How low-code app development is transforming manufacturing

In the manufacturing industry, time is a precious commodity. From assembly lines to provisioning to facility security to factory floor safety, it’s critical that machines and processes run smoothly and safely across an organization.

To streamline manufacturing operations and boost efficiency, many forward-thinking manufacturers are investing in digital technologies, such as low-code and generative AI (GenAI) solutions. These offer ways to accelerate innovation and overcome supply chain challenges.

Research from ServiceNow and Dynata shows technology investments don’t always produce the desired business outcomes:

• Only 33% of manufacturers are working to improve their operational technology asset security.
• Just 37% are digitizing the factory floor to drive worker productivity.
• Only 29% are improving supplier communication and collaboration to reduce supply chain risk.

Benefits of low-code development in manufacturing

Low-code development provides manufacturers a major opportunity to create a more agile and adaptable workforce—and to drive enhancements across the value chain.

By helping organizations automate previously manual processes, respond to shifts in product demand, and release new products quicker, low-code app development can boost efficiency and extend workflow automation across the enterprise.

As smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0 become more prevalent, many organizations are struggling to make sense of the gargantuan data sets their factory floor internet of things (IoT) sensors generate and record. Low-code and GenAI solutions enable manufacturers to:

• Unify data across siloed systems
• Automate manual processes
• Seamlessly connect teams and solutions

Using low-code and domain-specific large language models (LLMs), manufacturers can create a core hub that collects, analyzes, and democratizes vital data pulled from IoT sensors.

What’s more, these solutions seamlessly integrate with machine learning models and automated solutions to generate actionable data and provide even more intelligent and predictive insights. Let’s look at three examples of manufacturing low-code in action.

Publishing release management

On the factory floor, complex machinery requires detailed user manuals to ensure safe and correct use—and to provide guidance for troubleshooting and repairs.

As machines and products evolve, these user manuals must be constantly updated and republished so that floor staff, engineers, agents, and virtual assistants remain current on product details and maintenance protocols. Often, these updates must be applied manually—a tedious and time-consuming task.

With low-code, manufacturers can quickly build apps that manage release cycles for any/all publishing changes to manuals. In this way, organizations can streamline interactions between the stakeholders responsible for the product manual lifecycle, including illustrators and taggers, writers, and quality assurance teams.

Automated shift information turnover

For many manufacturers, shift turnovers are still managed with paper and clipboards, resulting in missing or inaccurate information regarding employee absences or shortages. This disrupts staff scheduling, hinders employee productivity, and represents a missed opportunity to record shift data, identify trends, and select areas for improvement.

Low-code enables manufacturers to create apps that automate shift information turnover. Providing digital forms helps employees accurately sign in and out at the beginning and end of their shifts.

Consequently, employees know exactly what they need to work on when starting a shift. This results in less downtime and fewer employee accidents—invariably boosting employee satisfaction and productivity.

Entry lifecycle management

Safety and security are paramount to any manufacturing business. It’s often up to IT to ensure employees are granted the appropriate level of access to various locations. However, this process is still predominately managed through emails, spreadsheets, and legacy systems.

As a result, passes and permissions are rarely updated in time. This poses significant security risks and causes employee frustration and unplanned downtime.

Using low-code, manufacturers can build apps to optimize entry lifecycle management. These apps can automatically organize entry requests and send notifications when a pass is nearing expiration.

This leads to quicker permission granting, happier employees, a safer and more secure working environment, and reduced business disruption from access expiration.

Innovation at scale

The examples above represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the transformative potential of low-code and GenAI.

Manufacturing is a fast-paced environment. Teams need solutions fast. Waiting on overburdened developers may not be an option. Low-code can empower manufacturers to create powerful software applications that address industry challenges and enable future innovation at an impressive scale.

Find out more about how low-code development helps organizations improve speed, agility, and productivity at a fraction of the cost.