A manufacturer of custom moulded cable assemblies for the global medical and military markets has seen both compliance and productivity increase after turning to digitalisation.
Carrio Cabling Corporation, based in Colorado Springs, USA, had been looking for new ways to identify assembly line bottlenecks and deliver a clear audit trail to satisfy regulatory requirements.
The company wanted to reduce wasted time due to frequent and often lengthy changeovers between multiple operations.
It needed to digitise its paper processes to achieve this, but its team was initially hesitant about moving away from existing ways of working – a common issue that many organisations face on their digital transformation journey.
Through its market research, Carrio came across Intoware’s WorkfloPlus – a mobile technology platform that enables businesses to digitise processes and tasks across industrial operations, converting them from paper to be accessible via mobile, wearable technology and desktop devices.
The technology could be used through tablets on the factory floor to help streamline Carrio’s manufacturing processes, and so the company signed up for a trial.
Miles Carrio, senior manager at Carrio Cabling Corporation, said: “Initially our assemblers were hesitant to any change to their existing approach, but they quickly found using WorkfloPlus to have major benefits over the paper-based processes.”
At Carrio Cabling, 28 assemblers are working on several customer orders at any one time, and it’s common for one assembler to change between multiple operations within a particular assembly several times a day, each with their own procedures.
Because of this, it was expected to take between nine and 12 months to fully train all of Carrio’s operators on the technology, and to deploy WorkfloPlus throughout the business.
However, the team took to the technology quickly and half of the assemblers were trained and using the software platform in just six weeks.
Miles added: “We quickly found that WorkfloPlus automatically compiles data faster and with greater accuracy that if our assemblers were to manually log this data themselves. Since we have thousands of lines that we can build, seeing how quickly we could digitise was key, depending on the complexity we can migrate and digitise an assembly in just 20 to 90 minutes.”
Previously, there was one large paper document shared for each assembly line at Carrio, risking the document getting lost or being subject to unauthorised modifications. Now, every assembler has a tablet, with all paper-based build procedures on the factory floor now replaced by digital workflows using WorkfloPlus.
Digitising paper-based processes has also allowed Carrio Cabling to access and analyse a wealth of data in real-time. This means managers can generate hourly data reports and compare and contrast individual assembler rates to improve efficiency and prevent future production bottlenecks.
The company has also found that it ensures a thorough audit trail to satisfy both customer and regulatory needs – something crucial to Carrio Cabling as an ISO manufacturer.
Miles said: “Before, an individual employee would gather, track the rate of production and what assemblers had built. By automating this work in real-time it simply pales in comparison to what we’d pay an operator to complete the same work, plus we wouldn’t get the information as quick to act on it as required.”
Keith Tilley, CEO at Intoware – the creators of WorkfloPlus, said: “Carrio Cabling is a great example of a manufacturing company that recognised the need to move away from paper-based processes to digital, and is now reaping the benefits.
“As the business found, it is common for frontline workers to be initially hesitant about digitalisation, but when rolled out correctly and with the right training and induction provided, it can enhance productivity and make workers’ jobs much easier when it comes to audit trails and compliance.”