Modern manufacturing and industrial companies deploy a range of automation and digital solutions to run their key operations. Most manufacturers also need to establish a cohesive ecosystem with their logistic partners, maintenance teams, customer-facing organizations, field services, and key suppliers. This makes their digital canvas quite vast, complex, and carrying high stakes. With so much depending on the digital network, the pressure is always on to ensure optimal performance, availability, speed, and scalability. Similarly, as more intelligent equipment and sensor-driven machinery get deployed in smart factories, there is a rising need for smart maintenance for maintaining optimal health.
Data and insights provided by different departments become crucial in such an operation. These decide manufacturing strategies to meet demands and ensure better utilization of manufacturing facilities and equipment.
However, leaders are often concerned about providing accessibility to data on the go for key personnel in the manufacturing cycle – irrespective of location.
This is the main driver that made enterprise mobility a key pillar of industrial automation.
Facilitating access
One of the key traits of modern manufacturing organizations is their ability to make quick decisions and drive timely actions. This means acquiring the ability to allow key personnel to access relevant operational and functional data in real-time to run accelerated and automated production cycles efficiently. The best way to achieve this access seamlessly is by leveraging mobile apps.
These mobile apps get integrated with the digitized core of the business spread across different internal and external digital systems. Be it field service agents, technicians, quality inspectors, people managers, or any other departmental staff, powerful and functional mobile apps can simply the operational experience while at the same time enabling better and elevated work management.
Let us have a closer look at 5 ways in which mobile apps can be a major complementary force for industrial automation initiatives:
1. Enhanced collaboration and communication
Large industrial workplaces have several people working in multiple locations that are too spread out and dispersed to allow effortless collaboration. Mobile apps can create an effective communication bridge that eliminates the collaboration challenge created by the time and space gap. With all team members connected to an enterprise mobile app on their smartphones or company communication devices like Tablet PCs, collaboration becomes seamless and effortless.
It becomes easy to facilitate real-time collaboration, information exchange, file transfers, or any other digital communication. All this takes place through secure enterprise mobility platforms that are centrally managed by the business.
2. Improving process efficiency
Industrial automation works best when processes and workflows are streamlined. This would require fast capture of data from different processes to execute workflows correctly and derive the desired outcomes from production cycles. Bringing enterprise mobility into this scenario can help manufacturers reap benefits significantly faster and more meaningfully.
For example, a smartphone app managed by the business can help employees perform critical data entry and information capture “on the go”. This can feed into key business systems such as ERP or integrated manufacturing cycle control dashboards. Manual capture and synchronization would take considerable time and can cause scheduling or reporting delays that can impact key workflows. Mobile apps will help capture insights in real-time thereby helping decision-makers optimize process workflows leading to overall efficiency gains in the production cycle.
Industrial automation works best when processes and workflows are streamlined. This would require fast capture of data from different processes to execute workflows correctly and derive the desired outcomes from production cycles. Bringing enterprise mobility into this scenario can help manufacturers reap benefits significantly faster and more meaningfully.
For example, a smartphone app managed by the business can help employees perform critical data entry and information capture “on the go”. This can feed into key business systems such as ERP or integrated manufacturing cycle control dashboards. Manual capture and synchronization would take considerable time and can cause scheduling or reporting delays that can impact key workflows. Mobile apps will help capture insights in real-time thereby helping decision-makers optimize process workflows leading to overall efficiency gains in the production cycle.
3. Optimize machine health
Ensuring that manufacturing equipment and factory infrastructure are maintained at optimal health is of crucial importance for businesses. Proactive monitoring of machine health, accurate maintenance cycles, and performance-driven timely replacement initiatives ensure that production commitments are always met without disruption. However, rather than manual inspection and management of manufacturing infrastructure, the use of apps with IOT capabilities can reshape the maintenance landscape of the industrial sector.
Integrated IoT sensors within the factory can constantly supply diagnostic information to smartphone applications. These can be accessed regularly by the maintenance crew thereby ensuring proactive maintenance checks. This helps in keeping machine health at optimal levels which further assures minimal downtime or disruptions, prevents unexpected breakdowns, and lower maintenance costs in the long run.
4. Build responsive supply chains
A robust and optimised supply chain ecosystem is critical to ensuring disruption-free manufacturing cycles for businesses. The use of mobile apps can help manufacturers gain real-time insights about their partner’s movements in the supply chain. This will help in optimising work schedules and new procurement initiatives in alignment with demands and supply chain behaviour.
Mobile apps help in establishing a real-time communication link between various partners involved thereby creating data-driven and responsive operations for end-to-end supply chain.
5. Improve safety
Employee safety is of paramount importance for manufacturers in industries replete with potentially dangerous production workflows. In most cases, the ability to warn employees about impending dangers in their deployment site can prove to be the difference between safety and danger. Mobile apps can be a blessing as they provide a continuous communication line that constantly transmits employee location information. Additionally, safety checklists can be enforced through apps to decision centres remotely by having employees report observations, validate hazardous environment entry credentials, and much more.
In the event of danger, employees can be warned in real-time through the app and appropriate escape guidelines can be communicated in real-time to them.
Summing it up
Mobile apps can play a key role in facilitating seamless access to digitized data and insights for all stakeholders involved when it comes to making manufacturing a smart entity. Through direct integration with key digital systems, mobile apps can help leaders measure accurate ROI on automation initiatives, efficiency optimization tasks, and other workflow exercises. These will provide enhanced customer experience, and better workplace productivity, and contribute significantly to revenue profitability through cost optimization.
However, embracing mobility solutions that are integral to core manufacturing workflows requires strategic planning and execution roadmaps that accommodate all unique production workflows involved in custom manufacturing cycles. This is where a knowledgeable partner like CSI Computech can make a huge difference. Get in touch with us to know more.