6 Ways Manufacturers Can Boost Time to Market
Olga Zakharenkava 
August 22nd, 2024
How fast a company can get a product or service to customers has a direct impact on its success. Product time to market in manufacturing is a huge factor in customer satisfaction. It also has a major impact on speeding up revenue, keeping up with competitors, and improving cash flow and profitability.
Document production is an important but undervalued aspect driving speed to market in manufacturing. Every step of the manufacturing process involves documents. The more you reduce lead times for producing important documents, the faster your products can get to market.
Table of Contents
- How Document Generation Bottlenecks Affect Time to Market
- 3 Crucial Types of Documents for the Manufacturing Process
- Meeting Compliance Needs in Your Specific Manufacturing Industry
- 6 Ways Automated Document Generation Gets Products to Market Faster
- Streamline Your Time to Market with Automated Document Generation from MHC
How Document Generation Bottlenecks Affect Time to Market
If your business’s documents aren’t flowing smoothly and efficiently, your products probably aren’t either. Let’s break down a few key causes of bottlenecks that slow the production of manufacturing documents. These are factors that hurt your cycle time and your time to market.
Manual Document Creation
Many manufacturers rely on manual data entry, physical routing for approvals, and other outdated document production practices.
Result: Manual processes are much slower and prone to human errors than automation, costing manufacturers valuable time.
Inefficient Workflows
Workflows built around outdated processes and technology often struggle to keep up with the pace of modern document assembly.
Result: Not only does slow processing speed delay document production, inefficient workflows also limit visibility into detecting bottlenecks and correcting errors.
Legacy Systems
Some manufacturers are reluctant to adopt new tech. They worry that overhauling their existing systems will be complex and costly.
Result: Many companies rely on slow, outdated systems. Often, these systems could easily integrate with newer, more efficient solutions.
Regulatory Compliance
Government regulations and industry standards are constantly evolving in ways that can outpace the capabilities of obsolete legacy systems.
Result: Manufacturers run a risk of fines and penalties for non-compliance, and also make it harder to identify and correct compliance issues that do arise.
Overall Result: Slow Time to Market
Inefficient systems and insufficient technology hurt your overall time to market, but the negative effects don’t end there.
A manufacturing business relying on manual processes also puts itself at a disadvantage in these specific areas.
The Effects of Product Delays on Manufacturing
- Sacrificing Your Competitive Edge
- Impacts On Your Bottom Line
- Lowered Customer Satisfaction
- Inefficient Operations
- Risk of Non-Compliance
- Conflicts with Corporate Strategy
- Lower Quality and Performance
In each of these instances, improved document generation can go a long way toward preventing the most negative impacts. Boosting document processing speed in manufacturing is the first step toward ensuring that products are launched on schedule.
By reducing the risk of human errors and document production delays, you create a more dependable and timely process that extends to all of your manufacturing operations.
Three Crucial Types of Documents for the Manufacturing Process
Compliance Documentation
Documents necessary for confirming regulatory compliance include:
- Regulatory submissions
- Quality assurance certifications
- Environmental impact assessments
- Safety compliance certificates
Consumer Documentation
Documents a manufacturer needs to supply to its consumers include:
- Product manuals
- Installation guides
- Warranty information
- Safety instructions
Order Processing & Financial Communications
FREE DOWNLOAD
Get a blueprint for manufacturers to streamline operations, reduce costs, and gain a competitive edge in 2024. Learn about proven strategies for document generation used by top manufacturing businesses.
Meeting Compliance Needs in Your Specific Manufacturing Areas
Manufacturing is a highly regulated industry on the whole. Different types of manufacturers have different requirements and expectations for compliance. Efficient document generation processes are at the core of staying on top of regulatory compliance. Let’s take a brief look at specific regulations impacting some common areas of manufacturing.
Automotive Manufacturing
- Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) documents: APQP documents include failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) and control plans. These documents track quality assurance and industry-specific compliance.
- Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) documents: Automotive manufacturers are required to document each vehicle’s lifecycle. That includes design and development, manufacturing process, and methods of disposal for its end of life.
- Regulatory compliance: Manufacturers must provide documented evidence that each vehicle meets all required environmental and safety standards. That includes crash safety and emissions tests.
Food and Beverage Manufacturing
- Ingredient documentation: Manufacturers need to detail all ingredients used in making all food and beverage products, including potential allergens and sourcing of materials
- Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) documents: Manufacturers are legally required to document their efforts to identify, evaluate, and control potential hazards to food safety
- Regulatory compliance: Food safety standards set by the FDA, USDA, and other regulatory bodies require specific documentation of nutritional information, safety measures, product labeling, and more
Industrial Machinery Manufacturing
- Bill of Materials (BOM): A manufacturing Bill of Materials serves as a single source of truth. It provides accurate, up-to-date product data. That includes names, numbers, descriptions, and quantities of all parts used.
