Unifying Processes and Operations to Achieve Operational Excellence

In the manufacturing chain, there are a very high number of operations and people who must interact with each other. Ensuring digitization of these interactions and a correct flow between them is key to achieving operational excellence.

In poorly digitized environments, it is very common to find inefficiencies and wasted time between (often absurd) bureaucracies resulting from the interaction between people and processes. The constant use of paper, validations that require the presence of a person, sending information in interpersonal emails, and the use of communication tools not designed for the professional environment (such as Whatsapp) makes it very difficult to trace human errors and much of the information is lost due to the difficulty of being recovered.

In addition, many of the processes that make up the production chain (continuous production, packaging, warehouse…) work with operations that also require interaction with each other. Often, these interactions are also not digitized or unified in an umbrella system that acts as a unifying system of operations. This also causes inefficiencies since there is often human intervention in this interaction.

It is therefore important to digitize and unify operations. To do this, collaborative tools and systems that allow us to create workflows between processes and operations are key.

BPM (Business Process Management) Solutions

The digitization of workflows is typically carried out with specific solutions that implement the BPM concept (Business Process Management). These solutions are prepared to be able to create workflows with activities that are capable of digitizing actions that typically require human intervention: validations and approvals, sending notifications, filling out forms and checklists, and also include activities that allow interconnecting systems with each other and in this way being able to act as the umbrella that unites operations from different systems and digitizes the procedures.

These BPM solutions are classified as collaborative tools as they promote collaboration between departments, people and operations. But they can be complemented with other collaborative tools that allow organizations to implement the development of skills in workers, the exchange of knowledge and the management of collaboration throughout the company.

Now more than ever it is about empowering workers with tools that make them more effective by providing training videos, standard operating procedures in digital format, digital logbooks or enabling interaction through help calls. These solutions solve many of the challenges of traditional training and knowledge retention that industrial organizations are currently experiencing.

AVEVA’s BPM Solutions

As a practical example of a BPM system, thanks to our AVEVA Worktasks solution it is possible to digitize workflows in an easy and intuitive way, to digitize procedures and reduce the use of paper. Likewise, and as a practical example of a collaborative tool, we have AVEVA Teamwork, a SaaS solution that reinvents the management and development of skills of workers in an Industrial Organization. Through a user interface that resembles an industrial social network, workers are motivated to share information and collaborate in improving the company’s operations, while developing their skills and training in a more efficient and faster way.

Finally, the entire manufacturing chain is unified in a single control center, unifying the visualization, control and insights related to its operations. They are called Unified Operations Centers, and provide an integration of operations from different disparate systems and information silos with the aim of also integrating people and different types of users (maintenance, operations, engineering, quality, IT…) in the same platform that converges and acts as a true SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS.

Unified Operations Control Center

It is the concept of UOC or Unified Operations Center, and it is here to provide a competitive advantage to companies, not only linked to operations, but from a global vision of the company.

If you want to know more about how to unify your operations in a way that helps you achieve operational excellence, digitizing procedures and operations, empowering workers and consolidating all operations management in a single unified control center (UOC), do not hesitate to contact us, our experts can accompany you in this continuous change that we currently call digital transformation.