Digital transformations have taken hold across the enterprise, but some departments have been slower to shift to digitized and automated operations. For organizations in asset-intensive industries, especially in areas like maintenance management, deploying successful transformations are key to maximizing equipment uptime, reducing costs, and mitigating the impact of labor shortages.
Continue reading “Organization-Wide Benefits of a Digital Transformation in Maintenance”
A maintenance backlog isn’t bad per se, but if it’s too high, it’s a sign of multiple problems costing you real money. Like many companies, you may not be tracking and measuring the impacts to justify what it’s going to take to reduce the backlog to acceptable levels.
Continue reading “The Real Cost of a High Maintenance Backlog”
Have you ever questioned what is a Mobile EAM app and why do you need it? Mobile EAM spelled out is Mobile Enterprise Asset Management — not to be confused with SAP Enterprise Asset Management Software. Confused? You are not alone. In this article, we will clarify terms and how going mobile significantly improves key processes within maintenance operations with SAP.
See How Mobile Enterprise Asset Management Software for SAP Improves Productivity
What is the difference between EAM and Mobile Enterprise Asset Management software?
Traditional Maintenance Processes Without a Mobile EAM Solution
What Mobile EAM Apps Can Do For You
The Benefit Impact for Your Organization
What You Should Consider When Selecting a Mobile EAM App
What is the difference between EAM and Mobile Enterprise Asset Management Software?
To start, let’s cover some definitions to frame the operational processes impacted by Mobile Enterprise Asset Management software.
Adding a mobile interface to specific functions, greatly improves the efficiency of working with and maintaining the data within SAP overall. To understand the impact, consider the process steps of traditional maintenance management without a mobile solution.
Traditional Processes Without a Mobile EAM Solution
Traditional processes start with work order assignments that are planned and scheduled using spreadsheets with data pulled from the EAM system. After checking parts inventories and production schedules (i.e. the best timing to conduct maintenance tasks), schedulers assign tasks to specific technicians and create a daily or weekly schedule.
With technicians assigned, work orders are printed, collated with printed work instructions, and physically distributed to technicians. Technicians proceed to the work locations, complete their tasks, and manually capture notes on the paperwork orders. At the end of the work shift, they return the paperwork orders to be individually entered back into the EAM system through manual data entry, work order by work order.
If a technician discovers an issue while conducting an inspection, they find someone to create a notification in the EAM if urgent or make a note on the current work order to enter the information into the EAM system later. If they don’t have the parts they need, it’s an extra trip to the warehouse. The result?
Now, let’s take a look at how these workflows are improved with a mobile device and EAM app:
The Benefit Impact for Your Organization
Going paperless and keeping technicians in the field or plant with immediate access to information results in optimized asset performance and utilization while minimizing operations and maintenance costs. Read more about the breadth of benefits of going paperless.
Some examples of real-world results:
Ambev, a part of AB InBev, the largest brewery in the world, reduced their MTTR (Mean Time to Repair) by 79% – from 24 to 5 days – by replacing their paper-based maintenance processes with Sigga’s Mobile EAM solution. Ambev also saved over 7.2 million sheets of paper per year ($360,000), reduced downtime, increased production, and increased the productivity of their technicians and workers by 15%.
Furnas is an electricity generation and transmission organization producing 40% of the energy consumed in Brazil. Furnas improved the utilization of their staff, saving 90,000 hours per year from cutting out administrative activities every month, reallocated 46 staff members to other functions, and reduced their costs by $630,700 annually.
Bunge, a soybean and wheat processing company producing vegetable oil and ethanol, saved 10,000 sheets of paper per month on a volume of 1,370 maintenance orders per day.
Cenibra is a producer of bleached pulp from Eucalyptus fiber. Cenibra improved the process management of contractors and reduced administrative work on a volume of 60,000 maintenance orders and 190,000 inspection rounds conducted by staff and contractors per year.
