MilliporeSigma creates a central hub for testing data.
The convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital process automation (DPA) is reshaping the manufacturing landscape. As businesses strive to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance competitiveness, these technologies offer transformative solutions. This comprehensive analysis explores the synergy between AI and DPA in manufacturing, highlighting their benefits, applications, and potential challenges.
Understanding AI and DPA
AI refers to the ability of machines to simulate human intelligence, encompassing tasks like learning, reasoning, problem-solving, and perception. In manufacturing, AI can be applied to analyze vast datasets, predict equipment failures, optimize production processes, and improve quality control.
DPA is a software approach that automates repetitive, rule-based tasks, streamlining workflows and reducing manual errors. When combined with AI, DPA can create intelligent systems capable of adapting to changing conditions and making informed decisions.
Key Benefits of AI and DPA in Manufacturing
- Enhanced Efficiency: Automation of routine tasks frees up human resources for more strategic activities, leading to increased productivity and reduced operational costs.
- Improved Quality: AI-powered quality control systems can identify defects early in the manufacturing process, minimizing waste and improving product quality.
- Predictive Maintenance: By analyzing equipment data, AI can predict potential failures, enabling proactive maintenance and reducing downtime.
- Optimized Supply Chain: AI can optimize inventory management, demand forecasting, and logistics, resulting in a more efficient and responsive supply chain.
- Data-Driven Decision Making: AI-powered analytics provide valuable insights into manufacturing processes, enabling data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement.
Applications of AI and DPA in Manufacturing
- Production Optimization: AI can optimize production schedules, allocate resources effectively, and identify bottlenecks in manufacturing processes.
- Quality Control: AI-powered vision systems can inspect products for defects, ensuring consistent quality and compliance with standards.
- Predictive Maintenance: AI algorithms can analyze sensor data to predict equipment failures, allowing for timely maintenance and preventing unplanned downtime.
- Supply Chain Management: AI can optimize inventory levels, improve demand forecasting, and streamline logistics operations.
- Product Design and Development: AI can assist in product design, generating innovative concepts and simulating product performance.
Best Practices for Implementing AI and DPA
- Start Small and Scale: Begin with pilot projects to test the feasibility and benefits of AI and DPA before implementing them on a larger scale.
- Prioritize High-Impact Use Cases: Focus on applications that offer the greatest potential benefits and return on investment.
- Invest in Data Quality: Ensure that data is accurate, complete, and accessible for AI algorithms to process effectively.
- Collaborate with Experts: Partner with AI and DPA experts to leverage their knowledge and experience.
- Address Ethical Concerns: Develop ethical guidelines and policies to ensure responsible AI implementation.
AI and DPA are powerful tools that can revolutionize manufacturing operations. By leveraging these technologies, businesses can enhance efficiency, improve quality, and gain a competitive edge. However, successful implementation requires careful planning, investment, and a commitment to ethical practices. As AI and DPA continue to evolve, manufacturers must stay informed and adapt their strategies to harness the full potential of these transformative technologies.
Want to gain more insights on the impacts of AI and DPA on manufacturing? Watch our webinar: How GenAI and Digital Process Automation Are Impacting Manufacturing Productivity.
How GenAI and Digital Process Automation Are Impacting Manufacturing Productivity
In this webinar, discover how generative AI (GenAI) technologies can directly improve process automation and business productivity for those in the manufacturing and commercial sectors. Gain insights on how best to implement GenAI into digital process automation (DPA) to streamline document controls and reduce costs and time associated with addressing ever-growing compliance and governance requirements.
Businesses can also leverage AI and DPA to improve business resilience, drive productivity of process cycles, and integrate with other technologies to ensure your organization stays ahead in a fast-changing digital landscape.
