In the manufacturing industry a sustainable standardization can create space, time and money for significant investments.
Companies in the manufacturing industry are facing two challenging trends. First, the products must become more and more customized in order to survive on the market. Reasons are the increased demands of the customers, shorter lifecycles of the products as well as an increased fragmentation of the markets. Also, due to the globalization many companies are active in several countries and must comply with the legal requirements.
Second, the pressure for standardization increases in companies, if they want to remain competitive. This goes hand in hand with the growing complexity of the products, that results in growing development costs. Also, the competition has significantly increase due to de-regulation. Hence, in several companies of the manufacturing industry, standardization is gaining in importance.
Not surprising, as significant cost reduction potentials rise from a sustainable standardization strategy. And not only from reducing single design variants but from generally standardized processes in all relevant areas of the product lifecycle.
This is why the implementation of a standardization strategy should be a matter for decision at the managemet level and coordinated and promoted as such.