What You Should Consider When Selecting a Mobile EAM App
User experience features. Not all mobile apps are the same, it is important to dig into the mobile features that support a good user experience for adoption and active use of the app. Considerations include ease-of-use of the interface and app performance as maintenance tasks can require a high volume of data transfer with SAP. In addition, consider the online and offline use especially in operations with locations without connectivity. Does the technician have the information they need while offline and how disruptive is the sync experience when back online? For more aspects to explore, read our article, Top 5 Mobile App Features for Maintenance.
It is an opportunity to streamline important maintenance processes with SAP EAM!
Take the proven step to deploy Mobile EAM Software with SAP. In doing so, you will modernize your industrial maintenance operations and be in a better position to take advantage of the endless stream of technology improvements in maintenance management.
Why Consider Sigga for Mobile Enterprise Asset Management Software?
Here at Sigga, we have a singular focus on the digital transformation of data-intensive maintenance work with asset-intensive industries.It takes dedication and ongoing development to sustain world-class mobile experiences. As a result, our EAM Empower solution is the leading Mobile EAM app for SAP environments. We design our apps to deliver exceptional user experiences to drive adoption and full use of the app. We have also designed our own proprietary, SAP integration technology to deliver Enterprise scale performance for high volumes of data and users.
In addition, we offer a Mobile Warehouse and Inventory solution to extend the mobile use cases and an integrated Planning & Scheduling desktop software solution to further streamline processes and drive efficiencies with SAP.
At Sigga, it is our mission to empower companies to achieve their mobile digital transformation goals by providing best-in-class software technology.
Read more about Sigga EAM Empower mobile app for SAP Enterprise Asset Management.
From growing regulations to the cliché “time is money”, asset maintenance and reliability managers know that downtime and delays in manufacturing processes cause waste, upset customers and lead to lost revenue. CEO’s and executives learned from their COVID
experiences that nimbleness and the ability to act quickly were critical to sustain operations. Paperand pencil processes, or information locked in individuals’ minds were inhibitors to adapt to the rapid changes.
In today’s hyper-mobile and data-centric world, the difference between leading or following is defined by whether you are flexible and resilient. The 90’s and 2000’s were the internet years. This decade, with the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and no-code app
development, is the intersection of mobility and predictive actions. No one can foresee every crisis, but most can materially mitigate the risks.
Continue reading “The Industry Trends Impacting your 2023 Maintenance Plans”
With the shortage of labor and supply chain disruptions, asset reliability needs to be a priority to sustain production levels, create quality products, and maintain productivity for your operations. Yet a survey of 80 large companies found that none were capturing the data required to evaluate and proactively address asset failures. NONE! These companies would be hard-pressed to implement a Failure Reporting Analysis and Corrective Action System (FRACAS).
If you are looking into a FRACAS or in the process of implementation, this article will highlight how to get started and set up your organization for success.
A Warehouse Management System (WMS), such as SAP Warehouse Management (SAP WM), can be modernized with the integration of a mobile solution, enabling warehouse teams to reduce costs and increase the visibility and accuracy of stock movements and inventory levels.
In this article, we’ll first examine the challenges of utilizing SAP WM without a mobile device. Then we’ll discuss the process improvements that can be made and the benefits companies using SAP may expect by modernizing their warehouse and inventory processes with a mobile solution.
Continue reading “Modernize SAP WM with Mobile Warehouse & Inventory Management”
Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) was developed in Japan more than 50 years ago as a method of physical asset management focused on maintaining and improving equipment used in manufacturing processes to reduce operating costs. TPM was subsequently expanded to incorporate lean manufacturing techniques.
Today, more and more plants are turning to TPM to complement innovative maintenance technologies and provide a means of structuring and improving proactive maintenance strategies. In this article, we will consider some of the benefits of TPM and explore 5 ways that your plant can get started with Total Productive Maintenance.
