trade disruptions occur, our cloud solutions help customers update cost structures, find affordable alternative suppliers, and keep production running without costly delays or shutdowns — protecting margins even when material availability and prices fluctuate. 

Additionally, Infor Velocity Suite offers advanced solutions and services that leverage process mining to ensure best practices are always in play and pinpoint where delays are happening and why. This allows teams to triage problems even more efficiently and analyze vendor performance at the transaction level to uncover pricing discrepancies and negotiate better contracts. Infor Velocity Suite also uses AI and robotic process automation (RPA) technology to automatically check vendors against new regulations and exclusion lists, eliminating risk and saving time.

When the only constant is change, Infor’s solutions help manufacturers adapt instantly to evolving conditions. Uncertainty doesn’t have to derail your business. Learn more about how Infor makes possible happen for our industrial manufacturing customers.