Jabil Aligns IT and Operations to Transform Manufacturing Processes at Scale

From consumer packaging to aircraft parts, Jabil manufactures products that touch nearly every facet of our daily lives. Jabil is a global leader in engineering, supply chain, and manufacturing solutions, with over 100 global production sites and 140,000 employees.

Senior IT Manager, Kevin Ferreira, describes their work simply: “We make stuff.” However, orchestrating business processes and IT systems in an organization of Jabil’s size is anything but simple.

In recent years, Jabil’s IT team was under immense pressure to deliver more software to support back office and production processes. One assessment revealed that without changes, it would take an estimated 100 years to complete their development pipeline – underscoring the opportunity to innovate and enhance their approach for greater efficiency.

To address this, Jabil enlisted Mendix as their strategic enterprise low-code development platform. At Realize LIVE 2024, Ferreira detailed Jabil’s journey to 55 Mendix applications that are increasing business efficiency and turning back millions in cost savings.

Bringing Agility Back to Development

Strong collaboration between Operations and IT is essential for modern manufacturing. At Jabil, this relationship presents a valuable opportunity to enhance efficiency by focusing on reducing software development timelines and addressing technical debt.

Jabil IT quickly concluded that an enterprise low-code development platform would be the best path forward and began an RFP process with leaders in the Gartner Magic Quadrant.

Jabil narrowed their search to two finalists and put them through a rigorous evaluation and proof-of-concept. “We have a 32-page document scoring Mendix versus the other competitor,” said Ferreira.

“Mendix won every single category. Technically, security-wise, and it just worked out-of-the-box. The real selling point was the responsiveness and sense of partnership. If we had challenges, team members around the global could pick up the phone and call Mendix to get an answer.”

Apps That Deliver Business Value

Jabil kicked off its relationship with Mendix in 2022, establishing it as the standard platform for developing:

1. Production systems that interact with their manufacturing execution system (MES) or SAP.
2. Bespoke or custom digitalization projects to improve internal processes.

Customizable Views on the Shop Floor

Jabil is currently preparing to roll out and standardize their homegrown manufacturing execution system, MES4.0. Jabil used Mendix to develop a front-end application to visualize data from MES4.0 on screens across their production sites.

“We used Mendix’s Solution Kit so that each production site can customize these front-end screens, but IT can block out parts that we don’t want them to customize. We can still maintain control and governance,” said Ferreira.

The IT team started with six customizable views and operations was so happy with the results, that more ideas came through.

The joining of IT and OT can also be seen in Jabil’s JEMScc-QROC application – another Mendix front-end operating on Jabil-made kiosks on the shop floor. The application helps shop floor team members manage quality control and reporting.

Filling Gaps in Core System Functionality

In another instance, a process gap was identified during the rollout of MES4.0 that was critical to maintain business operations. At one Jabil production site this was a feature to manage the printing and application of product labels.

“We missed a requirement with traditional development and the production team decided to use Mendix. They developed an application called Panel Maker in about three months with pretty much no IT involvement,” said Ferreira.

Internal Process Optimization

The latter category of bespoke applications was a byproduct of the improved collaboration between business and IT. Jabil runs new application ideas through a cross-functional product review board monthly, which has become a groundswell for new app ideas.

“We started these meetings to establish where we could use low-code for production systems on the shop floor,” said Ferreira.

“Then suddenly, someone brings an idea to develop a food ordering application. We realize that is something that probably wouldn’t have made sense to develop with traditional programming because it would have cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars if we even got it approved.”

It’s here that applications like eCater – which manages food orders for on-site vendors – are born. The application originated in Europe and then was repurposed for use in other Jabil offices.

Other applications to solve simple challenges, such as reserving parking spots or desk space, are now developed in just a few weeks and reduce administrative, manual work for Jabil employees.

Jabil’s Top 5 Low-Code Learnings

Jabil’s success with Mendix is a direct result of their strategic positioning of low-code across the organization. With an impressive uptake – 55 applications in less than 2 years – Ferreira reflected on some of the team’s key takeaways for those who are starting their journey.

