A production line in Juarez stops because a composite batch that left the curing facility in Salt Lake City hasn’t arrived. The batch shipped on time. The carrier confirmed delivery. But the material never reached the plant floor because the consumption forecast wasn’t updated after a customer accelerated their order by two weeks. The material is sitting in a warehouse 40 miles away, allocated to an order that won’t run for another month.
This isn’t a logistics failure. It’s a visibility failure. And it’s the kind of problem that a manufacturing execution system (MES) controlling production at a single plant was never designed to solve. MES tracks what’s happening in production at a single plant. It doesn’t know what’s happening with inventory at the five other facilities competing for the same materials. That gap between plant-level execution and network-level production and material coordination is one of the places where manufacturing operations management (MOM) earns its value.
Only 6% of businesses report full supply chain visibility, according to Procurement Tactics. McKinsey’s 2025 supply chain risk survey confirmed most companies understand their supply chain risks only up to tier one. That’s the default condition for most multi-plant operations.
Why Does Cross-Facility Material Visibility Break Down in Multi-Site Manufacturing?
The core problem is architectural. Most manufacturers built their execution systems one plant at a time. Each facility runs its own MES instance with its own inventory records (typically in ERP or a separate WMS system), its own material call logic and its own view of what’s available. When procurement, production planning and warehouse management operate in separate systems at separate sites, reconciling material positions requires manual effort that introduces both delays and errors.
Consider what happens when a supplier changes a lead time or a customer revises an order quantity. In a fragmented environment, planners at each plant interpret that change independently. One facility stockpiles material as a buffer. Another releases material already committed to a different production run. A third doesn’t receive the update until the following week’s planning cycle. The result is conflicting decisions made on conflicting data, each one rational in isolation and collectively destructive.
As Mike Bradford, business development director for DELMIA Apriso at Dassault Systèmes, has emphasized across industry discussions: MOM doesn’t replace MES or ERP. It connects and extends them. When a supplier issue surfaces or a substitute material gets approved, the change is recorded once and propagated to every facility instantly. That’s the architectural shift that turns reactive scrambling into coordinated response. A MOM platform makes cross-plant alignment its central purpose.
What Supply Chain Pressures Make Material Synchronization Urgent for Manufacturers?
The MOM software market is growing because manufacturers are learning these lessons the hard way. IMARC Group valued the global MOM software market at $13.7 billion in 2025, projecting a compound annual growth rate of 7.82% through 2034. Grand View Research pegged the market even higher, estimating $17.46 billion in 2024 and forecasting growth to $76.71 billion by 2033 at a 19.1% CAGR. Regardless of which estimate you prefer, the trajectory is unmistakable: manufacturers are investing in operational orchestration, not just execution tracking.
There are three converging pressures explain the urgency:
- Tariff volatility is structural, not temporary. In 2025, U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum doubled to 50%, reshaping global trade flows across automotive, construction and general manufacturing. Deloitte reported that 73% of U.S. manufacturers cited trade uncertainties as a top business challenge in the first quarter of 2025, up sharply from 37% just two quarters prior. McKinsey’s risk pulse survey found that 45% of companies facing tariff impacts were increasing inventories, 39% were pursuing dual sourcing and 33% were developing nearshoring plans. Every one of those responses changes material flows across multiple facilities. You need a platform that propagates adjustments across the network simultaneously.
- Inventory carrying costs punish poor synchronization. When plants can’t see each other’s material positions, the natural response is to overbuild safety stock at every location. That ties up working capital, consumes warehouse capacity and still doesn’t prevent stockouts because the surplus is never where you actually need it. A synchronized MOM platform replaces guesswork with real-time material positions across every facility, enabling leaner inventory without sacrificing delivery performance.
- Workforce constraints amplify every coordination failure. Deloitte projects the manufacturing sector will require approximately 3.8 million new employees between 2024 and 2033, with roughly half of those positions at risk of remaining unfilled. When experienced planners and material coordinators retire, you can’t replace their institutional knowledge of which plants share which material pools. MOM platforms capture that knowledge as digital logic that executes consistently regardless of who’s running the planning desk.
What Do Real-Time Synchronized Material Operations Look Like with Enterprise MOM?
A unified MES/MOM platform like DELMIA Apriso operates as a living execution backbone for global manufacturers. Bills of materials, routing logic, quality plans and material allocation rules reside in a single repository. Updates occur once and flow automatically to every site. When a shipment is delayed, production schedules and work instructions adjust across affected facilities in real time, preventing bottlenecks from cascading. When a substitute material gets approved, every plant sees the updated specification simultaneously.
