Improve Operational Efficiency in Manufacturing with Document Management

To get through the last few turbulent years, manufacturers were operating with bare bone resources – work forces are smaller than before the recession and everyone learned to “do more with less.” Today, though, manufacturing in the US has been consistently growing for more than two years. And that’s great, except that now those smaller work forces are doing even more with less.

You’re never going to be able to keep up when there’s paper and disconnected processes slowing down departments across the company. To operate at maximum efficiency, you need OnBase document management to automate and connect manual, paper processes.

Take Moen, for example. The faucet maker’s accounts payable team was manually handling 350 invoice exceptions a month through interoffice mail. Tired of adding weeks to the process, they automated the exception process and integrated OnBase with SAP.

“We don’t have piles of paper sitting on our desks anymore,” says Wendy Cambarare, accounts payable manager at Moen. “We know at any given time what each person has in their queue, what the problems are and what isn’t getting done.” The $8,000 savings in paper, processing and storage costs every month doesn’t hurt either.

The operational efficiency problems similar to the ones in accounts payable exist all over a company. Accounts receivable needs to provide more visibility into cash flow and management so executives can make financial decisions with more real-time information. Facilities management struggles to handle the documentation and procedures associated with the physical assets that keep your company up and running.

On the shop floor, policies and procedures can be a nightmare. Trying to get three shifts of workers to read and sign off on new or updated procedures is no simple task.  And where is there more paper than in an human resources office managing files for hundreds or thousands of past, present and future employees?

To improve operational efficiency, all of these areas across your company need to get control of their paper and manual processes. With OnBase, you’ve got a document management solution that doesn’t just fit into one area or another – it’s an enterprise solution that solves your paper problems in a single, central repository.

At Emerson Climate Control, OnBase rapidly expanded after starting out just in AP.  “We expected OnBase would be an AP application only. We had no idea we’d go from nine users to 900 in less than two years. Overall, we’ve saved more than $2.9 million, mostly in paper costs alone,” says Tim Arthur, IT director at Emerson.

And that’s just the beginning. If you want to know more about document management in a specific area of your company, check out our department solutions.