17 Feb
2019
Manufacturing and the supply chain has shifted dramatically in recent years. China, which has dominated the industry for decades, has started to pivot towards high-tech, precision engineered consumer products, in addition to its established production of smartphones, aerospace components and over 20 million cars a year. This shift has opened up other sections of the market to ?emerging? economies such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Poland, Brazil and Mexico. As industry has developed in these states, so has the middle class, resulting in a broader range of suppliers and buyers for manufacturers to work with.
This expansion has brought great opportunities for manufacturers and OEMs around the world, but it also presents a new set of challenges. Concerns about systems compatibility, IP protection and malicious attacks are all heightened when dealing with partners based in unfamiliar and less developed economies. And this is without taking into account the difficulties that arise anywhere in the world when it comes to speed and security of information transfer. For too many companies, the process of transferring mission-critical product design data is still time-consuming and insecure, creating a backlog of administrative work and putting valuable intellectual property at risk.
