In the world of manufacturing digitization, small businesses are often faced with a crucial question: should they rely on best-of-breed solutions that are tailored to specific needs or a comprehensive platform that covers everything? In this article, we take a look at the pros and cons of both approaches and explain how a combination of both strategies can be the key to success.

Best-of-breed: Tailor-made specialists

Advantages of best-of-breed approaches:

Highest performance in specialized areas: Best-of-breed tools are often leaders in their specific segment. They offer advanced features and high performance that general platforms in that specific area cannot match.
Flexible customization to specific needs: These tools can often be better adapted to a company's unique requirements. They allow for a customized solution that is tailored to a company's specific processes and challenges.
Independent innovation: Because these tools are developed by specialized vendors, they benefit from independent innovation, leading to faster and more targeted improvements in their area of expertise.

Disadvantages:

Integration challenges: combining different best-of-breed tools can lead to technical and operational challenges. This includes integration with existing systems, data consistency and user management.
Higher total cost of ownership: Using multiple specialized solutions can lead to higher costs for licenses, integration, training and maintenance.
Management complexity: Each additional tool increases the complexity of the IT infrastructure. This can lead to difficulties in maintaining an overview and controlling the various systems.

Platform solutions: Efficiency through integration

Advantages:

Centralized control and integration: A platform solution offers a central interface through which all processes can be controlled and monitored. This simplifies administration and increases efficiency.
Reduced IT complexity: A standardized platform reduces the complexity of the IT infrastructure, resulting in lower costs and less training.
Scalability and flexibility: Platforms are often designed to grow with the company and adapt to changing needs.

Disadvantages:

Loss of flexibility with individual adaptations: Platforms can be so comprehensive in their structure that they offer little room for individual customization. This can be an obstacle for companies that require specific, customized solutions.
Delays in implementing new features: Platform providers must consider the needs of a broad user base, which can lead to delays in introducing new, innovative features that are specifically tailored to the needs of individual industries or businesses.
Limited choice of third-party integrations: Platforms often offer a limited selection of integrated third-party tools. Companies that want to use specific external applications or services may find that they are not compatible or cannot be integrated.

The ideal combination: best-of-breed meets platform

At EVOMECS, we believe that the key to success lies in combining best-of-breed solutions with a central platform. This is why we also refer to the EVOMECS ecosystem. We offer our own and maximally integrated application components in the areas of MES, tool management and job management in the sense of a digital platform. We also enable the deep integration of third-party applications as part of a best-of-breed strategy. The decisive factor is always to focus on the greatest possible benefit for the customer.

We are convinced that we can already create great benefits with our own product range, and we are continuously improving and expanding our applications. However, we are also aware that there are numerous applications that have evolved over a long period of time and that offer more possibilities in their specialist areas than our own integrated applications. A hybrid strategy of platform and best-of-breed is therefore, in our opinion, the right and up-to-date approach in the area of production digitization.

Dialogue on the future