Guest speakers Craig le Clair, VP and principal analyst at Forrester, and Steve Everett Jr., SVP of operations at FCA Packaging, will join experts from Laserfiche to discuss:
- Current digital trends and use cases involving DPA in the manufacturing and commercial sectors
- How to build implementation roadmaps involving GenAI and DPA tools
- Frequent challenges in the digital transformation journey, and how to overcome them for improved business productivity and immediate ROI
- Why now is the best time for leadership to digitally transform their legacy business processes
Please join us On Demand
Persistent labor shortages are a pressing challenge for today’s manufacturers. The industry’s current skills gap is predicted to balloon to 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030, which will cost employers an estimated $1 trillion per year. This makes adding automation to increase efficiencies and optimize throughput a top priority across the industry. Smart manufacturing technologies, ranging from digital twins and robots to the use of data analytics to streamline production processes, promise to ease the difficulties associated with the current labor shortage. But automating factory floor operations isn’t simple. It requires massive investments in equipment, data infrastructure and employee training.
Manufacturers may be eager to embrace smart technology innovations, but leaders in smaller firms may struggle to understand where to begin. Meanwhile, larger enterprises are often inhibited by organizational silos or a need to prove short-term return on investment (ROI) when end results may be months, if not years, in the future. Implementing the right data strategy and enterprise architecture can make it possible to overcome these obstacles.
Many manufacturing firms — especially those with complex compliance requirements — create and process large volumes of documents to support their operations. To avoid redundancies and inefficiencies, they need to leverage automation to create a single source of truth and align workflows across the entire organization. This sets the foundation for digital transformation. The right data management strategy successfully melds data across diverse business processes — from sales and inventory management through logistics and quality assurance — into a unified informational backbone. With this data strategy in place, manufacturers will be prepared for success in smart manufacturing.
What is Smart Manufacturing?
The National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST) defines smart manufacturing as a set of fully integrated, collaborative systems that respond in real time to meet changing demands and conditions in the factory, in the supply network and from customers. Realizing this vision requires harnessing digital technologies to realize greater efficiencies than are possible in traditional production processes. Machines and operators should be sharing information about performance, efficiency and maintenance needs on an ongoing basis to maximize agility and minimize unplanned downtime.
Becoming “smart” means embedding sensors in production equipment to gather data about operational status and performance. But it also requires an infrastructure for sharing, processing and analyzing that data. Taking advantage of the cloud’s near-infinite scalability makes it possible to manage the enormous volumes of data involved.
A mature smart manufacturing ecosystem involves much more data than what’s output by operational technology (OT) systems and sensors, though. It should also incorporate product designs, sales information, logistics tracking (for both finished products and materials), financial results and more. Thinking holistically about all of this data is the secret to successfully advancing your organization’s smart manufacturing maturity.
This playbook will give a three-step roadmap to ready your organization for smart manufacturing. Standardizing document and data management paves the way for digitizing business processes across the organization. This will ultimately allow you to glean value from the smart systems on your factory floor faster and more easily.
- Step 1: Assess and Strategize
- Step 2: Design the Right Data Architecture
- Step 3: Build Out Integrations
Want to learn more? Download the full ebook: 3 Steps to Ready Your Business for Smart Manufacturing.
SITUATION
• Hundreds of records created weekly
• Storage requires complex compliance requirements
• Manual processes led to bottlenecks, errors and delays
RESULTS
• Standardized transparent records management enabled faster document retrieval and enhanced regulatory compliance
• Laserfiche automated workflows accelerate processes and increase productivity enterprise-wide
Orano is a recognized international operator in the field of nuclear materials. The company’s offerings include products and services throughout the entire fuel cycle, including the design, certification and production of casks, as well as the associated transport, with the highest level of risk control.
The company records every aspect of operations, resulting in the creation of hundreds of records weekly, including technical files, purchase orders and contract-related documents. Meanwhile, all documentation goes through constant review and approval, and everything must be stored in accordance with regulatory compliance requirements.
“Because we’re in the nuclear industry, document oversight is extremely important — so we undergo lots of audits and have to be able to find data,” said Gloria St. Denis, records management consultant for Orano. Fortunately, the complex information infrastructure and processing involved with Orano’s daily operations is made simpler with Laserfiche, the company’s records management and forms processing solution. “My background is in records management, however, Engineering is my biggest client at the company. They want to do things that make their life easier. And for a lot of that, there is Laserfiche.”
