Smart Manufacturing Impact On Retail

The retail marketplace is poised now to truly leverage the capabilities and benefits of smart manufacturing with the integration and expansion of the collaborative retail network. Smart manufacturing provides capabilities to customize and deliver on demand and the practices in smart manufacturing supporting the efficient product changeover and customization allows retailers to refine and expand their offerings into a type of endless aisle without the expense of manufacturing an endless aisle of inventory. This is just one example of the opportunities available with the combination of the collaborative network when combined with the capabilities of smart manufacturing. This can be the next wave of improvements in the retail shopping experience and is really just in the infancy of development and implementation in the retail marketplace.





I believe that retailers have a great opportunity to develop a relationship with smart manufacturers to enhance the consumer shopping and purchasing opportunities for new and customized products for customer purchasing. This will be an awesome development in the retail shopping experience and is an important improvement and additional transformation for the consumer shopping experience. This capability potential from smart manufacturing combined with the capabilities of the collaborative network provide the framework for the next retail transformation.





I see this transformation utilizing smart manufacturing to start from two different directions both the smart manufacturer through direct interaction with consumers and through specialized service providers that partner with smart manufacturers. This will be the first wave of transformation in the retail marketplace because of the traditional retail culture this marketplace change will start with the small and nimble providers that are experimenters and forward thinking. The benefit to the marketplace starts with the collaborative network that provides the framework for the types of services and offerings that are required to introduce the opportunities from smart manufacturing.





Retailers and especially the large retailers should focus on embracing these capabilities offered by smart manufacturing to refine their product development and replenishment strategies. The smart manufacturing capabilities will provide retailers with the opportunity to develop a replenishment strategy to reduce overstock and refine and improve the replenishment cycle in a manner that transforms their forecasting and replenishment to reduce overstock and the costs associated with overstock. This requires though retailers to reevaluate much of their retail strategy because of the recent growth and expansion of the overstock marketplace. The capabilities fit perfectly with the collaborative network capabilities though and this is why it will catch fire with consumers.





Unfortunately, from an historical perspective, the large retailers have historically followed the lead of smaller retailers to experiment and develop the new technologies or capabilities in the retail experience. This needs to change though because of the speed in which the retail marketplace is changing now. The marketplace development is not slowing down and every new development and improvement in the marketplace is in fact speeding the changes in the market. This should be the next focus for the large retailers in their transformation because consumers will embrace these capabilities because it fits right in with their lifestyles.