This conversational AI Buyer's Guide covers all of the features you should look for when evaluating a conversational AI solution. Technical requirements include support for utterances, sentiment analysis, conferencing in other employees or conversations, long-running stateful conversations, low-code capabilities, enterprise data security, and integration with your current and future apps. What's inside: • About the conversational AI market • Common conversational AI use cases • Details on the buyer's guide selection criteria and platform capabilities • Instructions on how to use the guide • Comparisons on 16 different conversational AI platforms

Every couple of years, MESA (Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association) puts their heads together with the researchers at Cambashi Inc. to study how manufacturers are using metrics at the operations level to ignite overall business performance. Today, it’s a rare business that doesn’t use metrics to survive and get ahead – but, every manager and executive wonders if they’re using the *right* metrics. You know – the ones that send up a red flag when we’re not on track, or promise wealth and fame when we’re doing the right things the right way.

For many manufacturers, traceability is a valiant goal. But, for food and beverage producers, it's a critical requirement. No one wants to put a single person at risk, let alone tens or hundreds. Yet, incidents of food-borne illnesses show up in the news every day. Amid demands for more stringent food safety and legislative mandates for "farm-to-fork traceability," food and beverage manufacturers struggle to adequately track ingredients, materials and end-products from origin to customer. As a food or beverage manufacturer, part of your job is to help prevent outbreaks of food-borne illnesses.

Durante casi dos décadas, analistas, periodistas y expertos de la industria han advertido a los fabricantes sobre las consecuencias de la falta de conexión entre la base (la línea de producción) y la cima (la gerencia hasta los ejecutivos más importantes). Con todo lo escrito sobre el tema, sorprende que pocos fabricantes hayan siquiera tratado de conectar el personal de planta con el personal directivo para mejorar la cadena de suministro extendida.

Much has been written about the increase in food costs over the past year. Food and beverage manufacturers face high commodity costs on the supply side and even higher fuel costs on the customer/distribution side. Landing in the middle of this cost equation, manufacturers have no choice but to pass along costs to consumers, rather than adversely affect profitability. Forward-thinking organizations have spent significant effort addressing efficiencies on the supply and customer sides.

Do you have sufficient breadth, depth, and precision to make a difference? ★ All sizes of manufactures ask the same questions: “How much traceability is enough?” and “Which approaches will protect my business?” However, small- and mid-size producers agonize over affordability as well. It all boils down to traceability objectives, and the characteristics of your production process.

Con la economía en alza, se terminaron los tiempos de los bajos volúmenes y la racionalización. Para muchos, los volúmenes crecen sostenidamente, y los fabricantes ahora se encuentran frente a un problema diferente al de la reducción de costos: cómo satisfacer la creciente demanda luego de los recortes de recursos y sin nuevas inversiones en mejoras de productividad en los años recientes. Con sus operaciones de manufactura ya acercándose a su capacidad, las formas tradicionales de ganar en capacidad son mediante la realización de grandes inversiones de capital o la tercerización de algunas de las nuevas demandas de manufactura. Estas son tácticas desafiantes, ya que obtener nuevos recursos en línea lleva tiempo y no existen garantías de que los números continuarán en ascenso. Sin embargo, usted sí tiene una tercera opción a su disposición. Puede satisfacer la creciente demanda al liberar los recursos necesarios dentro de sus operaciones actuales. La clave es identificar las áreas de mejoras dentro de sus operaciones existentes mediante el acceso en tiempo real a la información de manufactura y la utilización de información procesable para mejoras en la manufactura.

For nearly two decades analysts, journalists, and industry experts have warned manufacturers about the consequences of a disconnect between the shop floor (the production line) and the top floor (senior management up to C-suite). With all that has been written on the subject, it’s surprising that few manufacturers have even tried to connect the shop floor to the top floor to enhance the extended supply chain.

Manufacturing enterprises gain competitive advantages when they focus on operational excellence initiatives like Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, Total Productive Maintenance and other continuous improvement methods. They set goals to unlock capacity and reduce inventory and labor costs, while increasing productivity without additional capital investment. Leading manufacturers meet these goals by identifying and measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) within and across facilities on an ongoing basis.

