Business Journal

Posts Tagged ‘Manufacturing’

According to Preston Blevins, Vice-President of BatchMaster (www.batchmaster.com), Nutraceuticals manufacturing has been a very impressive growth industry with no end to its growth in sight. This growth is fueled by a public who is increasing focused on health and wants to have increased vitality and longevity. In many respects this parallels the situation in the food and beverage industry, consumers want healthier foods and greater variety. The popularity of organic food, kosher food and the acceptance of functional foods underscore this growing desire.

Despite the forecasted growth for nutraceuticals manufacturing there is a developing belief by some executives within the industry that there will be a consolidation of manufacturers. This consolidation will be driven in part by increasing regulatory compliance requirements, enforcement of claim statements, tighter quality requirements and operational inefficiencies. There is a formula that the nutraceutical manufacturer can use that will improve competitiveness and increase their survivability and benefit from those who ignore it. This formula has five active ingredients:

 INTEGRATION OF BUSINESS PROCESSES & INFORMATION

 BUSINESS PROCESS CONSISTENCY

 DATA ACCURACY

 VISIBILITY

 EFFICIENT USE OF RESOURCES

INTEGRATION OF BUSINESS PROCESSES & INFORMATION

Integration is a somewhat abstract word that requires explanation for those who do not have it in their business operations, individuals who have acclimated to “islands of information”. The reality today is that many small to medium sized manufacturers operate off numerous independent spreadsheets and a few stand-alone computerized legacy systems. While many manufacturers are GMP compliant and individual tasks are executed per the prescribed Stand Operating Procedure (SOP), they are not connected to facilitate a logical information flow. This results in limited access to information that is cumbersome to get, with significant data quality (accuracy) problems and to add insult to injury, is expensive to maintain. How expensive will be discussed in the benefits of integration section later.

A few examples of business process integration:

 Lot/batch control and traceability in the ingredient and finished goods supply-chain

 Lot/batch control and traceability in the manufacturing facility

 Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Regulatory authorities have forced a form of integration through the requirement of lot traceability record keeping throughout the entire supply chain. The illustrations below depict this requirement.

About BatchMaster

BatchMaster Software, Inc. has provided advanced ERP solutions for over two decades with more than one thousand five hundred installations worldwide. BatchMaster’s customers can be found in every formula or recipe-based business, including food, beverage, cosmetic, personal care, paint, coating, nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, and specialty chemical industries. Flexible, easy to learn and use, and scalable to grow with a process manufacturing business, BatchMaster is the definitive solution for the challenges facing small to midsize process manufacturers. BatchMaster has more than a hundred technical staff numbers of highly-qualified software professionals.

U.S. Trade Policy and Declining Manufacturing: Where do we go from here?

Paul Crist, August 14, 2010

The U.S. economy and the manufacturing sector in particular, face both short-term and long-term challenges.  There is debate about whether government can or should play a role in addressing those challenges, and if so, what are the fiscal, industrial, regulatory, and trade policies that would benefit the stakeholders, which essentially include all U.S. citizens in one way or another.

I should acknowledge at the outset a bias toward thoughtfully considered government interventions to guide the economy and trade in ways that benefit American workers and allow them to participate in the gains that accrue from their labor.  There are economic reasons for my bias that have nothing to do with either socialist or altruistic impulse.  That bias in no way means that I favor protectionism or a retreat from global trade, or that government intervention in the economy is always desirable, but there are, I believe, issues and stakeholders that get too little consideration and solutions to structural economic problems that are given short shrift in the name of conservative ideological orthodoxy.

There is ample evidence that without adequate and well-designed regulatory intervention in domestic and global markets, capital and political power tends to migrate upward and become concentrated at the top of the economic ladder. We see that phenomenon in country after country, most recently in the U.S.  Concentrated wealth becomes problematic when it undermines social cohesion and a sense of shared purpose.

The wealth/income gap is at the core of social and political stress and instability in most developing countries, and the U.S. is now experiencing the pangs of disequilibrium once confined to so-called “poor” countries.

As inequality increases, it can begin to undermine demand for goods and services.  The wealthy may consume a great deal, but there are simply not enough of them to maintain aggregate domestic or global demand.  Further, at the extreme, even those at the top may suffer negative economic effects if insufficient demand results in their capital being inefficiently allocated to producing goods and services, assuming international markets are not soaking up domestic demand shortfalls.

Despite what conventional trade and economic theories suggest, there are benefits to large countries in maintaining a diverse economic base that includes a broad manufacturing sector.  Not everyone in a large country is suited to higher education and high-skill employment.  The alternatives for non-college-educated workers ought to go beyond low-paid service sector jobs.  Comparative advantage theory may be great on paper, but societies have more complex goals that trade theory alone cannot address.

Comparative advantage may also have lost some of its relevance in a highly globalized world where the factors of production, labor, capital, goods, services, and information can cross national borders quickly and easily. Read the rest of this entry »

Despite the forecasted growth for nutraceuticals manufacturing there is a developing belief by some executives within the industry that there will be a consolidation of manufacturers. This consolidation will be driven in part by increasing regulatory compliance requirements, enforcement of claim statements, tighter quality requirements and operational inefficiencies. There is a formula that the nutraceutical manufacturer can use that will improve competitiveness and increase their survivability and benefit from those who ignore it. This formula has five active ingredients:

 INTEGRATION OF BUSINESS PROCESSES & INFORMATION

 BUSINESS PROCESS CONSISTENCY

 DATA ACCURACY

 VISIBILITY

 EFFICIENT USE OF RESOURCES

According to Preston Blevins, Vice-President of BatchMaster (www.batchmaster.com), Nutraceuticals manufacturing has been a very impressive growth industry with no end to its growth in sight. This growth is fueled by a public who is increasing focused on health and wants to have increased vitality and longevity. In many respects this parallels the situation in the food and beverage industry, consumers want healthier foods and greater variety. The popularity of organic food, kosher food and the acceptance of functional foods underscore this growing desire.

INTEGRATION OF BUSINESS PROCESSES & INFORMATION

Integration is a somewhat abstract word that requires explanation for those who do not have it in their business operations, individuals who have acclimated to “islands of information”. The reality today is that many small to medium sized manufacturers operate off numerous independent spreadsheets and a few stand-alone computerized legacy systems. While many manufacturers are GMP compliant and individual tasks are executed per the prescribed Stand Operating Procedure (SOP), they are not connected to facilitate a logical information flow. This results in limited access to information that is cumbersome to get, with significant data quality (accuracy) problems and to add insult to injury, is expensive to maintain. How expensive will be discussed in the benefits of integration section later.

A few examples of business process integration:

 Lot/batch control and traceability in the ingredient and finished goods supply-chain

 Lot/batch control and traceability in the manufacturing facility

 Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Regulatory authorities have forced a form of integration through the requirement of lot traceability record keeping throughout the entire supply chain. The illustrations below depict this requirement.

About BatchMaster

BatchMaster Software, Inc. has provided advanced ERP solutions for over two decades with more than one thousand five hundred installations worldwide. BatchMaster’s customers can be found in every formula or recipe-based business, including food, beverage, cosmetic, personal care, paint, coating, nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, and specialty chemical industries. Flexible, easy to learn and use, and scalable to grow with a process manufacturing business, BatchMaster is the definitive solution for the challenges facing small to midsize process manufacturers. BatchMaster has more than a hundred technical staff numbers of highly-qualified software professionals.