Continue reading “5 Ways to Get Started with Total Productive Maintenance”
Digital transformation is becoming an imperative in today’s world. We can no longer sit back and allow large portions of our organizations to work like they have for the last 20+ years. The tight labor market, inflation, and supply chain shortages all point to the need to be as efficient and as adaptive as possible in every aspect of our business.
The right software approach is a key consideration in accelerating digital transformations. For modernizing all business processes, the build vs buy software decision needs to be re-evaluated in light of today’s technology and resource challenges. This article explores these considerations.
New Factors in Build vs. Buy Software Decisions
Successful digital transformations certainly involve far more than the choice of technologies. Changing processes and driving adoption of new digital workflows has proven to be some of the major obstacles to achieving results. The choice of software and software approaches can impact these factors. And in consideration of the change management process, Enterprise organizations have tended to pursue custom development to fit the specific needs of the organization. This situation is changing, and the choices today are not so black and white.
Generalizing, here’s some of the historical comparison points:
Traditional Factors in Build vs Buy Software Decisions
| Consideration | Custom App Development | Read-made Software |
| Cost – upfront and on-going | In-house or outsourced developer’s | Software license fees plus customization costs to modify for unique processes |
| Time to deploy | Months to develop | “Off-the-shelf”, ready to implement |
| Integrations | Add your own choice of APIs | Select APIs |
| Security & bug fixes | Your resources | Vendor develops, you update |
| Flexibility to change | Yes | Limited customizations |
| Functionality | Generally, has fewer features and less specificity to the functional area | Generally, more fully featured, designed and vetted by 1,000’s of users from the functional area |
| Intuitive for users | Often less intuitive | Generally, more intuitive given history of use & feedback |
| User adoption | Falls to you to ensure the organization follows through with training and support to drive adoption | Vendor implementation services and training materials |
| Summary | IT resource intensive, long development cycle, custom software | Less IT resource intensive, shorter development cycle, less flexible to custom needs |
This is certainly a generalization as many other factors come into play such as complexity of workflows, skills of in-house developers, types of integrations needed, on prem vs. cloud, etc. And these variables have a significant impact to identifying the overall cost comparison. And history tells us that it is best to not be too optimistic in development time and cost estimations. Project Management Institute (PMI) found that 43% of IT projects exceed their initial budgets, 49% are late, and 14% fail altogether.
Today’s Considerations
There are many factors playing into this decision today. A significant consideration is the lack of availability of skilled developers. IDC quantified that the shortage of full-time developers is currently 1.4 million people (2021) and that will rise to 4 million people in just 4 years. With limited IT staffing in-house and limited supply of IT development contractors, the build vs buy software decision may no longer be a choice. But there’s many additional factors at play:
1) Low-code/No-code Tools
The labor shortage and endless need for software to accelerate digital transformations across the enterprise is fueling the growth of low-code and no-code tools to facilitate development.
Low-Code Application Development Platform Market – The global low code application development platform market size is expected to reach USD 86.92 billion by 2027, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc (July 2022). The market is projected to register a CAGR of 22.7% during the forecast period.
These development tool sets can accelerate app development between 40 and 60% faster than traditional development.
2) Growing Requirement for Application Adaptability
Development can no longer be considered primarily “done” once initially completed. Beyond the normal software updates, security and bug fixes, software needs to support a new level of flexibility that businesses require. The pandemic and ensuing supply chain shortages and inflation all illustrate the need to be able to rapidly adapt to change.
According to Gartner’s CIO Agenda, The leadership, organizational, and technology priorities CIOs must address in 2022, “Use technology in ways that support key pieces of composable business. Composability is the ability to assemble app components in various combinations to satisfy specific requirements. It makes it possible for organizations to increase production and accelerate timelines for innovation in a highly customizable way.
To support composability, “Composable Technologies are systems and data that integrate quickly and easily. Highly composable organizations recognize that iterative delivery processes, collaborative workstyles, and integrated systems drive better results.”
