IT in
Manufacturing
redolent of the latest Microsoft operating systems, with panel navigations which can be personalised by users according to their job role, current priorities, targets or projects. Edwards is ambitious and enthusiastic about the possibilities that diverse technologies represent for his product. For instance technologies of the kind now being associated with big data and the creation of advanced, data-driven service systems (p39). These systems are mostly associated with a few large multinational companies, but Edwards is intrigued by the possibility of using the technology to service individual employee and everyday business needs. For instance he shares, Papaya is partnering with Sheffield Hallam University to investigate the incorporation of radiography technologies which may one day offer a health and wellbeing tracking capability. “We’d be able to capture information on nutrition for instance, and this could feed into a company’s processes to support CSR.” Such a capability would also help employers advise and work with employees to avoid the development of long term health issues – and absence, which as EEF has recently noted is a challenge once again raising its head for the manufacturing sector (p14).
Why are manufacturers interested? Papaya is a product for all sectors, but Edwards says that manufacturing implementations are more exciting, and ultimately often bring more value because they include a complex set of physical processes as well as less tangible business ones. Manufacturing also tends to have more demanding health and safety or sector specific standards requirements with attendant document management challenges says
Customer comment: Bringing all of the business disciplines together from one system allows us to be smarter. Papaya provides real time information at the click of a button. I have saved around four working days a month by not having to gather and chase information which is now automatically collated and converted into the reports I require. Driving our inductions via Papaya allows huge time savings whilst and gives a great overview of individuals’ strengths and weaknesses Group safety officer at a European packaging company
Edwards, and then there’s the people. “Manufacturing companies tend to have a very high staff to management ratio. And seasonally affected manufacturing often has a very dynamic employment base. This means that there is a lot of potential value in standardising processes related to workforce management, such as induction processes.” Edwards says this has often been a real draw for manufacturing customers who are keen to cement parallel efforts in establishing lean cultures and embedding them in standard operating procedures that employees can own. Accessibility-wise, Papaya is flexible. It is a cloud-based application but it is possible to work off line so that audits being conducted remotely in instances where there is no internet connection. Work can then be saved and the system updated later. Papaya has also partnered with certification and accreditation bodies to link directly into the resources which will help improve individual and business capabilities. This includes online training packages. The price structure for Papaya is also attractive. Its cost effective price structure is relative to the number of users or employees in an organisation, making it easily accessible to SMEs but scalable to large organisations. Additional consultancy fees for
implementation are charged per project, not on a time basis.
What’s the catch? “No catch,” shrugs Edwards, “though of course there are challenges, the biggest of which is always the transfer of existing information about people and processes into the new system – essentially data entry. We are developing a back-end application which allows us to pull data and drop it into our system and we offer human labour to help with the data transfer process. “What I really advocate though,” and Edwards’ eyes light up, “is that companies hire an IT or business management apprentice and makes them responsible for this. We all know that apprenticeships are fully back on the radar and are a fantastic way of developing loyal, keen-to-learn employees. While initially you’d be giving this apprentice quite a mundane task, over time they’d become invaluable for the end to end knowledge they would gain of the strengths and weaknesses in the business.” Edwards is so enthusiastic about this idea that he is even developing an offering whereby he will fund part of the training cost for customers who take on an apprentice to assist in a Papaya implementation. It’s a novel approach which exposes a real passion for developing people and processes for the creation of jobs, productivity and, ultimately, wealth. @janefagray
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