How we simplified the development of new parts in building materials factories

Success in industrial manufacturing is driven by two factors: innovation and speed of bringing new products to market. But behind the scenes, there is often a complex and inefficient system for developing and approving new products.

This was the case with us. A large industrial company with dozens of factories all over Russia, a wide range of building materials, its own chain of stores for selling goods. But the expansion of the product line, to put it mildly, was not debugged.

New products regularly required custom-made components. But the work was slowed down by lengthy email approvals, manual comparison of supplier offers, and the lack of a unified document storage system. Each new project turned into a quest, where it was necessary to overcome many obstacles on the way from an idea to a finished product.

In this article, I will tell you how we optimized these business processes and brought order to the new product development system.

A disparate set of IT solutions slowed down the process of developing new products

The production department filled out an application for developing a new part in one program, and approval took place in another. For example, to clarify the status of a project, employees had to write to each other by e-mail.

There was no single document repository with the ability to work together. Any correction in the file meant re-sending it to all approvers.

The purchasing department first sent out a bunch of letters to material suppliers, and then compared the received CPs manually. It took a lot of time to compare all the conditions. One company offered good prices, but was already loaded with orders for other projects. Another company had more expensive products, but the delivery times were several times shorter.

After coordinating the documents and selecting the supplier, it was necessary to plan all stages of the work. For each group of parts, the manager wrote down the tasks from scratch, indicated the responsible persons and deadlines. It was difficult to understand how things were going as a whole – I had to constantly pester colleagues and collect information bit by bit.

In essence, all these problems arise due to the lack of NPD (New Product Development), a system for developing new products. It would streamline the entire process of creating a finished product: from collecting proposals and assessing their potential to testing prototypes and launching production.

The company needed:

• speed up the process of creating and coordinating applications for the development of parts;

• structure and simplify the work of employees, from comparing supplier proposals to drawing up a project plan and monitoring its implementation;

• centralize data storage.

We have automated the process of developing new products: the technical specifications are generated based on the created application, and approvals are carried out in a single system

After identifying the bottlenecks, it was necessary to decide on a tool for their development. For this purpose, the low-code BPM system “First Form” was chosen, in which it was possible to combine and automate all processes.

Now all activities on developing new products are carried out in one system. The process looks like this: an employee of the production department creates and fills out an application for developing a part, uploads the files necessary for the work here, and all data is sent to the corporate file storage.

When implementing the system, for each type of application (for developing a part), the composition of approvers was entered in advance. BPMS itself monitors the approval stages and sends reminders to employees who delay the process.

We also simplified the process of creating another important document — the technical assignment. The employee selects an approved application for a part from the list, and on its basis a technical assignment form is automatically created, where most of the fields are already filled in.

BPM system with supplier selection process helps to collect CP and determine the best offer

Based on the technical specifications, the employee creates a request in Russian or English. The supplier database has already been loaded into the system. The employee only needs to select companies and send requests to everyone directly from the system.

Suppliers study the requirements and offer their delivery terms in response. The employee evaluates each received commercial offer according to several criteria: workload with other orders from the company, communication on the technical side and with the manager, specialization, delivery times, technical risk, price and production cycle.

The system specifies criteria and possible answer options. Each answer is assigned a weight. For example, the supplier currently has orders from us in progress — 0 points; no orders, the supplier is free — 1 point.

The employee enters points, generates a summary report with one click, and sees which supplier has the best conditions.

The system includes a design work constructor

For the production of each group of parts, a project template is loaded into the system. It automatically sets the order of subtasks, deadlines and performers.

The type of detail determines what steps the process consists of and who will be involved in it, and those responsible are assigned automatically. A dashboard with summary information on the company's projects is also generated.

First, the project resolves issues with documents – agreeing on and signing a contract with the supplier, drawing up permitting documentation, recording prepayment, and so on.

After this, production tasks usually begin: transfer of product samples, approval of drawings and 3D models, sending raw materials for testing.

When the parts are ready, all that remains is to pay the remaining amount to the supplier, order transport and accept everything at the warehouse.

The result of implementing a BPM system with NPD and project management functions

The introduction of the new product development system has simplified the work of the production department employees as a whole. All data is stored in one place, and approvals are faster thanks to automatic reminders and clearly structured processes.

The system has taken over many routine tasks. Applications and technical specifications are now compiled automatically based on templates.

Selecting a supplier has also become easier. Purchasing specialists generate and send requests directly from a task in the system. Evaluation of supplier proposals is now standardized – an automatic summary report shows the best options based on clear criteria and objective data.

Analytics tools help managers track project progress in real time and quickly respond to potential delays.