By SPESA

In less than a week (September 13), SPESA will host its 2022 Advancements in Manufacturing Technologies Conference in Detroit. We recently spoke with Justin Hershoran, Director of Real-Time Analytics at Exenta from Aptean, who will join as a speaker on the Industry Digitalization panel during the conference. Check out the Q&A below to hear more from Justin on why he's excited about getting to the Detroit, the role of digitalization in the sewn products industry, and much more.

What is the role of digitalization in sewn products manufacturing?

Mainly the role in digitization comes down to management of production and staff and productivity gains. All aspects of digitization will result in greater productivity and more hours becoming available. Some examples: capturing and tracking production electronically reduces the need for manual methods and saves on average 10-15% alone. Digitizing quality and downtime will result in fewer quality issues and a higher level of product quality as well as less waste and less wasted time. On the downtime side, being able to manage and track downtime and repairs will result in lower downtime rates. These are just a few of the areas where digitization will offer significant gains.

What are you most excited about for the conference?

The potential to expand our offerings to a greater domestic manufacturing base. We already work with suppliers to the auto industry and look forward to continuing and increasing that effort. Also, I can’t help but have a bit of excitement to go to the Detroit Auto Show 😉.

What topics are you most looking forward to discussing?

How advancing companies with production on digitizing their production floor and the benefits along with the prospects for increasing profits and reducing costs. Mostly taking companies out of the dark ages and introducing efficient technology.

What are most pressing issues for your company right now related to manufacturing or technology?

We feel our new customers are coming to us because they are desperate to catch up (sometimes to their competitors) and mostly they have trouble knowing what’s happing on the production floor and with their labor. Also managing incentive pay is a big pain point.

What Exenta from Aptean solutions would be most useful for U.S. manufacturers right now?

All! Right now, the most important topics are anything related to increasing productivity to help companies dealing with hiring issues and better utilizing their current staff to output more production.

How do Exenta from Aptean solutions support the automotive industry?

By digitizing production, managing the labor side of production, and managing incentive pay for labor. All the features that are part of our core product are essential to a digital production. Also, integration to other products allowing for greater automation which is important in any industry but especially automotive. Our Shopfloor Control system can allow staff to respond instantly to production demands and issues.

How does Exenta from Aptean help companies implement digitalization in their operations?

We are there every step of the way to help customers transition from their current methods and legacy systems to the Exenta from Aptean method of managing production. We have an extremely high success rate and customer satisfaction.

How can Exenta from Aptean work with our other products to show operators what’s going on with production or deliver necessary information to the production floor?

With our simple built-in tools, we can deliver any document, picture, video, or other information directly to an operator’s tablet. Completely seamless.

To what level does Exenta from Aptean integrate labor into the Shopfloor product?

All aspects of production roll into labor management—from what an operator is working on to how much time they spend on each thing they work on. In addition, the auto calculation of pay regardless of if they are paid hourly, salary or incentive. Everything is tied together in a seamless way that allows a company to not only show operators what they have worked on and how much money they have made (in real-time to the second), but also associating automation that requires humans to run (think automatic machines in manufacturing) and giving the ability to manage the labor required to run those automatic machines.

Learn more about Exenta from Aptean here.