intelligent automation for manufacturing
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The Challenge
Manufacturers face ever-evolving challenges from changing government policies,
international trade wars and growing environmental concerns, which are bringing huge
paradigm shifts across the sector. All of this is further complicated by significant skills
shortages, growing cyber threats and evolving customer needs for greater personalization.
Manufacturers and suppliers must embrace Industry 4.0 to remain competitive, monetize
the opportunities new technologies bring, and drive change faster, safer and more reliably.
The Solution:
Blue Prism Intelligent Automation for Manufacturing
Blue Prism provides an interoperability solution for past, present and future systems, providing manufacturers the opportunity to integrate new technologies into existing and automated workflows. Manufacturers can monetize these new technologies and use them to optimize their agility in the face of constant change.
Blue Prism can help organizations:• Transform the customer journey: Increase
visibility across the supply chain, respond fasterto customer requests and adapt to their changingexpectations for increased personalization andcustomization
• Digitize the back office: Blue Prism drivestangible benefits for standard shared serviceprocesses, from finance and accounting to HR toinventory management
• Unlock big data: Vertical and horizontalintegration to ensure better machine utilization,faster throughput and improved tracking ofinventory and logistics through IoT
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Intelligent Automation for Manufacturing
What is Intelligent Automation?Intelligent automation is a set of combined technologies that enable digital workers to deliver more advanced automation capabilities. While digital workers derived from robotic process automation (RPA) have skills used for basic automation, intelligent automation enables digital workers to easily integrate with advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and master advanced analytical and cognitive skills, such as reading documents or performing activities that require rules-based thinking.
Through intelligent automation, Blue Prism delivers an enterprise-grade digital workforce that can perform tasks and manage business processes every day, around the clock. What’s more, Blue Prism Digital Workers can integrate new technologies into legacy systems and existing processes to help take manufacturers to the next level of operation.
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Intelligent Automation for Manufacturing
What is a digital worker?A Blue Prism digital worker is a super organized, multitasking software robot that works alongside your people to automate and transform business processes. Like humans, digital workers can develop new skills over time, getting smarter and more capable. With AI, Blue Prism digital workers can be trained to take on increasingly complex tasks, manage vast workloads, and make critical decisions to tackle work with greater speed and productivity, thereby becoming a force multiplier in your business.
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Intelligent Automation for Manufacturing
Streamline your operations
The Problem:Data, in various non-standard formats, has often been trapped in disparate systems due to the absence of APIs or simply the lack of integration. Blue Prism’s digital workforce now makes the systems, housing the vast datasets collected by equipment and machinery, accessible and actionable.
How we help:Predictive maintenance: Digital workers using intelligent automation can gather data from assorted sensors, standardize the formatting and then facilitate the use of predictive algorithms to provide predictive maintenance. Digital workers then take the relevant actions to minimize downtime.
Process efficiency and tracking: Data captured by IoT devices such as factory equipment and RFID tags can be collated, aggregated, analyzed and acted upon by digital workers in conjunction with machine learning to increase productivity, improve process efficiency and drive down costs. Parts, components and products can be tracked throughout the production cycle.
Bill of materials: Engineers can make changes to the Engineering BOM—in Product Data Management (PDM) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) applications—with the updated data points being automatically updated in the Manufacturing BOM, for example in SAP.
Improve the customer journey
The Problem:Customers are increasingly expecting a seamless digital and personalized experience from initial ordering to accurate status updates and delivery confirmation. Legacy applications and a lack of visibility across disparate systems in the supply chain makes this a significant challenge, as manufacturers seek to provide a frictionless and highly transparent customer journey.
How we help:Customer experience can be improved through more efficient order and invoice processing, more responsive customer service and enhanced quality assurance. Intelligent automation enables greater integration across multiple systems for improved speed and visibility, as well as providing self-service options to put the customer in control.
Additionally, Blue Prism’s integration with data analytics partners enables organizations to create greater insight from their customer data, thus, enabling manufacturers to more quickly adapt to evolving customer preferences, as well as providing the more personalized experience that customers now demand.
How we help: Manufacturing
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Intelligent Automation for Manufacturing
SAP Transformation
The Problem:With support for SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) ending in 2025, moving to SAP S/4 HANA is key, but the project may prove both lengthy and challenging regardless of the chosen route. As organizations plan for migration, they should consider their current ERP strategy and evaluate the role automation can have in their digital transformation journey.
How we help:SAP operations: Improve customer experience through the automation of historically manual SAP operations, including adjustments, renewals, account service and customer onboarding.