3) New Level of Collaboration Within the Business
This level of adaptability requires a new way of working with the business on software projects to accelerate development and adoption of new digital work processes. Creating project teams where the functional staff can take a greater role in the “development” of their software addresses the IT resource challenges and enables greater ownership and adoption of the resulting software.
“Who knew that one day, ordinary citizens, who lack deep knowledge of technology and programming, would be able to create really efficient solutions for their daily processes in an objective and clear way – and better: without relying on IT specialists? That’s what Low-Code provides: simplified access to technology.”
Mario Trentim, Low-Code Tools: Simplifying Technology as the Secret to Digital Transformation, June 2022
4) Hybrid – Application + Low-code Platform
The build vs buy software decision is also getting blurred with today’s software development technologies. Today, you can find ready-made software applications with their own low-code or no-code platform to enable the composability needed in today’s environment.
“Over the past year, we have seen existing solutions start to really mature and continue to show traction. Vertically focused, no-code/low-code products have especially found great fit in the market.”
Karan Bhasin, 10 investors discuss the no-code and low-code landscape in Q1 2022, March 2022
When these investors were asked which no-code/low-code developed apps excited them the most, they responded with:
“We see big opportunities in internal tools that usually require a lot of third-party integrations.
Here, low-code platforms replace a lot of the mundane work of creating internal tools and applications.
Modern low-code tools may provide about 90% of the out-of-the-box functionally required for these
operations and about10% wiggle room for customization required by the specific use case.”
So, given this new combination, how do the trade-offs change between custom app development and ready-made software?
Today’s Factors in Build vs Buy Software Decisions
| Consideration | Custom Development with Low-code Tools | SaaS Ready-made Software with Low-code Editor |
| Cost – upfront and on-going | In-house or outsourced developer’s – time savings with low-code tools | Software license fees (“customization” managed in-house – no developer/no customization costs) |
| Time to deploy | Months to develop (40-60% faster) | “Off-the-shelf”, ready to implement (any modifications are 40-60% faster) |
| Integrations | Add your own choice of APIs | Select APIs |
| Security & bug fixes | Your resources | Vendor develops and updates |
| Flexibility to change | Yes | Yes |
| Functionality | Generally, has fewer features and less specificity to the functional area | Generally, more fully featured, designed, and vetted specifically for the functional area |
| Intuitive for users | Often less intuitive | Generally, more intuitive given history of use & feedback |
| User adoption | Falls to you to ensure the organization follows through with training and support to drive adoption | Vendor implementation services and training materials |
| Summary | IT resource intensive, moderate development cycle, custom software | Less IT resource intensive, can be quickly modified and as flexible as a custom developed app |
As highlighted in the table, both approaches become faster in implementation with no trade-off between the two approaches to meet adaptability requirements. In summary:
Additional Considerations Today
“The average company has 254 SaaS applications but, on average, only 45% of a company’s SaaS apps are being used on a regular basis. Moreover, 56% of all these apps are shadow IT, or owned and managed outside of IT. And the crazy part is to think that goes on top of all the software packages and systems of records they already have to run the core of their business.”
The State of SaaS Sprawl in 2021
It is unsustainable to continue to have “SaaS Sprawl” in today’s world. For decision-making and efficiency, it is critical that applications are in active use and are well integrated with legacy and core systems, like SAP. Low-code development platforms whether standalone or within an application need to include the APIs and capabilities to be easily integrated into core systems.
The Best of Both Approaches for EAM Applications
Here at Sigga, we have fully embraced the need for applications to be flexible to be modified at any time. Our ready-made, mobile EAM software comes on a fully featured no-code platform. This robust, native mobile application is a result of continued development across 15 years of deployments with 70,000 users.
