2Sustain

Businesses today want both social media and environmental management functionality in the software they use in manufacturing and other industrial settings, according to a new study from IFS North America.

The 12-page report, titled “2010 IFS Advanced Manufacturing Software Trends Study,” is based on a survey of more than 260 U.S. manufacturing executives in November 2009. Here are a few of the key findings:

• Although they are interested in better understanding their environmental impact, most manufacturers are ill-equipped to track their impact on the environment in the areas of carbon footprint, solid waste, air and water pollution, product lifecycle and product end-of-life impacts.

• Among companies with between $250 million and $999 million in revenue, only 20 percent of respondents said they were tracking some environmental measures but not others in their enterprise software. 36 percent of companies with $1 billion or more in revenue said they had this capability.

• When asked what was the single most important benefit from an enterprise resource planning (ERP)solution that offers environmental tracking features, respondents answered: environmental compliance (35 percent), document “green” efforts for marketing/positioning purposes (28 percent), reducing environmental impact results in cost savings (25 percent), and manage board-level risks (seven percent).

• Workforce attrition of aging Baby Boomers is a pressing dilemma, and 64 percent of respondents said that they wanted their enterprise resource planning (ERP) to help them with this issue by capturing and recording the knowledge of senior experienced engineers and professionals so that it becomes part of a corporate knowledge base. IFS advises that Wikis, blogs and other social networking applications are ideal tools for pulling tacit knowledge from groups of people.

• About two-thirds (63%) of manufacturers who participated in this survey recognize the opportunities and potential benefits of tying social networking applications such as Facebook and LinkedIn with their own enterprise solutions.

The study is available for download at www.ifsworld.com/us (registration required).