Since implementing Laserfiche, St. Denis estimates that information management and automated business processes have been made between 10-50% more efficient. In some cases, the impact has been even greater.
“Laserfiche has saved us from a lot of issues and errors,” she added.
Building a Single Source of Truth
Laserfiche serves as the content repository for some of Orano’s most important information. The standardization that Laserfiche has provided solves a number of information management headaches for St. Denis and the organization, such as:
- Inconsistent metadata: Lack of standardized data entry practices can make searching for specific documents difficult
- Version control issues: Multiple copies and versions of documents lead to confusion and potential use of outdated information
- Process fragmentation: Manual processes for document submission and retrieval delay workflows
Due to the sensitivity and importance of the company’s products and services, the organization requires all information that is defined as a record to be held in dual storage. This includes the Orano Policies and Procedures System (PoPS), which Laserfiche keeps up to date with the latest versions of documents.
“We use transparent records management to manage PoPS, so that those who manage the procedures and policies can see the history of the information, but the rest of the organization only sees the latest and greatest version,” St. Denis explained.
Beyond PoPS, Orano uses Laserfiche to manage information and streamline processes in other areas of the business, including:
- Cost control
- Document and records management
- Engineering
- Fabrication project management
- Information services
- Licensing
- Procurement
- Project management
- Quality services
Simple online forms now enable employees to submit a new record, to which a standard template and metadata are applied. Additionally, Laserfiche’s OCR capabilities support the system’s abilities to provide the information that people need with a simple text search.
“Laserfiche does a great job of OCR,” St. Denis added. “It captures all the information we need from the documentation, making it easier for people to find what they’re looking for.”
As a result, staff can now find any engineering record, design record, purchasing record or any other customer or vendor documentation in just a few keystrokes, regardless of the information’s origin. To make information searches even easier, St. Denis has set up customized webpages and search forms using Laserfiche.
“With a transparent records management strategy, we’re going beyond thinking of Laserfiche as just a place to put electronic documents,” St. Denis said. “We organized and standardized everything. That made it simpler.”
Optimizing Information Flow
St. Denis has also introduced process automation to streamline the flow of information and accelerate reviews and approvals.
One of the most impactful Laserfiche solutions has been the Approved Suppliers List (ASL), which was previously managed through a Word document. “We built a Laserfiche Forms process in front, and within 15 minutes, that approved supplier is on the Approved Suppliers List,” St. Denis said. The previously manual, cumbersome process typically took between two to three weeks. “These automated processes enable us to communicate certified suppliers to our organization quicker. Ultimately, we can get back to the client sooner.”
Process automation also extends to the Approved Supplier Maintenance process, better enabling the organization to maintain traceability of documents and any changes, while still supporting the integrity of the ASL.
Other processes have simplified and accelerated collaboration across the enterprise, even across global regions. The Shipping Release process requires multiple sign-offs on multiple documents — with an average of three signatures per document. Previous to automating, employees would physically walk forms around or send them through email; when signatories were in different countries, delays were not uncommon. “We were able to get the average time it takes to do a shipping release from three business days down to one to two hours,” St. Denis explained.
Similar efficiency gains have been seen in the processes for:
- Document control
- Reserving a document number
- Data update requests
- Computer program error reporting
- Design change requests
- Quality procurement documentation approvals
- Unplanned design engineering work approvals
Using Laserfiche’s intelligent capture, transparent records management, and complementary process automation capabilities, Orano has seen the benefits of faster information retrieval, enhanced regulatory compliance, and increased productivity across the organization.
For St. Denis, Laserfiche has augmented her ability to support the organization’s business goals. “I love that I — as a records professional — can create solutions and there is a lot less involvement required from IS/IT,” she added.
It’s a data-driven world. Laserfiche’s enhanced Lookup Tables take your operations to the next level.
Lookup table limits have automatically increased for all Laserfiche Cloud customers. Customers who use Laserfiche Cloud to manage thousands of product SKUs and parts lists, medical billing codes, historical customer data points and more are now able to store and leverage even larger enterprise-level data sets with increased lookup table limits.
