Why does paperless manufacturing improve the whole organization’s performance?

Achieving paperless manufacturing is no longer within the reach of just a few companies. While some years ago it was only large companies that could afford the costs associated with digitization, today all organizations, to a greater or lesser extent, are able to invest in technology to become more efficient, sustainable and profitable.

With the advance of Industry 4.0, companies have realized that manufacturing without relying on paper documents is key to streamlining and enhancing the work of their employees. And here we are not only talking about operators or technicians, but also factory managers and, above all, executives in charge of business decisions.

In this article, we discuss some of the benefits of going paperless. How can digitization help you in your day-to-day work on the shop floor?

From operators to managers: how paperless manufacturing boosts everyone’s efficiency

Production workers

In a factory that is still paper-based and has not implemented solutions such as Mapex’s MES system to integrate all information on a single platform, operators waste hours navigating through multiple data sources.

For example, finding up-to-date work instructions becomes a challenge for them, which results in a significant loss of money for the company and can even lead to serious safety and quality issues.

Thanks to digitization, these employees feel more motivated and improve their productivity and efficiency from the very first minute:

  • They can have quick access to the documentation they need to perform their work correctly and safely.
  • They can be responsible for the quality of their work by completing checklists.
  • They can report incidents through the system.
  • They can perform higher value-added tasks.

Plant managers

Real-time visibility and centralization of information are two key factors in the efficient management of a factory. Without them, plant managers are unable to detect deviations, act on problems promptly and drive continuous improvement actions based on reliable data.

Working only with paper, it is impossible to achieve this global and up-to-date view of the production plant. That is why industrial companies that start their path towards digital transformation and implement an MES platform like Mapex share the same objective: always knowing what is happening in their factories (work order status, evolution of the main KPIs, equipment failures, etc.).

Thanks to digitization, supervisors and plant managers can:

  • Gain global visibility of the factory and drill down into details when needed.
  • Monitor all production activities from anywhere, anytime.
  • Leverage technology to enable greater standardization of production processes.
  • Use real-time data to react immediately and make better decisions.

Quality technicians and managers

Many companies still build their quality management system on the basis of paper documents. As a result, they face several risks every day that can jeopardize their reputation and customer relations: loss or damage of files, working with erroneous or outdated information, late response to problems that could have been detected earlier, etc.

For technicians and managers in the quality department, digitization and moving to automated systems play a decisive role if they want to achieve their goals:

  • Standardize quality management and compliance.
  • Obtain reliable real-time data and metrics on the quality of their production.
  • Access all the documentation they need in an agile way, at any time and from any device, to deal with quality controls and audits.
  • Rapidly identify those processes in which they need to improve to reduce non-conformities, defects, etc.

Maintenance technicians and managers

Just the time spent printing, sorting and distributing maintenance work orders is an extra cost for any industrial company. Together with errors in manual data entry and delays in obtaining metrics, deploying a CMMS solution pays for itself.

Through MapexMM, also available for mobile devices, organizations are able to increase productivity and efficiency in their industrial maintenance department thanks to:

  • Digitization of work orders (corrective and preventive).
  • Better visibility and traceability of spare parts consumption.
  • The possibility of communicating incidents in real time.
  • Reliable monitoring of indicators such as Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) and Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF).
  • Reduced downtime, as a result of faster action in the event of equipment breakdowns and failures.

Top management

Last but not least, paperless manufacturing is the first step in connecting the shop floor with the offices where business decisions are made.

Thanks to solutions like Mapex, industrial companies are much better prepared to deal with changes in demand and to be more competitive and sustainable in the long term by obtaining accurate, real-time information on the overall evolution of production processes without having to resort to paper documents.

For example, our Control Tower module is a very useful tool for executive management to visualize from a single screen customized dashboards with the most relevant KPIs, regardless of the source of these data.

Do you want to stop using paper documents in your factory?

If you are determined to reduce or even eliminate the use of paper documents in your industrial company for the coming year, get in touch with our team. They will help you begin the digitization process of your company according to your needs so that you can meet your goals.

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