Manufacture Digital Transformation with Low-Code

Mendix is a Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave leader in low-code technology. Capgemini is an end-to-end transformation specialist (from engineering to manufacturing to the shopfloor) and a preferred Mendix partner. Mendix and Capgemini can help your industrial enterprise build cost-efficient, future-ready solutions that:

• Unlock hidden productivity gains from within systems and equipment
• Speed up time to market with a composable, modular, and collaborative development platform
• Reduce complexity and thrash by integrating with existing interfaces, dashboards, and systems

Why low-code is best for digital transformation in manufacturing

Industrial enterprises face many of the core challenges that drive digital transformation. Enacting a modernization strategy within the required timelines and budgets is difficult when traditional development can’t meet industrial needs:

• It’s too slow: Even the most Agile, lean, and RAD—Rapid Application Development—strategy takes months when it’s not low-code. Depending on human resources, complexity, and other mitigating factors, it could take years.
• It’s too expensive: An 85-million-job candidate shortage means hiring top IT talent will cost more and take longer.
• It’s too difficult: It’s hard for traditional development to reconcile IT data with OT data that lives somewhere else. Disconnected islands of information are often the result.

The Mendix low-code platform helps industrial enterprises connect systems, people, and products. Capgemini provides end-to-end services from product development to the shop room so industrial partners can meet their digitization goals. In addition, Capgemini’s customer understanding is enriched by a business division with thousands of engineers who understand manufacturing customers’ systems, strengths, weaknesses, and goals.

“We bring industrial best practices, contribute to their product development, and learn from all our customers,” said Thomas Zynda, director of Digital Continuity at Capgemini Engineering. “As an engineering company in addition to an IT and consulting company, we share the same DNA as our customers.”

Capgemini uses low-code technology to help industrial enterprises connect their workforce with people, products, and data quickly and cost-effectively. With Capgemini and Mendix, manufacturers can:

• Introduce innovation and efficiency at every business level
• Watch quality management processes better
• Prepare for unpredictable supply chain disruption

Low-code is more time- and cost-efficient

Mendix low-code technology is modular and composable. Industrial enterprises can build functionality in Mendix once and reuse it in different scenarios. This composability saves time and money and reduces redundant coding. Industrial enterprises can also easily access new technology. With the Mendix marketplace and service connectors, incorporating innovative features is faster and easier.

“Most of the time, the business case for creating a high-code solution is not there—there’s too much at stake or it’s too complex to integrate data from different systems,” said Zynda. “For me, the ability to easily integrate data coming from complex sources—2D/3D drawings, ERP data, documents, bills of materials, metadata, IIoT [Industrial Internet of Things] —and other legacy sources, all to bring a holistic digital experience to the users in a matter of weeks is a key differentiator.”

Low-code reduces complexity

Less coding and more reuse save money and time. A modular approach also reduces complexity and minimizes developer specialization requirements. The Mendix abstraction framework makes incorporating legacy systems and diverse informational sources easier. End users can manage complex system operations from a single interface.

Using Mendix, manufacturing enterprises unlock hidden value with OT/IT data. They collaborate within Mendix to develop and deploy low-code cloud-based applications. These applications are easy to govern and iterate based on new technology. They are also easy to integrate with legacy systems.

Low-code is collaborative

With Mendix low-code technology, manufacturing enterprises remove paper and spreadsheet-based processes from workflows and expose data silos to all the necessary business systems. Low-code’s collaborative opportunity extends beyond IT/OT data. Mendix’s visual, integrated development environment (IDE) features drag-and-drop simplicity, limitless checkpoints, and easy-to-update user permissions and development guardrails to facilitate collaboration between business and IT.

When business users can add valuable subject matter expertise to the development processes, the end solutions have higher adoption rates. When manufacturing enterprises with experienced engineer-driven technology partners, those solutions are better tailored to an industrial enterprise’s needs.

With Mendix low-code, manufacturing enterprises remove paper and spreadsheet-based processes from workflows. Mendix makes it easy to expose IT/OT data silos to all the necessary business systems.

Low-code’s collaborative opportunity extends beyond IT/OT data. Mendix’s visual, integrated development environment (IDE) features drag-and-drop simplicity. It’s easy on the Mendix platform to build limitless checkpoints and update permissions. Mendix’s development guardrails also make collaboration between business and IT safer and easier.

When business users add subject expertise to development, solutions have higher adoption rates. When manufacturers digitize with engineer-driven technology partners like Capgemini, they build better-fitting solutions.

Digitize from the shop floor up

With Mendix, manufacturers can access new predictive tools. These tools uncover valuable insights to understand the production ecosystem better.

High-fidelity shop floor modeling improves on-time delivery and predicts production bottlenecks. Improved Supplier Relation Management (SRM) creates sustained supply chain predictability and agility. Composable, adaptive low-code development allows industrial enterprises to develop custom solutions. They also take less time and use fewer resources.

For example:

Data-driven development

Smart manufacturing plants can use Mendix to extend core system functionality. They can also modernize legacy systems, improve workflows, and integrate new technology. Data-driven results can ramp up automation and have other wide-ranging impacts. The positive improvements include but are not limited to the following areas:

• Product traceability
• Production management
• Statistical process control
• Operational shift workflows

Visibility into the whole ecosystem

Mendix-built frontends can combine data from disparate systems across the entire business ecosystem. This combination gives plant managers holistic access to information when they need it. Traceability, regulatory compliance transparency, and operational useability are all improved as a result.

Improved SRM

Mendix industrial partners can revolutionize the procurement process. Low-code data centralization means increased visibility into the following areas:

• Planned consumption
• Shelf life
• Vendor catalogs
• Times-to-ship

With Mendix, industrial enterprises save money and time. They are also better prepared for unforeseen shortages and other supply chain disruptions.

“In modern manufacturing, a lot of data is coming from a lot of different sources and systems of records. Bringing people together to build something that can reach across these layers of information is very complex,” said Zynda. “Low-code—especially Mendix—allows manufacturers to interpret data from shop-floor machines. They can build applications to plug into ERP systems. They can create connections throughout the enterprise. It is incredible that with the same solution, you can do so much.”

Capgemini and Mendix build industrial-strength low-code solutions

As a Siemens Business, Mendix has the backing of the global market leader in automation and industrial solutions. Siemens-owned factories and warehouses across industries have tested, developed, and perfected the platform.

Capgemini’s manufacturing expertise and low-code insight combine to create full lifecycle digital strategies. With Mendix and Capgemini, industrial enterprises create future-ready, efficient solutions. See how Capgemini and Mendix can provide future-proof, low-code solutions that will transform your manufacturing enterprise.

Sign up for Thomas and Capgemini’s Realize LIVE Europe session, Applying Generative AI to enterprise low-code – How AI empowers enterprise low-code and vice-versa this June.