CIO.com’s Martha Heller talked to Carlos Cardoso, CEO of Kennametal, about how data on customers’ manufacturing plants allows his company to identify ways to boost efficiency.
With 80,000 active customers in 60 different countries, Kennametal serve nearly 5,000 customers a day. Access to customer data gives them insight into how efficiently customers are running their manufacturing plants. This in turns helps Kennametal see which of their locations are the most productive and which are not.
Many large manufacturers don’t know how much they spend on tooling in their plants, let alone if they are running optimally. If one can show them that one location is 20 percent more efficient than another, one can also show them how applying the same best practices at all locations saves them money, effectively increasing capacity and production within the same footprint. Imagine the power of that conversation.
Using Lean and Six Sigma tools, Kennametal streamlined its processes against the standard SAP package. Cardoso felt that with more than 100,000 companies using SAP; Kennametal processes should not be so unique that they can’t make standard SAP work. The goal was to standardize 90% of processes, and they came in at 92%.
Read more here: http://www.cio.com/article/738516/Kennametal_CEO_Uses_IT_to_Keep_a_Laser_Focus_on_Customers