Data migration and validation: Digital workers can orchestrate and validate data migration from existing database tables into new ones.
Basis functions: Use a digital workforce to automate simple processing, ranging from setting up security, user authorizations, devices/printers to transport analysis and validation, and Fiori app activation.
Robust supplier management
The Problem:Maintaining and managing complex supplier relationships is critical to an effective supply chain and efficient production. Optimizing supplier performance, ensuring cost effectiveness and monitoring supplier adherence to regulatory and ethical requirements is a challenge.
How we help:Intelligent automation enables manufacturers to oversee their supplier portfolio and proactively manage performance through:
• Onboarding: Setting up approved and vetted suppliers accurately and efficiently
• Contract management: Proactive creation and management of supplier agreements
• Performance management: Automated reporting of supplier performance against SLAs
• Regulatory checks: Consistent execution of compliance checks to ensure suppliers are meeting all obligations and internal requirements.
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Intelligent Automation for Manufacturing
Optimize the Supply Chain
The Problem:Managing global supply chains with multiple suppliers operating on different systems across major regional regulatory differences is a complex task. End-to-end visibility can be limited and the manual effort of maintaining accurate data can be a mammoth task.
How we help:Digital workers enable seamless supplier integration with the ability to update multiple systems accurately and efficiently. This ensures standardization of data across the end-to-end supply chain and speeds up processing.
Automation of order, inventory and shipment tracking processes increases accuracy and productivity, freeing up labor to concentrate on more complex logistical tasks.
While proactively monitoring market data with intelligent automation can help, manufacturers consistently optimize the price they pay for services such as freight, minimizing the risk of constant fluctuations.
Strengthen cyber security
The Problem:The manufacturing sector is one of the most targeted industries globally for cyber attacks. Expanding the number of technological touchpoints across an organization naturally increases security risks. This has limited the investment in Industry 4.0 in some areas.
How we help:Blue Prism can help overcome these challenges and concerns by introducing secure digital workers, minimizing the risk of human vulnerability and increasing auditability.
Just as with a human workforce, we understand that a digital workforce also requires security, oversight and governance and have built in strict controls regarding how our digital workers are configured, as well as how changes are managed and approved.
With world-class security, comprehensive audit trails and nonrepudiation, Blue Prism has been designed to meet the strict security and compliance needs of industries with the most demanding regulations.
Find out how Blue Prism’s intelligent automation advanced ABB’s manufacturing organization
Read the Case Study
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Intelligent Automation for Manufacturing
Respond to regulation faster
The Problem:Regulatory changes across multiple geographies can be difficult to react to, comply with and measure performance against.
How we help:Blue Prism started in financial services, one of the most heavily regulated industries globally, demonstrating that we have a proven record of helping organizations:
• Quickly and efficiently comply with new regulations and amend existing processes when required
• Accurately manage customer and supplier data in line with regional legislation
• Remain agile enough to change locations, suppliers or production where market events or trends warrant it.
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Intelligent Automation for Manufacturing
Blue Prism is the global leader in intelligent automation for the enterprise, transforming the way work is done. At Blue Prism, we have users in over 170 countries in more than 2,000 businesses, including Fortune 500 and public sector organizations, that are creating value with new ways of working, unlocking efficiencies, and returning millions of hours of work back into their businesses. Our intelligent digital workforce is smart, secure, scalable and accessible to all; freeing up humans to re-imagine work.
To learn more visit www.blueprism.com and follow us on Twitter @blue_prism and on LinkedIn.
© 2021 Blue Prism Limited. “Blue Prism”, the “Blue Prism” logo and Prism device are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Blue Prism Limited and its affiliates. All Rights Reserved. Intelligent-Automation-for-Manufacturing -022921-mr
Why Blue Prism?
Blue Prism founded RPA, emerging as the industry leader and a trusted, secure intelligent automation choice for the Fortune 500 and public sector. We offer a secure, scalable and easy-to-use digital workforce that uses six intelligent automation skills to augment human talent, increase productivity, improve customer experiences, and provide a solid foundation for a true intelligent automation strategy.
Blue Prism’s intelligent automation platform connects legacy systems, API integrations, and the best in artificial intelligence and machine learning technology.
Blue Prism works with chemical, pharmaceuticals and engineering companies; food and beverage providers, automotive and aerospace manufacturers and many more. Blue Prism enables manufacturers to accelerate the digitization of their key operations and protect against cyber threats.
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Intelligent Automation for Manufacturing