Define the basics – your vision and intended value

The agility of low-code makes it tempting to dive in head first and address every employee pain point. Ferreira stressed the importance of having a common goal to rally around and remain focused.

Jabil’s team crafted a strong vision statement to guide their low-code adoption: ‘Increase development velocity and reduce costs by bringing development tools as close as possible to the business requirements.’

“If you’re thinking about Mendix I would challenge you to establish a vision – a shared vision across IT and your business partner, whether it’s engineering ops, or supply chain. You have to agree on that vision and then work towards it, together,” said Ferreira.

The vision provides a starting point, and to close the loop, it’s equally important to have sound KPIs to prove value. The Jabil team makes a dashboard of metrics – their total number of applications, contributions to their Private Marketplace, average days in production – visible to the entire organization.

Leverage Mendix best practices, frameworks, and expertise

Jabil looked to the Mendix Digital Execution principles to work through the typical stages of low-code maturity – start, structure, and scale. They also aligned around the 5 Ps as outlined by Mendix – people, portfolio, platform, process, and promotion.

“We didn’t want to come in and do everything differently,” said Ferreira. “We wanted work truly Agile using Mendix best practices before we started to tinker around and try to adapt certain things.”

Jabil also takes advantage of regular checkpoints with Mendix including portfolio workshops to define what applications to build when, and subsequent value assessments to reinforce that prioritization.

Take full advantage of the platform to support as you scale

Jabil has placed an emphasis on the concept of a composable enterprise. The central Mendix platform team expedites development cycles and upholds governance by creating starter app templates and reusable components.

By creating a reusable single sign-on module, Jabil is saving anywhere from 80-100 hours of development time at the start of every project.

The Jabil starter app is lightweight and contains a handful of table stakes elements. This includes:

• A standard design and user interface
• Single sign-on
• A Jabil-specific email and text notification feature
• An active directory component

“We are also using the Portfolio Manager tool from Mendix,” said Ferreira. “It’s a very cool visual board to showcase and visualize KPIs for the applications we’re building.”

Build and foster a community around the technology

People are an organization’s greatest asset and are the enablers in any digital transformation. In their early days with Mendix, Jabil sent a series of internal communications about the platform and promoted the availability of free academy trainings for any team members who were looking to upskill.

The response was overwhelming, and in a matter of months Jabil had hundreds of Mendix certified developers across the organization. Ferreira and the team were impressed with the level of interest, and quickly learned how important it was to nurture new Mendix developers beyond the basics.

Today, Jabil keeps this group connected and learning through Microsoft Teams channels, their internal employee portal, and portfolio review meetings.

Keep it simple and find what works for you

Jabil’s leadership encouraged IT to remove roadblocks and bureaucracy that would deter their business counterparts from accepting a new platform and way of working. One example of this simplicity was aligning Jabil’s low-code Center of Excellence (COE) to fit the Operations view of the world.

Operations divides itself regionally between the Americas, Europe, North Asia, and South Asia. Rather than try and impart a new operating structure to fit the IT perspective, IT adapted their COE model to fit what was already accepted and working.

“We decided to have our central COE set the governance, administration, and processes, and then push that to those regional teams who then push that to the sites and individual users. Ops felt validated and saw that we were listening to them,” said Ferreira.

A New Way of Working

Low-code within Jabil isn’t just a technical movement – it’s one that permeates the working culture of the organization.

“It’s really about communication. We are getting people together from different countries, and they might have a similar idea or need and can collaborate to bring something to life. Suddenly you have a regional or site-level app that started small and has gone global across two continents,” said Ferreira.

As a result of their work with Mendix, Jabil has realized:

• Improved collaboration between departmental and regional teams.
• Accelerated time to value and speed to market for new applications, with 94% of projects delivered on time and on budget.
• Significant cost savings – an estimated $10 million in cost avoidance to date.