We are specialized in maintenance mobile apps and software for SAP EAM. As such, we have the only no-code platform with over 200 pre-built SAP PM services. This means, you can completely avoid the costs and delays of development with SAP integration specialists. In addition, our SAP integration technology is specially designed to deliver high performance with a high volume of data and mobile users.
We are an SAP-certified global software company with 20 years of experience in helping large global companies optimize SAP with our innovative solutions and attentive support. We invest hundreds of thousands of hours annually in research & development to ensure the highest quality user experiences, ease of implementation, and security of our EAM software. As a result, some of the world’s largest companies across over 14 industries trust Sigga to improve the efficiency of their SAP-based operations.
See how Sigga EAM Empower can deliver on your digital transformation goals in operations.
You may have heard about the automation capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and about the considerable benefits of condition-based monitoring (CBM). Bringing these concepts together holds the promise of further automation in manufacturing and maintenance. Today, we’ll touch on the basics of CBM and AI then speak to the critical steps you can take to be ready for the future of enterprise asset management.
Condition-based Monitoring and AI Applications
Unpredictable equipment and asset failure make up 75% of the causation factors that lead to downtime and considerable financial losses. To mitigate the effects of equipment-related downtime, CBM frameworks – an Industry 4.0 business model – were developed. CBM frameworks involve the use of IIoT sensors, edge devices, and smart machines to monitor the real-time performance of production equipment to detect and automatically trigger an alert if a measure is out of normal range. Of course, the goal is to avert a breakdown event through a maintenance intervention.
AI applications such as machine learning (ML) bring greater efficiency to the analysis of the condition measurements in order to provide further advanced warning of an impending issue. Successful implementation of CBM strategies requires the deployment of both data collection and analytical tools to gain insight into equipment performance.
Types of Asset Condition Monitoring
Condition monitoring can be as simple as conducting inspection rounds to take and record measurement readings from pressure sensors, oil levels, temperature gauges, and more. CBM utilizes IIoT devices to take this a step further by replacing the human actions to inspect, capture and evaluate measures against pre-set parameters and trigger the alert. Here’s some common types and uses of asset condition monitoring:
| Measurement | Issues Detected | Typical Assets |
| Vibration | Detect mechanical faults such as imbalance, misalignment, looseness, and bearing failure | Assets with rotating parts such as centrifugal pumps, motors, compressors |
| Temperature | From simple temperature readings to infrared thermography to catch temperature irregularities which can be caused by a part misalignment or belt issue | >Motors, bearings, gear boxes |
| Oil level & condition | Testing lubricants & other fluids for level, chemical properties, contamination, viscosity, and foreign particles indicating degradation of the machine surface (ie. iron, silicon, aluminum silicate) | Compressors, gear boxes, transportation vehicles |
| Sound | Ultrasound testing for a change in the normal operating parameters as the source of the issue can vary widely. It could be anything from leaking gases, under/over lubrication, to improperly seated parts | A wide range of equipment including equipment that has high-pressure fluids |
| Electrical | Evaluating changes in the electrical parameters including induction, pulse and frequency response, capacitance and resistance. | Motors & other electrical systems |
Other asset condition monitoring techniques include electromagnetic, radiation, laser interferometry, motor circuit analysis and more. What’s key in asset condition monitoring is to be deliberate in your choice of assets, what is most important to measure, and how to measure for cost effective results.
Advantages of Condition Monitoring
CBM coordinates maintenance activities based on the asset condition as compared to regularly scheduled preventive maintenance tasks. It also reduces the potential of sudden breakdown. Both of these impacts result in greater efficiency and more cost-effective maintenance practices. In addition:
The degree of benefit is driven by the degree of planning, training, and use of technology to assist in the data collection and analysis.
AI in Condition-based Monitoring and Maintenance
Industry 4.0 and 5.0 technologies and data analysis capabilities make CBM truly predictive. That is, you can gain 60 or 90 days advanced warning of a condition changing and even identification of the underlying malfunction. This type of analysis requires a lot of data from a number of measurement systems to be fed to a central database where artificial intelligence is used to analyze the trends. The database structure in SAP S/4HANA has been specifically designed for this purpose.
