5. Highly Automated and Flexible Production Processes

Production processes will be highly automated and integrated through advanced information and communication technology with design, marketing, service, and business planning and control functions. They will be flexible as well – to allow for rapid reconfiguration to meet new, modified, or changing customer requirements.

6. Rapid Development and Use of Innovative Products and Technologies

The management of innovation will be a core competency across Canada’s manufacturing sector. Companies will have rapid response systems in place to allow them to meet changing market circumstances. Continuous product development processes, reconfigurable production technologies, and rapid access to new technologies will underlie both product differentiation and agile business strategies.

7. Flexibility as a Competitive Advantage

Agility will become critical in light of a much shorter product development cycle – where the time from concept through prototype development, testing, and production and service scale-up is a matter of months not years – and more exacting and changeable customer expectations.

8. Integration through Electronic Networks

All business functions – from management and administration, purchasing and materials management, design, engineering, production, inventory control, financing, and customer relations – will be integrated through electronic information and communication systems. Those functions will be integrated within manufacturing companies, as well as across supply chains and business networks – with customers, suppliers, and other business partners.

9. Integration in Global Value Chains and Business Networks

Manufacturers in Canada will be part of a global system of competing supply chains and business networks aligned to meet the needs of consumers in markets around the world. Those value chains will include businesses that produce things as well as services companies. And, they will be reconfigurable, continually reforming and realigning to meet new and different customer requirements.