Benefits of driving document processing automation within manufacturing sector

Benefits of driving document processing automation within manufacturing sector

We are living today at the time of Industry 4.0 and companies across all industries are launching automation projects for various functions. Hence, it is estimated by McKinsey & Company that around 50% of work performed today can be automated by use of the current technologies. However, if we take a close look at the manufacturing sector, we shall outline that automation initiatives are not among the top priorities of companies’ management teams.

Opportunity vs Bias

If we take a look at the percent of SME as well as huge corporations that adopt an automation tools within manufacturing sector and compare it to the level of adoption among companies across all industries, we can clearly identify the slack between average rate of adoption versus the that is currently estimated for the industrial organizations. There are several reasons behind it: first of all, the management of these companies do not always see a bigger picture and presumes that if results are not delivered in the first 6 months after implementation – than it won’t be happening later on. It is a profound mistake: according to the research provided by McKinsey & Company, only 17% of enterprises realized benefits of automation tools’ implementation within the first 6 month, however, within the period from 12 to 36 months this rate goes up to 75%. Thus, it is important to select a proper use cases before the initial launch of an automation process, assemble a team which would focus particularly on the automation journey and be prepared that results might be tangible not within first two quarters but rather within 4 to 6 quarters after automation process initiation. Another concern regarding automation initiatives is the affection of the workforce: many employees within manufacturing sector are frightened, assuming that they will be replaced by robots, while their employers fear massive strikes of unionized labourers. Again, this is not the case. According to the same research, only 27% of the tasks within manufacturing sector are easy to automate, while the rest 73% are difficult to automate (58%) or not automatable at all (17%). At the same time, it is crucial to understand that these 27% of automation won’t facilitate a 27% cut of the workforce. Conversely, this will give an opportunity for the employees to focus on more significant tasks instead of effectuating a manual work.

IDP implications

Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) plays a crucial role in driving hyperautomation. This tool comes on stage when an automation task is too complex for Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Besides a significant cost-cut and an increased rate of time efficiency due to removal of all manual data inputs (on average, these processes are completed 5 times faster compare to manual approach), IDP also eliminates a chance of a mistake in a data load). There are many procedures within different departments of manufacturing companies of any size that can be automated by IDP. As an example, we can outline the following activities: order form processing, invoice processing, quality assurance records management, sales order processing, change request management and the others. We at Smart Layers provide our customers with a complex in terms of functionality, (our solution is capable of data extraction of any format, not only from text lines, graphs and tables, but also from handwriting parts) however, very intuitive and user-friendly platform, that can solve all the stated issues and help an organization automate their document flows at a 100% rate.

Future impact

It is necessary to keep in mind that an automation journey is never a trifling matter, nonetheless, with the right approach and decently structured action plan, recognized not only by the executive board, but also by all the employees involved in the process, the implementation of automation tools will go smoothly and drive the expected outcomes in accordance to the estimated timeline.