Engineering or continuous improvement teams design a global process template representing the best-known way to execute a particular operation. DELMIA Apriso propagates that template to every relevant site. Each plant configures approved local variations for equipment models, regulatory requirements or material grades, but the core process and material specifications stay governed centrally. Embedded analytics combine production, supply and quality indicators in real-time dashboards, flagging disruptions before they fully materialize. Virtual twin technology lets manufacturers simulate alternative material flows and sourcing scenarios before committing capital.
Case Study: How Hexcel Achieved Global Material Synchronization with DELMIA Apriso
Hexcel, a world leader in advanced composite materials for commercial aerospace, space and defense, provides a concrete example. The company operates a vertically integrated manufacturing network where material flows from fiber production through resin formulation, prepreg layup, and final curing across multiple sites. Getting the right composite materials to the right facility at the right time isn’t a convenience. It’s the difference between meeting aerospace delivery schedules and missing them.
Hexcel deployed DELMIA Apriso as a unified MOM platform across its global manufacturing footprint, replacing the patchwork of plant-specific systems that had previously governed shop-floor execution. The shift gave every facility, from fiber production through final curing, a shared definition of how materials move, how operations are validated and how data is captured. As Random Kiser, Director, IT Manufacturing Systems, described the impact: “[Regarding DELMIA Apriso] it’s a common entry point for all of our operations personnel, all of our factories around the world. It’s very easy from an IT perspective, to support, because it’s just one platform to deal with instead of multiple platforms. It’s a great system because we have all of our data in one place in exactly the same format for our teams to analyze.”
That single-platform foundation is what makes material synchronization possible across a vertically integrated network. When every plant runs the same execution logic, a change in material specification, a substitution approval or a quality update propagates instantly to every facility that needs it. The combination of consistent process execution and unified data gives Hexcel the network-wide visibility that fragmented, plant-by-plant systems can’t provide. Every operator, engineer and analyst across the global footprint is working from the same source of truth, in the same format, at the same time.
How Can Mid-Tier Manufacturers Achieve Material Synchronization Without Enterprise Complexity?
Material synchronization is sometimes seen as an enterprise-only conversation. It shouldn’t be. Mid-tier manufacturers face the same coordination challenges with thinner margins. The shift from fragmented MES to unified MOM mirrors a journey many already understand: moving from QuickBooks-level tools to integrated ERP. The same logic applies on the shop floor. You outgrow point solutions when you need consistent material data across facilities to make confident decisions under pressure.
DELMIAWorks provides a practical MES entry point for manufacturers scaling beyond basic MES. It proves that material synchronization is accessible to mid-tier organizations without enterprise-scale complexity. Configurability rather than customization is the key architectural principle, the same principle that allows operations to scale without accumulating technical debt.
Why Synchronized Material Operations Turn Supply Chain Visibility into Competitive Advantage
Material synchronization across plants isn’t a feature request. It’s a structural requirement for any manufacturer running more than one facility in a volatile supply chain environment. MES gives you control of each shop floor. MOM gives you command of how materials move across the network. In an operating environment where only 6% of companies have full supply chain visibility and 73% of U.S. manufacturers cite trade uncertainty as a top challenge, the question isn’t whether to invest in synchronized operations. It’s whether you invest before the next disruption reveals what your visibility gaps cost you.
Manufacturing won’t slow down for disconnected systems. Companies closing their material visibility gaps today are converting operational coordination into competitive advantage. Those still reconciling spreadsheets across plants face an increasingly steep climb as synchronized competitors pull further ahead.
DELMIA, from Dassault Systèmes, enables manufacturers to keep factory operations running smoothly. Powered by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, our Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) solutions establish a unified digital environment that provides real-time visibility and AI-enhanced control. By connecting the virtual and real worlds, we enable you to streamline complex processes, minimize waste and guarantee quality. Harnessing data-driven insights and intelligent automation allows for optimized production, enhanced adaptability to disruptions and the delivery of sustainable, customer-focused manufacturing performance at scale.
Louis Columbus is currently serving as a member of the DELMIA Marketing team, where he assists with DELMIAWorks and robotics solutions. Previous positions include product management at Ingram Cloud, product marketing at iBASEt, Plex Systems, senior analyst at AMR Research (now Gartner), marketing and business development at Cincom Systems, Ingram Micro, a SaaS start-up and at hardware companies. Professional experience includes marketing, product management, sales and industry analyst roles in the enterprise software and IT industries. Columbus' academic background includes an MBA from Pepperdine University and completion of the Strategic Marketing Management and Digital Marketing Programs at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He teaches MBA courses in international business, global competitive strategies, international market research, and capstone courses in strategic planning and market research. Columbus has taught at California State University, Fullerton: University of California, Irvine; Marymount University, and Webster University.