Shop Floor Digitalization: Your Automation Effort must be Designed to Drive Continuous Improvement (CI)

At ComplianceQuest, we recently published a whitepaper titled “Gearing up to restart shop floor operations? Here’s a checklist for manufacturing leaders”. In this paper, we suggested a 4-step approach to drive digital transformation of your factory operations.

The steps include the following:

1. Conducting a gap analysis
2. Identifying specific workflow improvements that are needed
3. Shop floor data integrated with the entire ERP, EQMS and EHS system that’ll drive connected automation across operations, quality and health safety requirements
4. Continuous improvement, taking advantage of predictive analytics and proactive measures

In this blog, we share a checklist for Step #4 that’ll help plant heads and quality leaders with driving continuous improvement of quality, health and safety workflows – taking advantage of next-generation technological capabilities like predictive analytics, AI and automated insight gathering.

Continuous Improvement of Quality and Safety Workflows on the Shop Floor

Continuous Improvement (CI) has been a critical component of the Japanese TQM system for manufacturing companies. The Deming Prize, the longest-running and one of the highest awards for TQM, takes into account how a manufacturing company embraces CI to drive innovation and quality.

The improvement must happen across products and workflows. Here’s a sample checklist for Step #4, with a focus on CI:

• Increase efficiency of operations – both in terms of workforce productivity and financial efficiency
• Measure all key quality and safety data (metrics)
• Improvement of key quality and safety metrics on an ongoing basis
• Constant focus on preventive mechanisms
• Predictive maintenance of machines
• Constant upskilling and training of your workforce
• Mock drills to ensure adherence of rules and regulations
• More integration and connectivity across systems
• More automation of data capture vs. manual data entry procedures
• Taking advantage of AI/ML-based technologies but not at the expense of your people
• Fully harness the power of data analytics, constantly improving both analysis and quality of input data

True improvement will come from cross-functional collaboration. ComplianceQuest’s QHSE is built to drive such a collaborative effort. By involving people from across teams and forming a multi-departmental team to drive change and improvements is crucial.

Why ComplianceQuest Can Make it Really Easy to Drive Digital Transformation and Automation in Your Shop Floor

At ComplianceQuest, we put together this checklist based on our experience of implementing our QHSE (EQMS + EHS) product at 1000+ customer locations across the world. We’ve served shop floor leaders across a range of sectors including automotive, medical device, oil and gas, electronics and hi-tech, consumer goods and more. Please do keep in mind that the above checklist is only a guideline and by no means is exhaustive.

Overall, at ComplianceQuest, we’ve built each of our solutions on the highly flexible, scalable and customizable Salesforce platform. It can be deployed at companies of all sizes – from high-growth startups to Fortune 100 companies. Thanks to our experience of serving a wide range of customers, we believe that the following aspects are absolutely essential in the factory of the future:

1. Embracing Industry 4.0 methodologies using best-of-breed technologies
2. Data, especially connected and automated data capture, plays a critical role in the automation of workflows
3. Every shop floor is different, so a good quality and safety management system must fit into the workflow followed by the shop floor, and not vice versa. The tool must not dictate the process, but can serve as a guideline.
4. Data analytics and strategic insights can drive continuous improvement of operations, delivering long-term financial impact

If you are a manufacturing leader, look no further than ComplianceQuest’s basket of solutions to automate your workflows. Our EQMS, EHS, Workplace Safety and Supplier Readiness apps can be customized as per your needs.

Request for a demo of our products here.

Read this whitepaper to find out more.