To support operational performance, continuous improvements must be made in all parts of the company, starting with documentation. We cannot claim to gain in efficiency and competitiveness if the information media are organized, used and transmitted via methods and tools that are no longer up-to-date.
All activities within the industry are conducted on the basis of documents.
This includes everything from work instructions to processes, records and data related to logistics and traceability. All documentation is therefore concerned by this need to reinvent it to enable the organization to be ever more efficient. The implementation of visual management processes is one of its main characteristics.
The industry is changing, so is industrial documentation
The documents that exist in the industrial sector are of many kinds. This may include industrial documentation relating to the company’s assets (equipment inventories, etc.), technical data (specifications, up-to-date work instructions, procedures, etc.) or the legal field. This documentation is vital for the organization at all levels. Above all, it will have to evolve to meet the new specificities and requirements of industry 4.0, which aims to be intelligent and connected.
Industrial production has undergone significant changes with the massive arrival of new technologies. The manufacturing processes have almost nothing to do with what was in place when the Industrial Internet of Things, among other notable innovations, had not yet arrived in the factories. Production line organization, maintenance services, supply chain, resource management (both material and human), flow management, purchasing, procurement, procurement, inventory management and planning are now provided by even more efficient hardware and software.
The information media are therefore constantly optimized to support these developments. By guaranteeing the quality of documentation, operational performance is enhanced in several ways:
- reduction of waste (time and resources),
- reduction of downtime of production equipment (better maintenance),
- process improvement, etc.
Indeed, employees with clear and effective documents can only be more efficient in each workstation.
Visual management, one of the main forms of document evolution
One of the main aspects of the evolution of documentation in favor of operational performance is the increasing use of visual management, which is one of the pillars of modern lean and continuous improvement.
As its name suggests, it is about deploying visual tools to help teams progress. In practice, this consists, for example, in providing operators with dashboards displaying performance indicators and situating them in relation to objectives. These visual aids, offered in various forms that are more “meaningful” than series of texts (diagram, diagram, diagram, etc.), can also display good practices, procedures or sources of dysfunction. This makes it easier to visualize key business trends and take corrective action when necessary.
Visual management is also at the service of operational performance as it simplifies the transfer of technical skills to newcomers, whether they are employees already in place but called upon to occupy new positions or recruits from outside the company.
Dedicated software solutions to efficiently digitize work instructions
Picomto is the industry 4.0 solution for digitizing its standard operating procedures and work instructions in a visual and interactive way. Our experts are available at any time to answer your questions.
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