Benchmarking performance in manufacturing operations. ★ As a teenager, it only took once or twice to figure out that it didn’t matter how much time I spent on planning, research and writing, if I simply forgot that all-important report on the kitchen table when I headed off to school. The effort was entirely wasted, and I would have been better off killing time instead. It was like preparing for a party where I’d forgotten to invite the guests – absolutely useless.

How does your business connect to third parties, like corporate customers, government agencies and other financial institutions? These transactions may span funds management, insurance trade services, ACH transactions, payroll, payments and foreign exchange orders. Tower Group calls these processes “B2Bank”, and they can easily number in the tens or hundreds of thousands per month. Maintaining control can rapidly consume resources needed for survival and growth. Furthermore, most executives have become frustrated with the excessive cost of ineffective enterprise software and disconnected legacy tools. License, maintenance and transaction fees are just the beginning. Adding to the tremendous burden is a large and expensive infrastructure team to support disparate systems. The business, however, must forge ahead.

The global economic crisis is changing how banks and insurance providers operate and compete. It’s forcing them to rethink business models and make hard choices about how to invest resources and which services to deliver. Some organizations will disappear; others will emerge from the crisis recognizable in name only. To succeed, banks must take a fresh look at how they operate, where they invest and how they manage technology. With crisis comes opportunity. Just as some banks fade, others will seize the opportunity to capture immediate savings while deploying flexible systems, preparing them to serve new customers in new ways. This white paper describes a new approach for how banks can connect to corporate customers and use a managed file transfer (MFT) platform to simplify data transfers, lower costs and deliver compelling services to customers.

Benchmarking performance in manufacturing operations. ★ Dad is an engineer – with highly methodical ways, endless lists (and lists of lists, I suspect), and mountains of books and journals, his pearls of wisdom have served me well – both in business and my personal life. One insight stands out more than all the others, and it’s the one I impart most often to my own kids… “If you want to learn something, take a look at somebody who’s already tried it, whether they succeeded or failed. It’ll get you to where you’re going faster.” Certainly, Dad’s thought process wasn’t a revolutionary one – folks have been learning from each other since the dawn of time.

Los fabricantes tienden a centrarse en la efectividad global de los equipos (OEE) como un indicador fundamental del rendimiento. Debido a que muchas empresas tienen restricciones de capacidad (producir más equivale a mayores ingresos), los beneficios contables ofrecen una justificación sólida para maximizar las iniciativas de mejoras de la OEE. En realidad, cada punto porcentual de mejora de la OEE se puede traducir en contribución de valor en áreas como costo de los bienes vendidos (COGS), inventario, ganancia bruta, ingresos, gastos de capital y ahorros de activos. Encontrar y eliminar todo aquello que inhiba el rendimiento, como el tiempo de inactividad, ayudará a las empresas a mejorar la capacidad y la OEE. Por último, comprender el impacto financiero del tiempo de inactividad y las categorías de pérdidas ayuda a los profesionales de operaciones a establecer prioridades de mejoras en contexto con el rendimiento general de la compañía.

Nearly every manufacturing company uses key performance metrics (KPIs), but few manufacturers really understand how these metrics relate to each other. Understanding the interactions between metrics and their associated effects can lead to a better understanding of what drives sustainable improvement. Most of the time, plants and companies sense that there is room for improvement, but determining a set of actionable diagnostic metrics is more elusive. What is a reasonable expectation for the improvement effort? Operational silos, confidentiality, competitive advantage strategies, and differing manufacturing approaches cause manufacturing professionals to resist looking outside their own plant for additional insight. For many companies, benchmarking manufacturing performance in relation to actual practices has been key to driving and sustaining higher performance levels. When enterprises benchmark manufacturing performance and examine corresponding strategies of best-in-class performers (lines, plants, and even other companies), they close the gap between today's performance and what could be. Benchmarking activities can be as simple as comparing shifts, lines and product categories. But when the benchmarking effort spans entire plants throughout the enterprise, and leverages insight from across the manufacturing community, there is a shift in perception about what is realistic and possible.