Introduction
A client of ours, who is one of the biggest global medical device companies in the world, wanted to have better visibility of the processes in its manufacturing sites and warehouses, located across the globe. In order to stay competitive, they needed to innovate their ways of reporting and managing their manufacturing processes.
Although the company is known for having one of the most dedicated and skilled workforces in their industry, without pro-active management, all that talent will be wasted. Therefore, with the right management processes in place, costs will be minimal, and employee effort will be utilized more efficiently.
The Challenges
One of the main challenges of the project was to bring together all different data sources that the client used – ERPs, Excel files, Access DBs, etc. An additional requirement that we had to consider was that the different manufacturing sites wanted to report the same KPIs but visualized them differently – in various charts and graphs.
The client had the following primary needs, which our solution had to satisfy:
- Enhance the effectiveness of the entire working processes;
- Optimize the product inventory;
- Guarantee the quality of the final products during the whole manufacturing workflow;
Furthermore, our team needed to design our business intelligence application in a way, which would be the most comprehensible to the broad group of analysts who are responsible for the performance of the different manufacturing sites.
The solution
Our team worked closely with the client to identify the key KPIs that need to be reported in order to meet their specific needs. To ensure better control over the testing and implementation of the business solution, we split the project into several phases. Additionally, to address the needs of the different manufacturing sites, we developed several Qlik applications, each tailored to their requirements.
Our solution helps them have a full 360-degree view of the whole manufacturing workflow. For instance, they can track on what stage of production each product is, what type it is, as well as the exact time they need to produce it. Furthermore, they can check on what stage most often they need to scrap products. Consequently, they can take measures to improve the process and minimize the scrap of materials. Besides, they can also assess the productivity of their employees, award the most outstanding workers to boost the motivation of the entire workforce. Before implementing our solution, our client had to collect the information from different sources, consolidate it manually and generate reports. Our solution brought automation to the previously manually intensive process and ensured that our client has access to up-to-date data regarding their manufacturing processes.
The cases:
- Need for better visibility on manufacturing processes
- Optimization of the product inventory
- Assessment of the product quality throughout the manufacturing process
Challenges:
- Scattered data from multiple data sources
- Different visualization requirements to satisfy the needs of the various manufacturing sites
- Take into consideration the wide gap between users’ skill levels
Solution:
- We developed several Qlik applications to meet the needs of the different manufacturing sites
- Helped our clients identify the key KPIs
- Automated reporting
- Implemented features to help users track each product’s manufacturing stage
- We allowed them to easily track their on-hand inventory of finished products
As a result of using our application, the client can efficiently conduct financial management, cost management, inventory control and calibrate the time reduction in its processes.
Within the financial management, the client can improve their profit margins as they can focus on both external profit-building and internal cost reductions. They can also analyze information across multiple sources to set performance goals and create sophisticated profitability and financial models.
Moreover, within the cost management, the client will have in-depth cost analysis across multiple sources so that they can track materials, manufacturing and production costs through multiple layers of information. As a result, they can reduce overhead costs by analyzing and monitoring operational efficiency and identifying areas where they can streamline processes and procedures.
The most significant benefit for our client is that they can easily keep track of the on-hand inventory of finished products as well as the inventory of replacement, spare, and refurbished parts. Furthermore, they can efficiently monitor what quantities and products are in transit and the number of returned goods. Inventory analysis, like the one our client can perform after our application implementation, is essential for managing costs and allocation, tracking inventory usage across location and time, monitor inventory costs, etc.
Conclusion
With our application, the client can bring visibility to their manufacturing processes and proactively focus on more strategic issues to improve their entire manufacturing workflow with the right metrics to measure the advancements in their processes. Moreover, the business will benefit from the aggregation of all their data sources in one place where, as they can analyze and predict different trends and patterns and make informed decisions regarding the direction they want to take.
