Client
Our client is worldwide leading company for industrial, high-tech manufacturing solutions and engineered equipment, operating several high-capacity production sites in USA. With a world-class team, Prominent manufacturing organization operating multiple plants is committed to upholding the highest standards of safety, compliance, and operational excellence.
Challenge
To Driving continuous improvement and standardisation,?our client wants to digitise and automate its Plant Tour Management System (PTMS) for their plant and automate its operations like its previous successful rollouts had been achieved at other plants. The processes and tools we are using for the previous plant inspection and compliance were very manual, made up of many different tools that didn’t talk?to each other, and we were sifting through lots of paper and spreadsheets and had no visibility into the status of the inspection process or the quality of the data. Key challenges included:
- Manual and Fragmented Processes: Scheduling plant tours,?Safety observations and Compliance reporting was being handled via spreadsheets and documents, with difficulty tracking and coordinating ETAs across plants and departments.
- Limited Role-Based Access: Employees, reviewers, department heads, and plant managers all needed tailored dashboards and permissions, but the previous tools could not provide role-based controls.
- No Automated Scoring or Closure Tracking: Scoring tours, measuring turnaround times, and tracking observation closure all relied on manual calculations and email follow-up, increasing errors and delays.
- Inefficient Reporting and Analytics: Leadership lacked real-time access to key metrics such as department and plant scores, open observation counts, and corrective action progress, impeding data-driven decisions.
- Observation Closure Gaps: Without automated workflows, closing observations and following up on corrective actions depended on email reminders and manual tracking—risking missed or delayed resolutions.
- Scalability Issues: The legacy approach could not easily scale to new locations, departments, or business requirements, limiting standardisation and continuous improvement.
Solution
To address these operational inefficiencies and support enterprise-wide best practices, the client partnered with us to digital transformation for plant inspections by migrating and implementing the PTMS at plant—leveraging Microsoft SharePoint Online and the Microsoft 365 platform to deliver a secure, scalable, and fully automated digital solution tailored to every user role and business requirement.
Key solution features included:
- Comprehensive SharePoint Site Migration: Creation of a dedicated SharePoint Online site collection and, replicating proven PTMS structures from other sites and customising master data for local departments, users, and compliance criteria.
- Role-Based Dashboards and Controls: Customised interfaces for plant managers, HODs, reviewers, and employees, ensuring each user only sees and acts on relevant data—supporting efficient workflows and improved data privacy.
- Digital Plant Tour and Observation Workflow: Plant managers and HODs conduct digital tours using structured SharePoint forms to log observations, assign severity, attach evidence, and record turnaround times, while the system automatically calculates tour and department stores and timestamps all actions.
- Centralised Observation Tracking and Closure: All open observations are managed in real time, with clear escalation and closure workflows—only authorised users can close observations, and every corrective action is documented for compliance.
- Automated Reporting and Analytics in Power BI: Live dashboards display department and plant scores, open observations, turnaround times, tour counts, and closure rates—enabling managers and leadership to make informed, proactive decisions.
- Audit-Ready Master Data and Controls: Administrators manage users, roles, master data, and permissions from a central dashboard, with every action logged for audit readiness and compliance.
- Future-Ready, Extensible Platform: Using Microsoft 365 as a foundation the solution can be readily connected to other systems and can, as your business case?grows, be expanded to include automation, document archiving, or advanced analytics.
Result
The new digital PTMS transformed plant inspections and compliance with driving greater efficiency, transparency, and safety with Microsoft 365 Services.
- Standardised Inspection and Compliance: All plant tours, observations, and corrective actions now follow a unified, best-practice digital process, ensuring consistent compliance and reporting across the plant.
- Real-Time Visibility and Accountability: Managers, HODs, and leadership have up-to-the-minute insight into scores, open issues, and progress, with clear ownership and audit trails for every observation.
- Automated Workflows and Scoring: Automated calculation of scores and digital workflows eliminate manual errors and speed up observation closure, freeing up staff for higher-value activities.
- Data-Driven Decision-Making: Live Power BI dashboards empower leadership to identify trends, allocate resources effectively, and respond rapidly to compliance challenges.
- Operational Efficiency and Scalability: The digital system reduces paperwork, manual tracking, and delays—while providing a scalable platform ready to support other plants, departments, and business units as the organisation grows.
Tools Used
- SharePoint Online
- SPFX Framework
- Power Automate
- Power BI
- Microsoft 365