Q3 is where manufacturing years are made or lost. Volume picks up. Customer delivery pressure builds. The scheduling, quality, and inventory decisions made between July and September set the conditions for Q4 performance.
Most manufacturers respond to that reality by focusing Q3 entirely on execution. Get the orders out. Hit the targets. Deal with the development work later.
The problem is that later rarely arrives. Q4 brings its own pressure. Year-end close follows. And the team that entered Q3 underdeveloped exits the year the same way.
The manufacturers who consistently finish strong take a different approach. They treat Q3 as the window to do both: execute on current demand and develop the team that will carry performance into Q4 and beyond.
Why Q3 Specifically
The timing is not arbitrary. Three things make Q3 the right window for team investment.
H1 data is available. Your team has been running DELMIAWorks for six months. You know which users are fully productive, which ones are working around the system rather than in it, and which processes are generating the most questions. That information makes Q3 training and development decisions specific rather than generic. You are not guessing at where to invest. The system is showing you.
Q4 pressure has not arrived yet. September is the last month before the final quarter closes in. Team development done in Q3 has time to take hold before Q4 demands peak performance. Training delivered in November is too late to affect year-end results. Training delivered in July compounds across the entire back half.
The cost of underuse is visible. By mid-year, most manufacturers have a clear sense of which DELMIAWorks capabilities their team is using well and which ones are sitting untouched. Unused features are not just a wasted investment. They represent problems your team is still solving manually that the system could be solving for them. Q3 is when addressing that gap delivers the most remaining value in the calendar year.
What Team Investment Looks Like in DELMIAWorks
Investing in your DELMIAWorks team is not always a formal training program. It takes several forms depending on where the gaps are.
Power user development. Every DELMIAWorks operation benefits from a small group of users who go deeper than their role requires. These are the people who understand not just how to use the system but how it connects across functions. They answer questions before they reach outside support. They identify configuration improvements. They onboard new hires faster because they can explain not just the steps but the why behind them. Identifying and developing these people in Q3 pays dividends across the rest of the year and beyond.
Role-specific training gaps. H1 operations typically reveal which user groups are struggling most. A quality team that is not fully utilizing the non-conformance and corrective action modules. A scheduling team that is still using spreadsheets alongside the system because they are not confident in the scheduling module. A purchasing team that has not adopted automated reorder points. Q3 is the window to address those specific gaps with targeted training rather than broad retraining that covers territory people already know.
Process alignment. Over time, the way teams use DELMIAWorks drifts from how it was configured during implementation. Workarounds become standard practice. Data entry shortcuts create reporting inaccuracies. A mid-year process review that identifies where team behavior has diverged from system design and corrects it is one of the highest-return investments a manufacturing operation can make. The system works better. The data is more accurate. Decisions improve as a result.
New hire onboarding. Q3 is a common hiring window for manufacturers ramping up for Q4. New team members brought on in July or August need to be productive before the year-end push arrives. A structured onboarding approach that gets new hires operational in DELMIAWorks quickly is not just an HR priority. It is an operational one.
The Connection Between Team Development and System Performance
There is a persistent tendency to treat ERP performance as a technology problem. When DELMIAWorks is not delivering the expected results, the conversation often turns to configuration, integration, or features.
In most cases, the gap is not in the system. It is in the team using it.
A scheduling module used by someone who understands both the tool and the production process it represents produces better schedules than the same module used by someone who only knows the steps to enter data. A quality module used by someone who connects it to their responsibility for product conformance captures more useful data than the same module used by someone who sees it as a data entry requirement.
The system is the same. The people using it are the variable.
Investing in that variable in Q3 — when H1 data tells you specifically where to focus and Q4 has not yet closed the window — is one of the highest-leverage decisions a manufacturing operation can make.
DR Software Services works with DELMIAWorks users to assess team adoption, identify development priorities, and build training plans that address the specific gaps your operation has identified. If you want to make Q3 a turning point for your team’s DELMIAWorks performance, reach out at info@drsoftwareservices.com or visit drsoftwareservices.com/our-services.
