20.02.2023
Reading Time: 2 Minutes

Is it Time to Review Your Manu­facturing Plant Document Procedures?

In this Article

    In today’s challenging business environment, it’s easy to spend a lot of time putting out fires rather than figuring out how to prevent them from starting in the first place. That time could be better used to increase margins and decrease costs.

    Disruption in supply chains, a global reset in how productivity and profit margins connect, and a changing economy make now the perfect time for procedural plant management and manufacturing overhaul.

     

    What a Review Can Do for Your Plant

    A great place to start is with a review of current operations. Take a look at the performance of your demand forecasting, procurement, production, reporting, and analysis, and ask how effective the processes behind each piece is today.

    A review can help you unlock efficiencies, highlight problems, and renew procedures that will help operations run more smoothly.

    For example, are there gaps in reporting that could be filled to provide better actionable data, or is production spending a lot of time searching for the documents they need to accompany work orders?

    If so, your manufacturing plant could run more efficiently by automating your digital documenting procedures.

     

    Procedural Changes

    Something as simple as how documents are stored, retrieved, and analyzed can make significant changes in operations and ultimately add up to additional revenue. For example, automatically tracking procurement costs along with plant output reports can keep you on top of fluctuating margins and aware of what changes can be made to maximize the cost of goods at that moment.

    SAP offers many tools to help manufacturing plants track and analyze data; the only problem is ensuring the right data makes it to the tools. This can be done manually, but it takes time and allows for error; by automating your documentation procedures, the right data always makes it to the appropriate endpoint.

     

    Document Management

    If your review uncovers inefficiencies in document management, you will also want to investigate document ad document delivery quality. Questions you can ask yourself include:

    • Do all work orders make it to their endpoint with the right accompanying documents?
    • Are managers spending a lot of time putting together procedures because they can’t find the correct documents?

    In many plants, these documents need to work together to ensure the correct work is completed, the right materials are ordered, and so on. If you are gathering documents from different repositories, it can be difficult and time-consuming to find exactly what you need and enter corresponding information quickly.

    Just one glitch or error in the process can cause fires to pop up throughout the operation.

     

    How Automating Digital Document Procedures Can Help

    Automating your documentation procedures removes the need for human interaction. It also speeds up the process of finding and collating additional documents needed to process work orders, procure materials, and report.

    No more searching through endless databases looking for the right file; automated solutions by SEAL Systems take care of searching, sending, and reporting for you.

    You can be up and running with an automated document collection solution in less than five days. Contact SEAL Systems to find out more about how our document integrations for SAP run on Azure or AWS.