In addition, these enhancements allow customers to take advantage of real-time data lookups across millions of data points for use in forms and workflows, further enabling your organization to support hundreds of thousands of customers.
Furthermore, these changes increase limits for both numbers of rows within lookup tables, and the number of lookup tables overall.
Limits will be increased automatically according to your license tier. Professional tier customers will now start with a limit of 20,000 rows. Business tier customers will start with a limit of 50,000 rows. Additional add-ons, offering up to 100,000 rows are available for purchase.
An API to manage your lookup table data is also now available. For more details and documentation surround this API, please visit our developer page.
Why lookup tables?
With enhanced lookup tables in Laserfiche, you can sync your customer data with Laserfiche to engage them on a personal level. If you’re in education, healthcare, government, or e-commerce, having immediate access to a customer, student, or patient past activity, historical decisions, and preferences can allow you to tailor how you handle their needs individually, making each interaction more relevant. There’s a direct correlation between increased satisfaction of your audience when you pull this information in real-time. For example:
- Education – use Laserfiche Forms for your students and automatically look up their course history and documents in real-time, so they can register for courses and ensure needed forms are submitted.
- Financial Services – create workflows that follow up on customer service inquiries, ensure real-time history lookups on phone calls, and use forms that can lookup account history and important documents.
- Healthcare – automatically pull up relevant records and visit history for patients when they fill out form in Laserfiche. Store volumes of medical codes and clinical results data, create workflows based off of patient history and streamline billing processes.
Improve daily decision making
In finance, healthcare and manufacturing, understanding trends, predicting behaviors and optimizing resources can be critical to operating effectively. As an example, healthcare providers can make more informed decisions about patient care when they have instant access to medical records and treatment history from an internal operations workflow built on Laserfiche.
Optimize your supply chain
Industries dependent on supply chain management, such as logistics, manufacturing and retail, can benefit greatly from real-time lookups. Access things like parts lists, order history and volumes, vendor performance tracking, RMAs and more for better inventory management and more opportunities to improve vendor relationships.
Provide better customer service
In customer service, nothing is a substitute for real-time data lookups for providing the best experience possible. Whether it’s customer order status, resolving a customer service issue, call history, and more, instant access to this historical data allows your service representatives to have the best tools available to provide top-notch support.
Implement predictive maintenance & continuous improvement
Industries with specialized equipment and machinery, such as aviation and manufacturing, can avoid breakdowns, outages, and downtime with real-time historical analysis, while using workflows to determine maintenance schedules. This proactive approach saves resources and time while creating opportunities to further operational efficiency.
Get started today
Regardless of your industry, lookup table improvements can help your organization unlock the power of real-time customer data. Leveraging this data to analyze past performance and identify opportunities to enhance operations can enable your organization to be more responsive, and in turn be more resilient and effective in how it conducts business. In a world where data and measurable metrics are as important as ever, businesses that harness real-time data access in their operations are poised for sustainable success, even in a dynamic business landscape. For more on lookup tables, visit our What’s New page or contact your sales representative for more information.
As manufacturers adopt AI, they can expect enhanced efficiency and output and the ability to make more informed decisions and adapt swiftly to market changes.
With the business ecosystem operating in a distributed manner, hyperautomation eases the burden that repetitive processes and legacy infrastructure put on an organisation and its resources.
SITUATION
· Accounts payable relied on manual tasks and data entry
· Looming e-invoicing mandate required the digitization of purchase orders, payment terms and credit notes
RESULTS
· Integrated Laserfiche with SAP ERP to digitize both internal and external invoices and automate invoice processing
· Reduced average cycle time from 72 hours down to 10 minutes
· Improved traceability and compliance, inventory management and sustainability
In 2019, Colombia joined a host of other countries in mandating e-invoicing — an electronic billing approach that requires the digitization of purchase orders, payment terms and credit notes. E-invoicing requirements are becoming more and more common across the globe, with the goal of providing governments a more efficient means of auditing and tax and customs enforcement.
