How a Leading Manufacturer Achieved Digital Transformation with Informat: A Customer Success Story
When Apex Manufacturing (a composite of real customer experiences), a mid-sized industrial equipment manufacturer with 2,500 employees across five facilities, embarked on its digital transformation journey in 2024, the challenges were familiar to anyone in the manufacturing sector. Legacy systems that did not talk to each other, paper-based processes that slowed operations and introduced errors, data trapped in spreadsheets and departmental silos, and an IT team stretched too thin to address the growing backlog of digital needs from every department. Two years later, the company has fundamentally transformed its operations — reducing operational costs by 35%, cutting order processing time by 60%, and empowering department leaders to build and modify their own digital tools. This is the story of how they did it.
The Starting Point: Digital Fragmentation
Apex's technology estate in 2024 was typical of mid-sized manufacturers. An ERP system handled core financials and inventory but was difficult to customize and inaccessible to frontline teams. Production monitoring relied on spreadsheets and manual data entry. Maintenance management used a mix of paper work orders and a legacy CMMS that technicians hated. Quality management was document-heavy, with inspection reports filed in binders and non-conformance tracking done through email chains. The IT team of 12 people spent 80% of their time maintaining existing systems and handling ad-hoc requests, leaving almost no capacity for strategic initiatives.
The breaking point came when the operations VP requested a real-time production monitoring dashboard — something that would give plant managers visibility into OEE, downtime, and quality rates across all five facilities. The IT team estimated 12–18 months for custom development, assuming they could get to it at all given their current backlog. It was clear that traditional development approaches could not keep pace with the business's needs.
The Solution: A Governed Low-Code Platform
Apex selected the Informat platform as its low-code development foundation after evaluating several alternatives. The decision criteria included: enterprise-grade security and governance (essential for a manufacturer with proprietary production data and ITAR compliance requirements), the ability to integrate with the existing ERP system (a non-negotiable requirement), AI-powered development capabilities to accelerate application building, and a governance model that would enable business teams to build their own applications within appropriate guardrails.
The implementation was phased. Phase 1 (months 1–3) focused on the highest-priority use case — production monitoring — and on establishing the governance framework and center of excellence. Phase 2 (months 4–9) expanded to maintenance management, quality management, and supply chain visibility. Phase 3 (months 10–18) extended the platform to additional departments and increasingly sophisticated use cases, including customer-facing applications and predictive analytics.
Key Applications Built on Informat
Real-Time Production Monitoring Dashboard
The application that started it all: a real-time OEE dashboard aggregating data from PLCs, IoT sensors, and operator inputs across all five facilities. Built in three weeks by a joint team of IT and operations personnel — compared to the 12–18 months estimated for custom development — the dashboard gave plant managers and executives real-time visibility into production performance for the first time. Within six months, OEE across the plants improved by 12% as visibility drove accountability and targeted improvement initiatives. The dashboard has been continuously refined based on operator and manager feedback — a process that takes hours rather than the months it would have required under the previous development model.
Digital Maintenance Management
Replacing the unloved legacy CMMS, a mobile-first maintenance application built on Informat transformed how maintenance work is managed. Technicians now receive work orders on their mobile devices with complete equipment history, step-by-step procedures, parts availability, and safety requirements. Photo capture and annotation capabilities enable better communication about equipment condition. Automated scheduling optimizes preventive maintenance timing based on equipment usage and technician availability. And integration with the production monitoring dashboard enables condition-based maintenance triggers. The result: maintenance backlog reduced by 45%, emergency repairs dropped by 30%, and technician satisfaction — measured through internal surveys — improved dramatically.
Quality Management System
A comprehensive quality management application now orchestrates the entire quality workflow — from incoming inspection through in-process checks to final audit and non-conformance management. When a quality issue is identified, automated workflows immediately trigger containment actions, notify affected production areas, assign root cause analysis, track corrective actions, and verify effectiveness. The application enforces the company's quality procedures consistently — something the previous paper-based system could not guarantee — and provides real-time visibility into quality performance across all products and facilities. Customer-reported quality issues have decreased by 25%, and the time to close non-conformance reports has dropped by 60%.
Supply Chain Visibility Portal
Built in response to the supply chain disruptions that have characterized the 2020s, a supply chain visibility application aggregates data from the ERP, supplier systems, and logistics providers into a unified view. Automated exception management alerts procurement and production teams when shipments are delayed, quality issues are detected, or inventory falls below safety thresholds. A supplier collaboration portal enables real-time communication and issue resolution. The application does not prevent supply chain disruptions — no software can — but it dramatically reduces the time to detect and respond to them, which in manufacturing is often the difference between a minor delay and a production stoppage.
Results and Lessons Learned
Eighteen months into its low-code journey, Apex has achieved results that exceeded initial expectations. Thirty-five percent operational cost reduction through process automation, reduced errors, and more efficient resource allocation. Sixty percent faster order processing through automated workflows that eliminated manual handoffs and data re-entry. Twelve applications built and deployed across production, maintenance, quality, supply chain, HR, and finance — most built or significantly customized by business teams rather than IT. IT capacity freed for strategic initiatives as business teams took ownership of their own departmental applications. And perhaps most importantly, a fundamentally different relationship between business and IT — from "IT as bottleneck" to "IT as enabler and governance partner."
The lessons Apex would share with other manufacturers considering a similar journey: Start with a high-visibility, high-impact use case that demonstrates value quickly and builds momentum. Invest in governance from day one — the guardrails that enable safe citizen development do not build themselves. Empower the people closest to the process — the operators, technicians, and supervisors who understand manufacturing operations best are the most valuable participants in application development. And treat low-code as a strategic capability, not a tool purchase — the organizations that succeed are those that invest in training, community, and organizational change alongside the platform itself.
Conclusion
Apex Manufacturing's story is not unique in 2026, but it is instructive. Across industries, mid-sized enterprises are discovering that governed low-code platforms can compress digital transformation timelines from years to months, and from millions of dollars to a fraction of that cost. The key insight is that low-code is not just about building applications faster — it is about changing who can participate in building them. When the people who understand the business problems most deeply are empowered to create their own solutions, within governance guardrails that ensure security and quality, the entire organization becomes more capable, more agile, and more innovative. Apex's 35% cost reduction and 60% cycle time improvement are impressive — but the enduring transformation is the organizational capability they have built: the ability to continuously create and adapt digital tools at the speed their business requires.