Margins. Machines. Manpower. Here’s how to sleep better as a manufacturing leader

What’s keeping manufacturing leaders up at night – and how to fix it

One delay. One breakdown. One late order. That’s often all it takes to bring an entire factory to a halt.

If you’re leading a manufacturing business, you know how finely tuned everything has to be. From supply chains to inventory levels, from machinery uptime to cost control, every part of your operation must perform flawlessly. At the same time, pressure is mounting. Margins are shrinking. Customers are more demanding. Regulations are tightening. Systems are ageing while expectations accelerate.

At Platned, we work with manufacturers facing these challenges every day. Our job is to help restore control, increase visibility, and build resilience. With IFS Cloud™ at the core – and tools like Mahara, ParsaAI and Platned Gateway behind the scenes – we help manufacturers reduce disruption and unlock performance.

Resilience starts with your supply chain

Manufacturers rely on intricate, often global, supply chains. A single late delivery can disrupt production schedules, compromise quality and create downstream chaos. Platned helps mitigate this risk by giving you full visibility across procurement, logistics and supplier performance within IFS Cloud™.

Live updates allow your team to spot issues early and act before they escalate. Alternative sourcing decisions, timeline adjustments and internal communications all happen faster because you’re working with real-time data instead of incomplete spreadsheets.

Stay ahead of rising costs

Fluctuating material prices, energy costs and freight charges are making it harder to maintain profitability. While you can’t control external prices, you can improve how you manage internal costs. Platned configures IFS Cloud™ to track spending in real time across procurement, operations and production lines.

With detailed reporting and cost breakdowns, you gain insight into inefficiencies that were previously hidden. These might include overused resources, energy-intensive processes or high scrap rates. By acting early, you protect margins and respond faster to market pressures.

Prevent breakdowns before they happen

Unplanned downtime can cripple your output and jeopardise customer relationships. When one critical asset fails, everything around it stalls. Platned helps prevent this with predictive maintenance strategies built into IFS Cloud™.

Real-time machine data, combined with automated alerts and condition monitoring, enables your teams to intervene before issues become failures. Maintenance planning becomes proactive, not reactive, which extends equipment life, reduces service costs, and keeps production moving.

Balance your inventory with confidence

Too much stock ties up cash and warehouse space. Too little stock causes missed orders and delayed deliveries. Platned helps manufacturers strike the right balance using intelligent inventory tools within IFS Cloud™.

Forecasts and reorder points are optimised using real usage data. Workflows ensure materials are where they need to be – not just in theory, but in practice. This improves planning accuracy, reduces waste and keeps your factory floor well-fed and flowing.

Make safety and compliance routine, not reactive

Safety incidents and compliance failures don’t just risk downtime – they put your people, reputation and entire business at risk. Platned supports safer manufacturing by configuring IFS Cloud™ to manage inspections, certifications and regulatory reporting in real time.

Digital safety checklists, mobile site assessments and automated alerts help your teams stay compliant without slowing down. Audits become easier to pass. Gaps become easier to fix. Safety becomes part of the everyday rhythm of your operation.

Manage system changes with confidence

Upgrades and system changes are essential, but they often introduce risk. A small change in one module can disrupt processes across your entire operation. To eliminate this risk, Platned offers Mahara – our automated testing platform designed specifically for IFS Cloud™.

Mahara captures your critical business processes and runs them automatically in a safe test environment before changes go live. Issues are caught early. Unexpected downtime is avoided. Your team no longer has to trade progress for stability.

This tool also supports compliance. For regulated manufacturers, having a verifiable testing history is essential. Mahara provides full traceability across every test run and deployment.

Accelerate invoicing and financial accuracy

Manufacturing finance teams often juggle high volumes of invoices, approvals, and vendor contracts. Manual processing creates delays, introduces errors and reduces visibility. Platned’s ParsaAI automates invoice workflows from start to finish.

Integrated with IFS Cloud™, ParsaAI captures and validates invoice data, flags anomalies and routes documents for approval instantly. Payment cycles speed up. Disputes decrease. Finance teams gain accurate, timely insights to support planning and control.

Keep growing with support that adapts

Once IFS Cloud™ is in place, ongoing changes, new features, and evolving processes are inevitable. Platned provides support beyond implementation through Gateway – a flexible, token-based model that gives you expert help when and where you need it.

From reconfiguring workflows to creating new reports or training users, you choose how to spend your tokens. This approach avoids lengthy contracts and ensures your system grows with your business, not against it.

Manufacturing doesn’t slow down – so your systems shouldn’t either.

Platned helps you keep operations flowing with IFS Cloud™ and a long-term support model tailored to manufacturers. With real-time visibility, automated testing, smart finance tools and flexible support, you gain the confidence to modernise without adding risk.

Whether you’re looking to reduce downtime, streamline cost control, improve compliance or manage complexity, we’re here to help.

Let’s talk about what’s keeping you up at night.
https://platned.com/keeps-you-up-at-night-manufacturing