If you take a bird’s eye view of your manufacturing company’s store floor, you will see a complex communication network of workstations, departments, and project groups. Every process, every machine, every incoming order, every sensor and now every employee is constantly producing data and knowledge. Communication is scattered and ineffective, with various systems, projects, and platforms operating in parallel. This includes department or project-specific collaboration solutions, bulletin boards, individual machine dashboards, and the classic intranet.
For your store floor communication, this means that a lot of information often arrives too slowly, incompletely, or sometimes not at all in the places where it may be most urgently needed.
This fundamental problem can be avoided by taking a strategic approach to communication: which workplace needs which type of information from which source to be able to work as effectively as possible? With a strategic approach that we call “smart communication“, you can successfully meet this challenge.
From a technical perspective, cross-departmental information exchange can often only take place to a limited extent. This is because the information logics differ depending on the department and the associated “information sphere” and are not coordinated with each other. This becomes particularly problematic when processes must function across departments:
A breakdown of a machine on production line A is raw information that affects production, its planning process and possibly personnel utilization. However, this event is also relevant for logistics. This is not about the fact that a machine has stopped, and new tasks therefore must be carried out in production, but rather about follow-up questions that are aimed at logistics-specific tasks: Can we deliver goods that were to be produced with this machine on time? And if not, when will it be possible instead? What current idle times and new capacity planning will result in the meantime and what bottlenecks will have to be considered when the delivery is made up for? If the raw information “machine failure” is simply passed on to intralogistics, this means communicative isolation.
A smart communication approach at this point would be as follows: from the machine failure in information cycle A, production, relevant follow-up questions are defined automatically and in real time for information cycle B, logistics, as listed above in the text, for example. The relevant information is then communicated to logistics on this basis and how to react to it is also defined. This means that specific key figures and concrete work orders for logistics are generated from error messages from a machine.
The more complex such cooperation between the various departments is, the more important it becomes that relevant instructions are communicated to each of them, giving them a clear overview and enabling them to work more effectively.
This makes clear what sounds banal but has not yet been considered in the information logic of many companies: the intelligent communication of cross-departmental processes and thus the greater success of the different areas of a store floor are inextricably linked.
The large amount of information produced by the various store floor elements brings with it a second decisive challenge: prioritizing, reducing and individualizing communication for each instance. This means that each workstation or individual person must always be made aware of the most important information for the next process step.
An example: In a large production hall, error messages are constantly being generated on various production lines, each of which is displayed on the machine. The problem is that most of the errors or warning messages are relatively irrelevant for most workers. And if there are several lines, it is not only confusing but also superfluous to keep track of every message with all its implications.
Smart communication would mean automatically collecting the information from all production lines, applying a logic filter, and displaying in one place precisely those messages that represent a prioritized task for a particular worker. Neither he nor other colleagues are distracted by information that is irrelevant to them. At the same time, they run less risk of overlooking problems or misinterpreting key figures. This type of logic is characterized by the fact that it separates what is relevant from what is irrelevant for individual workstations and prioritizes them at the same time.
Once these two central communication weaknesses have been overcome, the various departments, every workstation and ultimately every employee are in constant communication with each other. And only to the extent that it is useful in the respective position. This not only improves communication, but also your overall processes. Especially in the following areas:
Both smart networking of the various store floor areas and individual processing of information can only succeed if communication takes place in real time and, above all, is constantly adapting. The infrastructure for this must therefore be agile and easily adaptable. This means, for example, that information from any grown IT structures such as cloud applications, Excel spreadsheets, PLCs, MES or ERP systems can be selected, processed and then individually prepared at any location.
It would be dubious to claim that a central solution alone can meet all these requirements for intelligent communication within the company. Neither an ERP, MES or a BI solution as an analysis system for historical data, which actually originates from controlling, can guarantee this flexibility and real time. Either there is a lack of speed, processing, display and technical customization options or a lack of sufficient connection to the various components around the store floor such as PLCs.
A centralized approach is therefore not compatible with smart communication. Instead, the aim is to find the best solution with a higher-level, decentralized, and complementary logic at the necessary locations that establishes connections between all existing information cycles and offers the best added value for employees.
Kristin has been with Peakboard since October 2019. As Director for Brand, Organization & Culture, she adds that special something to our brand by skillfully directing the marketing department and weaving together culture and organization.