- Engineering Change Order (ECO):A manufacturing ECO details proposed changes. That includes anything that will affect the form, fit, or function of an industrial machinery product.
- Consumer documents: Industrial machinery products require a number of customer-facing documents, including operating manuals, maintenance schedules, installation guides, and more.
Medical Device Manufacturing
- Technical documents: Detailed records of clinical evaluations, product labeling, risk assessment statements, and more are required for regulatory submissions.
- Design History File (DHF): DHF documents carefully record the step-by-step design and development processes for producing a medical device.
- Device Master Record (DMR): DMR documents record each step of the medical device manufacturing process, including quality assurance measures, device specifications, and materials used.
Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Manufacturing
- Batch records: Every batch of products requires extensive records of ingredients, quality control data, processing details, and more.
- Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) documents: GMP standards require detailed documentation of employee training, equipment maintenance, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and more.
- Regulatory compliance: Products that require regulatory approval by the FDA, EMA, and other bodies need detailed documentation of clinical trials, quality control data, manufacturing processes, and more.
Textiles and Apparel Manufacturing
- Material specs: Manufacturers must document the source, quality, and certain properties of their raw materials.
- Certifications: Products sold as organic, Fair Trade, Oeko-Tex, and other designations require certification that they meet required standards.
- Records of production: Key manufacturing information such as production volume, quality control standards, and labor practices requires close documentation.
CCM SOFTWARE
Discover Our CCM Solutions for Manufacturers
Six Ways Automated Document Generation Gets Products to Market Faster
An automated document generation solution boosts processing speed and cuts your time to market. Digitizing your manufacturing document creation and distribution process eliminates human errors and inefficiencies that can hurt your time to market. Document generation software provides the flexibility to adapt processes and scale production. That enhances problem solving, making it easier to meet product deadlines and address manufacturing-specific concerns.
A centralized library of customizable document templates makes it easy to create documents adapted to your brand. That keeps logos and branding consistent across all documents. That clearly differentiates you from other manufacturers while also adhering to regulatory compliance.
A deep library of reusable document fragments makes it simple to personalize technical documents, bills of materials, and other manufacturing documents. That allows you to tailor documents to the needs of specific customers and audiences. Your final product maintains your messaging and brand standards.
Today’s manufacturing customers want options to receive communications via the channels they prefer. An automated document creation system allows you to deliver a consistent experience across all channels for maximum user experience. That includes email, SMS messages, physical mailings, and more.
4. Centralized Document Management System
Manual document creation requires searching across multiple platforms and databases to find the right templates and content. In a field as wide-ranging as manufacturing, that can take a lot of valuable time. An automated process stores all documents in a centralized location. That makes it easy to track and update them as needed.
5. Collaboration Tools
Outdated document creation systems make it difficult to collaborate smoothly, often leading to duplicated work and communication problems. That can create costly product delays and compliance violations. Automated document generation allows teams to collaborate in real-time from any location, ensuring quick feedback and approval cycles.
Making edits, routing documents for approval, and other key tasks are inefficient in a manual document creation system. Automating document review, approval, and distribution sharply reduces the time required to move from one stage to the next. That makes sure your products get to market with as few delays as possible.
Why Boost Time to Market?
79% of businesses that boost speed to market using efficient supply chains grow their revenue faster than the industry average.
45% of product launches are delayed by at least a month. That gives businesses extra incentive to improve time to market to get a competitive edge.
Automated document generation can reduce the time required to assemble a document from 3 hours to 15 minutes, with no errors to correct.
Streamline Your Time to Market with Automated Document Generation from MHC
Things move quickly in the manufacturing sector. Processes that were standard five years ago now seem outdated, and new technologies are always just around the corner. Today’s business landscape requires flexible, scalable solutions adaptable to the specific demands of your company and industry.
Relying on legacy systems and obsolete technology hurts you in the long term. Outdated systems put your business at a competitive disadvantage in an era of booming automation.
Want to learn more about MHC’s automated document generation software? Contact us today to schedule a demonstration. Our team of in-house experts will connect with you to discuss your specific needs and goals. See how streamlining processes with automation can help reduce your time to market. That lets you focus on continuous improvement in product design and keeps you on pace with the competition.
FREE DEMO
Get a Live Demo Today
Agile and reliable delivery of high-impact communications when it matters most. Experience it today! Easily integrated with your business systems, utilizing our cloud-based platform will guide you to communication success.
Olga Zakharenkava
Olga is a marketing and growth leader with 17+ years of experience in B2B SaaS software. Passionate about making an impact, she builds high-performing teams that drive recurring revenue by being experts in their market and experts in their marketing craft. Olga always puts data first when it comes to building and optimizing marketing strategies, encourages the team to challenge assumptions, and promotes lifelong learning and creative thinking.