“S/4HANA provides tools to help companies move from scheduled to predictive maintenance
for more efficient equipment uptime and lower service costs.”
Jim O’Donnell, TechTarget, SAP wants to own intelligent enterprise, but firms have options, >June, 2021
The application of ML brings another level of efficiency. Instead of determining and setting the parameters for each measurement manually, now the models can be generated automatically providing significant time savings for your engineers and technicians.
Additional impacts include:
“The incidence rate of both false alarms (false positives) and missing alarms (false negatives) have been found to be reduced by over 90%. This reduces human engineering efforts in diagnosing machine faults by over 60%, reduces maintenance budgets and improves machine availability by about 10%.”
Dr. Patrick Bangert, algorithmica technologies GmbH, Smart Condition Monitoring Using Machine Learning
Although there are great efficiency advantages of AI and ML for CBM, it can take time to collect the data needed for analysis. Get started with the right foundation.
Getting Started with Condition-based Monitoring Strategies
>1) Structure and Centralize Data Collection
AI, when used correctly to make good decisions quickly, requires that the data is available and accurate. If you have messy master data due to inefficient business processes, then you can’t utilize the data to drive process improvements.
Eliminating any paper based processes by deploying a modern software interface to SAP should be a first step. These systems can help streamline your core maintenance process steps and remove unnecessary work, like manually entering data into SAP, while structuring the data inputs into SAP. As we noted earlier, if you use or will be transitioning to SAP S4/HANA, it is specifically designed to deploy AI and ML for maintenance operations.
2) Capture Current Sensor Data
Your modern-day equipment likely includes a wide range of sensors that can be programmed to feed the central database. Even before you invest in additional IIoT devices, you can already be using the data available to analyze to set triggers for alerts or to determine where you need to invest in additional monitoring capability.
3) Determine Asset Criticality
Prioritize where to invest by reviewing your maintenance history to uncover:
4) Practice Reliability Centered Maintenance
Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) takes the approach of identifying the conditions that could potentially result in downtime and then prioritizing failure modalities from a maintenance cost standpoint. With this data, operations can decide what specific actions provide the best return on maintenance spend to prevent those failure modalities from manifesting themselves. As a result of RCM analysis, you will find that certain assets are critical for investment in measuring technologies and using AI, while others should be managed as “run-to-failure” due to the low cost to replace as compared to the cost of applying predictive measures.
5) End-to-end Digital Processes
Responding to CBM alerts requires real-time communication and coordination of the workforce. For maintenance operations, this means replacing paper work orders and notification processes with a mobile device with an interface to SAP. Initially condition monitoring activities will result in a little advanced notice of an impending issue. In these cases, real-time notification is critical to avoid the downtime event. Overtime, with AI and ML results, you can apply true predictive maintenance strategies and see greater forewarning of an issue starting to occur.
Let Us Help You Get Started
Here at Sigga, we have been helping asset-intensive industries with SAP Plant Maintenance drive digital transformation and mobile initiatives in industrial maintenance for 20 years. Our SAP Certified EAM software solutions can help you improve the capture, structure, and quality of the data needed to build condition-based monitoring strategies.
Our EAM Empower mobile EAM application digitizes the entire maintenance process connecting users across your business real-time. It helps your technicians accurately capture and structure the data you’ll need in SAP to determine asset criticality for condition-based monitoring investments.
Sigga Planning & Scheduling provides the management tools for the effective deployment of preventive and predictive maintenance strategies. Together these solutions form an effective foundation for real-time coordination of maintenance activities as a result of your condition-based monitoring investments.
Learn how you can take your preventive maintenance program to the next level!