In order to accommodate the coming requirement, the agroindustrial company Monómeros sought a new document management system (DMS) with business process management (BPM) capabilities. “We saw that the versatility and capacity that Laserfiche had as a BPM tool would allow us to keep control of our documents, plus there was traceability that would comply with Colombia’s laws and archival standards,” said Esteban Echeverria, IT superintendent at Monómeros. “Laserfiche is not only a tool that will allow us to keep control of documents, maintain traceability and comply with the rules and archival standards of Colombia, but it also provides a platform that will allow us to automate business processes across the company.”
With Laserfiche process automation and records management, along with an integration between Laserfiche and SAP, Monómeros fulfilled the country’s e-invoicing requirements while also accelerating the accounts payable (AP) process.
Today, the company’s AP cycle has been cut down from an average of 72 hours to just 10 minutes — a 99.77% improvement in efficiency.
The Seeds of Innovation: ERP Integration
Monómeros is a large agroindustrial company with an important role in supplying the necessary fertilizers for some of Colombia’s most important crops, including potato, coffee and palm. With a history dating back to 1967, the company has undergone a number of modernization initiatives for a more efficient, agile enterprise.
Accounts Payable (AP) is one area where the organization has seen tremendous impact. With thousands of invoices needing to be processed per month, manual tasks — such as data entry, inventory management, and data verification — can delay critical operations at any organization, causing missed deadlines and challenges in vendor and customer relations.
At Monómeros, the invoicing process relied on manual tasks and mailing invoices between staff and geographic locations.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, invoices had to be manually assigned to each analyst and physically sent to them to be managed in our ERP,” said Carlos Daniel Machado, head of accounts payable at Monómeros. “Cycle times from when invoices were received reached up to 72 hours. We needed to optimize the process and reduce cycle time.”
On top of this, the Monómeros team needed to consider the e-invoicing requirements that would become compulsory for businesses in 2020. This perfect storm led them to Laserfiche, which was implemented with support from Colombia-based Laserfiche solution provider Gestech.
“Laserfiche offered a balance between all of our considerations, including cost, functionality, business process management (BPM) capabilities, a good user experience and local support with Gestech,” said Echeverria.
The goal was to digitize and optimize the process to increase efficiency and reduce costs; improve visibility and control; and strengthen business relationships.
To tackle the challenge, the Monómeros and Gestech teams created a Laserfiche workflow designed with four stages and integrations with the company’s SAP ERP software.
- 1. Invoice acquisition: Once received, invoices are digitized and indexed in Laserfiche. Laserfiche matches the supplier data to the invoice metadata, then routes the invoice to the accounts payable manager.
- 2. Assignment: Once the AP manager receives the invoices in Laserfiche, they assign them to the appropriate AP analysts.
- 3. Invoice entry: Analysts receive and review invoices in Laserfiche, which queries invoice tracking numbers that have been entered into SAP.
- 4. Payment: Payments are carried out in SAP, which queries payment proposal numbers associated with the invoices and relays them to Laserfiche. Payment numbers of paid invoices are also relayed to Laserfiche and recorded in invoice metadata.
The process not only applies to external invoices, but also to internal ones having to do with reimbursing employees.
“In the case of employee reimbursement, they file their request through a Laserfiche form and attach all necessary documents, and that generates a digital filing through Laserfiche in a matter of seconds,” said Machado.
Ripe for Digital Transformation
With this solution, Monómeros has been able to reduce the average cycle time from 72 hours down to 10 minutes. With an average of 1,500 invoices per month, Monómeros has seen a huge impact on overall time and cost savings. As added benefits, Monómeros has improved traceability and compliance, inventory management and sustainability.
“Not only have we been able to improve compliance practices and optimize processes with Laserfiche process automation, but we have also enhanced customer service and their overall experience.”
Carlos Daniel Machado, Head of Accounts Payable, Monómeros
“We are now working on an integration between Laserfiche and our vendor bill reception process. Every business process that needs to be automated or integrated with our content we see as in the scope of Laserfiche’s capabilities. This makes us excited for all of the future possibilities.”