Guide to Manufacturing for SMBs with Cin7

Over the last several years, manufacturers like yourself have faced major supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, and inflation woes. Now, you have another challenge to add to your list: tariffs.

In the face of uncertainty you may feel like you have no control over what happens to your business. But with Cin7, you’re in the driver’s seat.

In this guide, we’ll explore the importance of the right manufacturing technology before diving into how Cin7 can help you overcome common challenges brought by disconnected, aging business solutions. The wrong technology causes you a heap of trouble, but with the right solution, you’ll alleviate some of the strain you feel navigating today’s uncertain economic environment. 

Wrong Technology = Complex Manufacturing Challenges

“Right” and “wrong” are not the most accurate way to describe technology. There are solutions that work best for you and solutions that don’t. The ones that don’t are usually poorly developed, or they have become obsolete as new, better, and more sophisticated technologies emerge.

When you rely on such inadequate solutions, you set yourself up for the following frustrating challenges: 

• Data Silos & Disconnected Systems: Systems that don’t speak to each other (in other words, do not seamlessly integrate with one another) create data silos. Information is “siloed” within different departments, systems, and databases that have no clear-cut, efficient pathway for sharing data. The result? Slow decision-making and avoidable errors.
• Inefficient Demand Planning: Demand planning is an essential process that helps determine future demand for your product, balance your supply, optimize operations, and reduce costs. Older, disjointed systems and data silos can hinder your ability to assess your inventory needs accurately. With inefficient demand planning, you run the risk of stockouts, overproduction, and waste.
• Manual Production Workflows: Though manufacturing is largely an automated industry, many manufacturers still rely heavily on human labor and their specialized skills. The advent of technology and automation, however, has helped eliminate many tasks that take time and effort that could be spent solving problems, engaging with customers, and developing additional skills. Without advanced technology, you can expect increased errors, such as delays and inefficiencies, which negatively affects employee satisfaction and your bottom line.
• Complex Bills of Materials (BOMs): As a growing business, you expect that your manufacturing needs are going to go from simple to more complex. This includes your BOMs. If your business solutions are incapable or not set up for your more complicated materials requirements, then your ability to track multi-level components (and more) will be hampered.

Making Complex Manufacturing Simple with Cin7

Increased complexity is often the sign of growth, but some business solutions make handling the complexity more complicated than it should be. That’s why tapping a cloud-based, comprehensive inventory management solution (IMS) like Cin7 to automate your manufacturing processes and seamlessly connect all your vital applications (thus eliminating data silos, inefficient demand planning, insufficient BOMs, and manual workflows) is a wise decision.

To prove our point, here are five critically important benefits you’ll get when you implement Cin7 and use our advanced manufacturing tools:

1. End-to-End Visibility: The days of poor visibility and limited insights are over. Cin7 unites production, inventory, and sales in one system, enabling you, and your team, to manage your operations and make decisions with real-time information.
2. AI-Powered Demand Forecasting and Automated Inventory Replenishment: Demand forecasting will no longer be a guessing game. Instead, you can accurately predict stock needs, optimize inventory, and never run out of critical materials again with the help of ForesightAI, which allows you to future proof your inventory.
3. Real-Time Production Tracking: Production tracking via manual processes is time-consuming and prone to human error. Cin7 provides you with real-time production tracking that saves you precious time, and keeps you in the loop regarding your manufacturing process. 
4. Optimized Production Scheduling: With Cin7, you can ensure the right resources are available right when you need them. With automated production scheduling Cin7 saves you time and energy.  
5. Full Traceability & Compliance: Traceability and compliance are key to manufacturing success, but it’s a big job. Thankfully, Cin7 can help you track lots, batches, and expiry dates so you can easily manage recalls, respond to audits, and remain compliant.

Regardless of what you’re manufacturing and how you manufacture it, Cin7 keeps you fully organized with total order control. You can follow your products with our customized and comprehensive BOM traceability while easily tracking your materials, streamlining your manufacturing workflows, cutting your waste, and syncing your inventory across multiple locations. 

And Cin7 does it all from one powerful and affordable platform that is designed for small and mid-sized manufacturers like you—and like manufacturer Invisawear.

From Disorganized to Streamlined with Cin7

Invisawear is smart jewelry that saves lives. Created by University of Massachusetts Lowell students Rajia Abdelaziz and Ray Hamilton, Invisawear is stylish jewelry that comes with hidden Bluetooth technology. In case of an emergency, the technology alerts up to five contacts (via text) when you click on the back twice, giving your contacts a Google map location. 

From the start, founders Ray and Rajia decided to partner with Amazon, becoming a member of Amazon Exclusives, but they didn’t do so well when it came to who they partnered with regarding inventory. That partner was Excel.

“It was very disorganized, and we were growing to a point where we needed to be able to keep track of things. We’ve got a lot of moving parts in different locations where we do assembly.”

Ray and Rajia decided they needed to find an IMS that worked for their unique needs as well as integrated with Amazon. Cin7 was the one.

“We’ve been loving [Cin7] ever since [we implemented it]. It’s actually been really helpful to keep track of all of our production jobs. Certain little parts get used in the actual makeup of our products, so it helps keep track of where the parts are moving, from one facility to another. It’s been working really well so far.”

They also praise Cin7’s Smart Buyer tool. “[W]e’re growing very quickly and we want to be able to order all these raw materials, have them in stock, and control all of these moving parts so that we don’t have another incident where we run out of inventory and we’re scrambling to get everything back in stock again.”

Thanks to Cin7, Ray and Rajia are spending less time on administration tasks and more time on expanding overseas. 

Get Started with Cin7 

Invisiwear’s real-life Cin7 success story can be yours. We invite you to request a demo to see how Cin7 not only fits your specific manufacturing workflow but also how we can help give you peace of mind in an uncertain time. Start a free trial to test our automation and visibility tools, and if you have any questions, our experts are standing by!