The manufacturing industry is the backbone of economic development in any country, be it underdeveloped, developing, or developed. Any improvement in this sector helps in modernizing the underlying sub-sectors including agriculture, automobile, chemicals, textiles, machines, equipment, etc. The process management and workflow in the manufacturing industry are typically complex. It involves a lot of underlying processes that are difficult to automate and scale for their dependency and interlinking.
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In this blog, we are going to discuss how the Nintex Process Platform can bring transformation to the manufacturing industry with process management and workflow automation by throwing a light on industry 4.0.
Industry 4.0
Industry 4.0 is drastically changing the conventional manufacturing landscape. It is the fourth industrial revolution and encompasses three key technological trends: connectivity, intelligence, and flexible automation. It converges information technology and operational technology to build a cyber-physical environment.
The technologies associated with industry 4.0 are:
- Industrial Internet of Things
- Big Data
- Cloud computing
- Additive manufacturing (AM)
- Advanced robotics
- Augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR)
These technologies help to bring digital transformation to the manufacturing industry. Industry 4.0 also enables the manufacturing industry to use advanced tools to automate mass manufacturing with a flexible approach. The elemental concept of mass manufacturing is processes, and their automation.
But the process managers are facing the following challenges in the manufacturing industry:
- Paper-based documentations
- Process delays for no hierarchy
- Low visibility in supply chain
- Poor collaboration between partners, customers, workers
- Hard-to-digest text-based reports
- Defective task management
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To overcome these challenges, automating the processes and workflows is paramount. A core manufacturing organization comprises production, quality control, design, purchase, service, MIS, etc. Each of these departments manages a set of processes and operations depending on the complexity of the manufacturing process of the particular product. While integrating all these departments across a single process is critical.
The manufacturing sector: Process management and workflow automation
Automation comprises a range of technologies that decrease human intervention in any process. It has a huge role in the manufacturing sector both in robotic automation as well as digital process automation. The process management and maintaining the workflows without failure in the manufacturing sector is a daunting task. However, it varies from products to products. The complex process management and workflows demands more human intervention, workforces, and time.
Automation solves all these critical issues at one go by re-engineering the processes with advanced technologies like RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and document automation. The benefits of automating the process management and workflows are:
- Leverage lean manufacturing: Lean manufacturing is a business strategy to achieve efficiency continuously. It defines waste that doesn’t add to the customer value and automating the manufacturing workflows helps to achieve lean manufacturing. Using tools like Cycle Time Tracker, we can efficiently manage and track the production timeline and improve operational equipment efficiency (OEE).
- Lower operating cost: Robotic Process Automation (RPA) enables bots to work instead of humans to do the mundane tasks such as data cleansing, data entry, etc. They can perform work for four to five people. Thus, RPA saves labor cost and time. Also, robots can deliver accurate tasks and processes with no error.
- Faster ROI: Grow your ROI with automation with low operating costs, decreased lead time, and increased output.
- Increase production output: Robotic Process Automation (RPA) opens the door of potentiality with robots that can work 24*7 at a constant speed. With such a faster and error-free software bots, you can introduce new processes faster than before.
- Maximize labor: Automation adds to your labor force and productivity. When you use robots to do repetitive tasks, you free up your humans to do other important work.
- Smaller environmental footprint: When you use automation to streamline manufacturing processes and workflows, it reduces time, effort and overall energy utilization.
Enhance the way people work in the manufacturing sector
Nintex’s digital process management and workflow automation are changing the way people work in the manufacturing industry. Earlier, the worker’s life was harder with labor-intensive workflows and low safety. The key challenges are:
- Forecasting demands: Many manufacturers find it difficult to forecast the demands of the products without an analytics-driven reporting tool. Without such a tool, it’s become difficult to plan production lines.
- Inventory control: Manually managing the inventory is cumbersome. You need a lot of resources to view the entry, stocking, and exit of products. It also affects the supply chain.
- Labor shortage: A non-automated workflow costs a lot to fill the labor shortage. You need to plan the human resource meticulously to curb the cost.
Other key challenges of a non-automated workflow are managing and prioritizing sales leads, adapting new technologies, improving efficiency, etc.
The solution to the problems is automation. A study reveals that automating the labor-intensive tasks cuts the 3PL’s costs by 50%. Automation helps you with better inventory control and forecast the demands with advanced reporting tools.
Bridging the manufacturing technology gap
Technologies are growing at a fast pace. But the manufacturing industry is struggling to understand the new software, and it is creating the top gap in the industry. Economic uncertainties because of the pandemic are also slowing down hiring the workforce.
Adapting automation helps you to close this technology gap, creating no fuss about technology adoption. Process management and workflow automation bring technologies to your manufacturing line by filling the gap.
Challenges & Benefits of Digital Workflow implementation
Implementation of digital workflow automation has its challenges and benefits. Any manufacturing organization goes through a lot of changes during such implementation. But we make it smooth with Nintex Process Platform deployment.
Digital workflow comprises:
Workflow management enables businesses to create key metrics and help to measure & analyze the efficiency of the business process by facilitating constant improvement in the manufacturing sector. You can also integrate these systems with the tools of other companies for giving a structure to the overall business process. Manufacturing companies need a high level of scalability, flexibility, reliability, and interoperability that come from the management system. Digital workflows help to meet these requirements with high efficiency.
Manage processes and automate workflows with Katpro Technologies
At Katpro Technologies, we use the innovative Nintex Process Platform to manage processes and automate workflows as per specific business needs. We offer you a dedicated team to take care of your process and workflow automation. Nintex is a powerful solution for procurement management, factory inspection, and supplier onboarding.
- It helps build a flawless end-to-end process for purchasing order requests & approvals. It helps to speedup the purchase-to-pay cycles and optimize the whole supply chain.
- It keeps machinery running and ensures safe and compliant production facilities. Easily approve and assign tasks to create detailed work orders.
- It optimizes supplier operations with digital forms by managing all communication online with automated renewal and approval to cut down the labor cost.
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About Katpro Technologies
Katpro Technologies is an advanced technology firm offering specialized services in Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Sharepoint Consulting, Microsoft .NET based IT development and mobile app developments. We work on emerging technologies in the Microsoft Platform providing customers with high performance and comprehensive solutions. We adapt ourselves to change business needs and deliver our customers with high-performance solutions that are relevant, futuristic & scalable.
Author, Kothand Rajangam
Founder and CEO with a passion for technology is providing Microsoft Suite of solutions to mid-market and enterprises on Nintex, SharePoint and Cloud. Kothand drives excellence in designing and delivering solutions backed by client success. His strong focus on Azure Suits and AI helps to complete enterprise turnkey projects with deep skill in quality delivery and business strategy. With more than 15 years of experience, Kothand and his team migrated over 500+ customers to the cloud.
