How rethinking core technology platforms can help manufacturers keep up to date

Insights

• Manufacturers are moving beyond pilots, with AI and digital technologies now embedded in core operations and delivering tangible returns.
• The shift toward servitization is redefining value, as companies monetize outcomes like uptime and efficiency rather than standalone products.
• Heavily customized legacy ERP systems are limiting agility, slowing innovation, and increasing operational complexity.
• Cloud‑based ERP platforms help standardize processes, improve data quality, and enable faster scaling across regions.
• Continuous updates and built‑in AI capabilities allow manufacturers to evolve their operations without disruptive upgrade cycles.

The manufacturing industry is undergoing significant change as digital technologies such as connected devices, digital twins, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) become widely adopted and start delivering real business value.

Many manufacturers are adopting servitization, moving away from one-time product sales toward service- and outcome-based models in which value is delivered and priced based on performance. Instead of selling equipment alone, manufacturers commit to outcomes such as uptime or efficiency, helping them grow revenue and protect margins in an increasingly commoditized market.

Leading manufacturers are already applying digital technologies in meaningful ways. For example, Siemens uses AI-powered predictive maintenance and digital twin technology to monitor equipment and simulate production performance before deployment, helping reduce downtime and optimize operations. Likewise, Bosch is advancing Predictive Maintenance 4.0using internet of things (IoT) and AI to reduce machine failures and improve efficiency and is investing billions in AI across its operations.

To support these changes, manufacturers are increasingly turning to cloud-based supply chain systems that can scale easily, respond quickly to market shifts, and enable modern capabilities like real-time visibility, advanced analytics, and AI-driven decision-making. But many are discovering that their current enterprise systems were not built for this level of speed, flexibility, or continuous innovation, and are seeing a widening gap between what the business needs and what their technology can deliver.

Why existing platforms struggle to keep pace

Across large and mid-sized manufacturers, Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), Oracle’s onpremises enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, continues to run many critical manufacturing and supply chain processes. EBS includes dedicated manufacturing capabilities such as support for configure-to-order, flow manufacturing, discrete manufacturing, and complex supply chain planning, which made it a strong fit for manufacturers managing complex operations. For many years, it provided a dependable and integrated foundation for running core business processes.

However, EBS was designed for a time when business environments were more predictable, and change happened less frequently. Today, manufacturers are expected to respond quickly to market volatility, introduce new business models, integrate acquisitions, and adopt digital capabilities at a much faster pace, placing far greater demands on core enterprise systems.

To keep up, many EBS environments have been heavily customized over time. While these customizations helped address immediate requirements, they have also increased complexity and cost. Major upgrades now require significant time, effort, and investment, often resulting in organizations delaying upgrades and operating several releases behind. This kind of technical debt makes systems harder to change and more expensive to maintain, while slowing support for business-led initiatives.

In day-to-day operations, these customizations lead to inconsistent processes across business units and geographies, as well as fragmented or poor-quality data. This reduces visibility and increases reliance on manual workarounds, affecting productivity, employee experience, and timely decision-making.

As a result, what was once a strong operational backbone has, for many manufacturers, become a constraint limiting scalability, agility, and innovation at a time when all three are essential for growth and competitiveness.

The strategic inflection point

The cost of maintaining legacy environments is outstripping the cost of modernizing them. New business models, AI-enabled operations, connected products, and the need for realtime insights all depend on having a core system that can evolve quickly. The decision to modernize ERP is about ensuring that the organization has a platform capable of supporting continuous improvement, rapid innovation cycles, and the growing expectations of customers, partners, and employees. Modernization is now a strategic requirement for long-term resilience and competitiveness.

How manufacturers are addressing these challenges

Organizations are now moving from Oracle EBS to Oracle Fusion because they want a system that is easier to maintain, more adaptable, and better aligned with how manufacturing operates today.

The shift gives manufacturers a chance to reduce the complexity that has built up over time and move toward an environment that can evolve more easily with the business.

A global high-tech equipment manufacturer recently made this transition with support from Infosys. Operating across North America, the UK, and Asia-Pacific (APAC), the company had a heavily customized EBS estate, variations in processes from one region to another, and long-standing data quality issues. Upgrades were costly and disruptive, and the system struggled to keep pace with changing business needs. To break this cycle, the company adopted a phased migration to Oracle Fusion, rolling out by country and avoiding replication of legacy customizations. Infosys supported the program with tools and structured methods to simplify processes, improve data quality, and guide the organization toward a more standard and maintainable model.