These are unprecedented times with runaway inflation, supply chain issues, labor shortage, and continued impacts from the global pandemic. As a business leader, you need to accelerate the changes that are going to make your company more competitive and resilient in a world of constant change. You have been on the path to digitize your business as one clear strategy to help meet these needs. Yet progress has likely been slow-to-date – especially for internal teams like your maintenance operations. It’s time to take a new approach.
In today’s article, we are going to highlight how to drive the digital transformation in SAP-based operations to support a more lean and agile organization while minimizing the resource impact to your IT department.
Digitization in Enterprise Asset Management
“The “new normal” is disruption. Organizations that lean into this reality and leverage their innovation capacity, technology and reach will not only survive, but grow as a result.”
Monika Sinha, VP Analyst, Gartner
In every facet of your business, you are having to constantly adjust to change driven by the pandemic, supply chain shortages, labor shortage and now unprecedented growing inflation. Technology is a key enabler of dealing with change, but with tight IT resources it is harder than ever to both accelerate and scale technology adoption across your business.
According to McKinsey in the report: Navigating inflation: A new playbook for CEOs, a key concern for CEO’s is “What is the fastest way to stabilize, and redesign stretched and, in some cases, broken supply chains? What capabilities will I need to increase my company’s resilience and control costs?… The good news is that digitalization will likely play an important role in answering these questions, and digital efforts often pay back their costs in 12 months.”
In other words, digital readiness is key for every facet of the organization including your operations teams.
The Imperatives for CIOs
Times are different, but the story is the same, digitization across your business will increase collaboration, efficiency, and capture the real-time data needed to increase resilience and control costs. According to Gartner’s CIO Agenda, The leadership, organizational, and technology priorities CIOs must address in 2022, “Use technology in ways that support key pieces of composable business. Composable Technologies are systems and data that integrate quickly and easily. Highly composable organizations recognize that iterative delivery processes, collaborative workstyles, and integrated systems drive better results.”
The CIO challenge is to put in place the technology infrastructure to enable this rapid composing of new products, new production methods, and new ways of collaboration to execute changes quickly and efficiently to stay competitive. This means that IT needs to accelerate digital initiatives, overcome historical roadblocks to progress, and do so with fewer IT resources.
How? Here’s a few strategies that are proving successful in today’s environment:
1) Democratize IT
The concept is simple, share the workload. How? Low-code and no-code tools are increasing efficiency for IT and the organization as a whole. Anyone in the business can collaborate with IT to digitize processes and collaborate to create better results.
“Who knew that one day, ordinary citizens, who lack deep knowledge of technology and programming, would be able to create really efficient solutions for their daily processes in an objective and clear way – and better: without relying on IT specialists? That’s what Low-Code provides: simplified access to technology.”
Mario Trentim, Low-Code Tools: Simplifying Technology as the Secret to Digital Transformation>, June 2022
These low-code and no-code tools are becoming increasingly available as standalone development platforms and as part of ready-made solutions. There’s many ways to start incorporating these tools sets into your development processes.
2) Start Small and Iterate
Tackle projects in an iterative approach. Agile software development methodologies have been around for a while. Now, with low-code and no-code platforms, this approach can overcome the roadblocks of past digital transformation initiatives.
“An agile transformation calls for small, specialized teams that rapidly develop experimental product iterations. Leaders establish a culture that trusts workers to experiment with creative solutions, giving them the freedom to “fail fast” and recalibrate by learning the lessons of these failures. …The value of this agile approach includes boosted workforce engagement, focused training and skill development, creative problem solving, and the ability to scale up quickly.”
McKinsey, Lighthouses reveal a playbook for responsible industry transformation>, March 2022
Besides enabling an iterative approach to each initiative, the agile approach set-ups the organization as a whole to be responsive to changes at any time.
3) Ensure Digital Readiness Across the Organization
Since digitization, collaboration, and real-time data are important for creating an organization that is adaptable and resilient to change, it is important that every group within your organization has at least achieved a baseline of replacing paper-based processes with a digital solution.
