Cool Vendors in Manufacturing Operations , 2012

The 2012 crop of Cool Vendors in manufacturing operations illustrates the importance manufacturers place on product quality and safety, as well as safe and reliable production operations. The vendors apply innovative approaches to tackling these high-priority issues. ■ Combining real-time data and risk assessment models is a paradigm shift in the world of safety management, opening the door to new levels of safety performance. ■ Cloud-based product quality and compliance services provide a cost-effective and sustainable way to reduce the risks of supply chain disruption and/or noncompliance to proliferating regulations. ■ Production excellence in process manufacturing requires operations intelligence (OI) — that is, a purpose-built analytical tool with the ability to consume data from diverse sources. ■ Effective asset management is a balance between effectiveness and efficiency. Adding greater scientific rigor to the process requires new approaches and tools. Recommendations ■ Energy producers and manufacturing companies looking to improve their safety performance and better manage operational risk should consider real-time risk monitoring, such as what's provided by ACM Facility Safety. ■ Companies looking to simplify and streamline their product compliance/safety activities should consider using a cloud-based product compliance hub, similar to what Actio provides. ■ Process manufacturers — particularly, pharmaceutical and biotech companies — looking for better ways to analyze process data and improve production performance should consider purpose-built OI applications, such as the one from Aegis Analytical.