Administrative process in the industry.

Blog: Flokzu

Historically, optimization efforts in the industry were focused on production processes. In general, all industries have their production processes optimized, measured, and controlled. But not every administrative process in the industry is optimized.

The support processes, or administrative processes, have been left aside and usually run in a suboptimal way. This implies more personnel to execute them (with the consequent increase of indirect costs). It also means that the customer, distributors, and suppliers’ service is slow. Improving these processes, by automating them with a BPM Suite, implies generating a legitimate competitive advantage.

We have seen in many of our clients that increasing the competitiveness of companies in the industrial sector is possible by automating their administrative processes.

In Flokzu, we have a large number of clients in the Industry sector. In most cases, the processes that have been automated have been the administrative ones. The results are very encouraging, and improvements in the efficiency of most processes have been generated. Fewer people are required to execute them. We will see below some concrete examples.

Administrative process in the industry automated with Flokzu Cloud BPM.

The design of new products

The design of new products is a complex administrative process in the industry, involving many steps and people from different areas, such as:

Innovation area and basically any employee, who proposes a new product.
Engineering area that analyses its viability, prototypes, and estimates costs.
The financial area that makes the corresponding analysis.
The commercial area that estimates the potential market, suggested price, etc.
Management, which reviews and approves the new product.
The marketing area that defines the materials to boost sales.
etc.

This process is classified as administrative since it is not a production process, although it clearly involves almost all areas of the company and a large number of steps. We have seen real BPMN diagrams of this process with more than 100 user tasks. Of course, many of them are executed in parallel (using inclusive gateways), while others are sequential.

The huge benefit of automating this process is to be able to speed up the design and launch of new products as much as possible. In this way, the company can better serve market needs and respond effectively to the competition. Both elements are vital for survival and growth.

The modification of existing products.

Related to the above process is the modification of existing products. This is another typical administrative process in the industry, which also requires a large number of steps, depending on the degree of modification of the product.

As with the processing of new products, it is possible to execute this process manually. In fact, many industries still do this, relying on emails and spreadsheets (such as MS Excel) to track the tasks involved. Anyone who has participated in a process under these conditions will agree that it is tedious, error-prone, and above all, very slow.

Being able to modify existing products, to meet market needs and changes in competitors is essential to remain competitive.

Occupational Health – HSHE

Another area where processes can be much more efficient is in HSHE – Health, Safety, Hygiene, and Environment. Here we have seen remarkable Flokzu instrumentations in processes such as:

Workplace checklist. An electronic form that each operator fills in when he arrives at his workplace. It works as a checklist to verify that you have everything you need and that the protection measures are adequate. In some organizations, this process is called “30 seconds” because it is intended not to take more than that time for the operator if everything is correct.
Corrective and preventive actions. A process that allows for the registry and adequate follow-up of corrective and preventive actions to ensure compliance with the organization’s HSHE standards.
Analysis of incidents and accidents. When an incident or accident occurs, it must be registered and a process of analysis of the causes must be launched to prevent it from happening again. It is very important that this process is automated and all its audit trail stored.

Other administrative processes in industries

Finding a concrete example of a successful automated administrative process in the industry is not difficult. We have several examples in different countries and type of industries, like:

For industries that produce custom-made products, the process of controlling work orders, with their plans and instructions, until delivery to the customer.
Improvement plans for facilities, budget analysis, approval, control of execution.
Complaints, claims, and suggestions from customers. In food industries, for example, it serves as a complement to product quality assurance systems.
Contracts with customers and suppliers. Easy access to conditions, versions, monitoring of renewals.
Applications for Staff Licenses, both permanent and temporary, for annual scheduled leave, or extraordinary leave (illness, study, etc.).
Management support. Proposal of topics for the Board of Directors, distribution of the agenda to the directors, and resolutions.