McKinsey found that the leading manufacturers were realizing significant value from Industry 4.0 technologies, but many were stuck in pilot purgatory. In their article, Capturing the True Value of Industry 4.0, April 2022, McKinsey identified several bundles of use cases that were key to success. Digital and mobile platforms for the front line workers was one bundle that was identified as a key enabler of the Industry 4.0 roadmap for business impact.
And as you know, digital transformation is more than deploying technologies, it is changing how people work, standardizing processes, and building employee skills and comfort with the use of technology. This is why digital readiness is key for every employee in the organization from the production manager to the maintenance technician.
4) Balance Investments Across Digital Initiatives
Investments in technology can get ahead of where your organization is ready to embrace. New Industry 4.0 and 5.0 technologies seem to come into play almost every week. To take advantage of this technology revolution, it is important to balance and pace the investments for better return on your investment. Many Industry 4.0 technologies hold the promise of incredible savings, but only if they can be utilized.
“Formalize the value at stake. In each assessed site, describe the actual value at stake by linking the most applicable Industry 4.0 solutions or use cases with current digital readiness, data availability, and IT/OT architecture.
McKinsey, Industry 4.0: Digital transformation in manufacturing, April 2022
If a pressure sensor indicates an impending issue, how long does it take your organization to recognize the issue, create a notification, approve, and turn it into a work order, and then dispatch it to a technician for repair? Hours? Days? Weeks? How many people had to be involved? What’s the value of Industry 4.0 technologies, like sensors with real-time information, if your processes are not digitized end-to-end to be able to act in real-time?
Industry 4.0 Opportunities with the Transition to SAP S/4HANA
With the move to SAP S/4HANA, many Industry 4.0 and 5.0 use cases will become enabled using the platform’s analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning capabilities, and databases.
“For productivity, S/4HANA includes robotic process automation tech so rote tasks can be automated, providing employees more time for higher value work for asset utilization, S/4HANA provides tools to help companies move from scheduled to predictive maintenance for more efficient equipment uptime and lower service costs for strategy, the modern ERP system includes real-time analytics features to enable data-driven decision-making.”
Jim O’Donnell, TechTarget, June, 2021
If your technicians are working with paper-based work orders which then require data entry of work status back into SAP, you won’t be able to take advantage of the power of the real-time information that SAP S/4HANA offers. This is just one of many examples for preparing maintenance operations for migrating SAP ECC to S/4HANA.
Digital Readiness for Maintenance Operations Made Easy
Here at Sigga, we have been helping asset-intensive industries mobilize maintenance operations for 20 years with a focus on SAP Enterprise Asset Management. Our software and mobile apps have been proven in use by over 70,000 technicians and are fully SAP-certified.
We understand what it takes to drive technology adoption in operations and preserve IT resources and budgets in the process. For example, our mobile EAM cloud SaaS solution comes on a no-code platform with no-code SAP integration. And, with our expertise in maintenance, we can actively drive a collaborative agile implementation and support adoption and scale across global sites.
Our Sigga EAM Empower mobile EAM application eliminates paper-based processes and digitizes the entire maintenance process connecting front-end technicians to SAP in real-time. As an outcome of implementation, the solution improves the capture, structure, and quality of your data as a baseline for taking advantage of many Industry 4.0 and SAP S4/HANA technologies.
Our integrated Planning & Scheduling desktop software provides an intuitive SAP UI5 Interface to SAP PM. This solution provides automation to drive annual budgeting, planning and regular scheduling of work orders. With the mass update feature, the solution improves data capture, structure, and data quality in SAP.
With our EAM products for SAP, your company can easily establish digital readiness within the maintenance organization. Let us help you make sure your data and processes are optimized so your maintenance operations are fully ready to take advantage of the speed, data analysis, and real-time information with current and future Industry 4.0 technologies.
Read More About Sigga and our EAM Solutions for Maintenance Operations