The move delivered tangible improvements. The overall system became easier to maintain as historical customizations were retired. Processes across regions were brought into closer alignment, making operations more predictable and easier to scale. Master data improved significantly through early involvement of business and data owners, systematic data cleansing, and the introduction of governance practices to keep data accurate after go-live. Teams experienced smoother day-to-day operations with fewer manual workarounds, and the organization no longer faces large, disruptive upgrade cycles. In short, this helped the manufacturer respond quickly to business changes and pursue ongoing improvement.

What a modern platform enables for manufacturers

By working with standardized processes and a consistent data foundation, organizations are better able to align operations across regions, improve visibility across end‑to‑end activities, and support both discrete and process manufacturing in a more unified way. The move also provides an opportunity to put more robust structures around data quality and governance, ensuring information stays accurate and reliable as the business scales.

Modern platforms are better suited to today’s manufacturing environment. Manufacturers increasingly expect shop floor systems that are intuitive, role-based, and capable of supporting different manufacturing modes within a single solution. They also look for lightweight manufacturing execution system capabilities that enable real-time monitoring of production and make day-to-day work simpler for operators and supervisors.

As manufacturers move toward service- and subscription-based business models, it becomes essential for manufacturing, supply chain, and service operations to work from a shared data foundation. Cloud platforms make this possible by integrating shop floor systems, partner applications, and digital technologies through modern APIs and mobile tools that support real-time visibility and interaction.

Manufacturers additionally benefit from having a system that evolves continuously rather than through infrequent, large upgrade cycles. With regular update models, new capabilities, whether related to automation, analytics, or emerging AI tools, can be adopted gradually and without the disruption associated with major upgrade programs. This allows organizations to stay current and incorporate innovation at the pace of business change, rather than waiting for long upgrade timelines.

Finally, a more modern user experience supports day‑to‑day productivity by making systems easier for teams across the shop floor, supply chain, planning, and service operations to interact with. These changes help manufacturers shift away from the constraints of legacy ERP environments and build a more adaptable, resilient foundation that can evolve with the needs of the business.

Practical considerations for modernizing

To successfully move to a modern cloud platform such as Oracle Fusion, manufacturers should focus on both technology and business readiness.

First, it is important to understand which customizations are truly required. While many are added to address gaps or short-term needs, not all continue to add value. Manufacturers should map these customizations to understand the benefits they deliver, and retain only those that clearly differentiate the business. Wherever possible, standard capabilities available in Oracle Fusion should be used instead of rebuilding custom extensions, unless a requirement is unique and critical to the organization’s success.

Second, manufacturers should rethink and redesign business processes rather than carry forward older ways of working from Oracle EBS. Oracle Fusion is built around modern, standardized processes, and organizations gain the most value when they align to these processes instead of recreating legacy workflows. This requires collaboration between business and IT teams to identify where processes can be simplified or standardized.

Third, data and integrations should be prepared early for a cloud-first environment. Data quality plays a major role in the success of any transformation. Manufacturers should start data migration planning early, assess the quality of existing data, and define a clear approach for data cleansing and governance. Integration requirements should also be reviewed to ensure smooth connectivity with other cloud and edge applications.

Fourth, user adoption should be addressed from the beginning. Training and change management are essential to help users understand new processes and tools. Early engagement, hands-on training, and clear communication help reduce resistance to change and improve acceptance of the new system.

Fifth, a phased migration approach can help reduce risk. Rather than moving everything at once, manufacturers can start with selected processes, regions, or innovation initiatives and then gradually migrate core operations. This allows teams to learn, stabilize, and apply lessons as the program progresses.

Finally, AI capabilities, including AI agents, should be applied to clearly defined operational use cases. AI agents can monitor data, make decisions, and take actions without requiring constant human input. For manufacturers, AI agents can:

• Monitor transactions and flag exceptions for review.
• Suggest corrective actions based on historical patterns.
• Assist planners by summarizing demand and supply issues.
• Automate repetitive workflow steps across end-to-end processes.

Embedding AI into planning, procurement, manufacturing, and service workflows helps reduce manual effort, speed up decision-making, and improve overall response times.

Conclusion

Moving to modern, cloud-based platforms gives manufacturers an opportunity to simplify systems, standardize processes, and stay current as business needs evolve. Organizations that approach this transition thoughtfully by focusing on process alignment, data readiness, and user adoption will be better positioned to respond to future demands and support long-term growth.