Manufacturing and social media aren't words often mentioned in the same breath. Although manufacturing is an inherently social operation, the industry hasn't been a strong adopter of social media - at least not operationally. Sure manufacturers use Twitter, Facebook and blogs, but there are few instances of manufacturers using social media for the production process. This has largely been because few social tools for manufacturing production exist. That may be changing.
At this year's Dreamforce event, a new cloud ERP product - called Kenandy - launched for the manufacturing industry. A cloud vendor launch isn't usually something that garners too much attention given the frequency of cloud launches these days. However, Kenandy caught the attention of analysts and media alike because they want to bring social media tools to the manufacturing industry.
For those of you that might have missed the launch, Kenandy is built on the Salesforce's Force.com platform. They've also received financial backing from Salesforce, and indication of their intent to move into the enterprise resource planning (ERP) software market. With this relationship, Kenandy has incorporated Salesforce Chatter into their software offering. This makes Kenandy one of the only manufacturing ERP vendors to incorporate social media tools into their software application.
In my view, incorporating Chatter into manufacturing software carries several implications for the manufacturing industry. It provides the industry a way to operate their manufacturing systems on a much more human level rather than relying purely on hard calculations output by the software. Here are a few ways that I can see Chatter having a positive impact on manufacturing operations.
It can be used to help:
Locate alternate suppliers for materials when needed;
Inform customers and distributors of available stock levels;
Let suppliers know when inventory levels have reach trigger levels; and,
Compare shop floor best practices.
At least these are the benefits that I can see from integrating social media into manufacturing software and their daily operations. Whether Kenandy and the use of Chatter has the impact that Kenandy and others are anticipating remains to be seen.
While we wait to see the impacts, I'd like to know what others ways you can see the manufacturing improved by social media tools? I'd love to have you leave your thoughts on my blog at: What Does Social Manufacturing Look Like? Be sure to stop by and share your thoughts and opinions on the matter.