How digital forms in manufacturing processes help you collect, manage and analyze data

The integration of digital forms into manufacturing processes brings a wide range of benefits to the industry by digitalization the collection, management and analysis of data in the life cycle of a product.

In this sense, and with the aim of showing all the competitive advantages of this type of tools, FIELDEAS Forms has held the webinar “The digital form integrated into the product lifecycle in manufacturing.”where our experts have shown how to implement digital forms in a simple, flexible and accessible way.

What is a digital form?

A digital form is an electronic version of a traditional paper form, whose data collection is done through digital tools.

In this way, digital forms facilitate the collection, management and analysis of data, crucial elements for developments, launches, marketing or continuous improvement of products within a company.

In addition, digital forms are very versatile tools because they have a lot of flexibility and can be used in a variety of ways. use at any stage of the life cycle of a product being manufacturedThe company’s products and services range from the initial phases of design, prototyping or raw material sourcing, to the final phase, after-sales, analysis of results and satisfaction surveys of end customers.

Thus, the integration of FIELDEAS Forms digital forms in the life cycle of a product brings with it:

• A revolution in precision and efficiency in manufacturing processes. This tool standardizes data capture and allows you to be much more precise in what you need to collect.
• It allows for exhaustive and real-time monitoring. We expose data on both web and mobile devices.
• Improved product traceability and quality . The transmission of this data to the supervisory profiles gives better traceability and product quality because they have the data in real time and can make decisions much more quickly.
• The margin of human error is significantly reduced and costs and production times are optimized.
• Ensures compliance with current regulations, both internal and external to the company. This leads to the drive for continuous process improvement and, above all, to increase customer satisfaction with products that meet high quality standards.

Benefits of digital forms in manufacturing processes

The industry in general is accustomed to the use of paper for data collection in the field. However, not implementing digital forms in manufacturing processes has disadvantages such as:

• Higher paper consumption.
• Model not scalable to changes that may arise in manufacturing processes.
• Waste of management time. Every time you have to make an adjustment to a paper data collection model, then you have to deploy it to the different work teams, you have to print it, send emails…
• Transcription errors. There is no homogeneity in the way data is collected among different users.
• Increased risk of lost or damaged documents.
• Slow transmission of information.

On the other hand, using FIELDEAS Forms digital forms in the manufacturing processes brings multiple advantages such as:

• Environmentally friendly by eliminating the use of paper.
• Optimization of process times.
• Efficiency and proactivity in the process.
• User experience quite friendly and modern
• Online access to all information
• Automated information flows that can be done with such a tool.

Use cases of digital forms in manufacturing processes

During the webinar, our experts explained each of the areas in which FIELDEAS Forms can intervene in the life cycle of a product in manufacturing.

Procurement

In logistics activities, FIELDEAS Forms digital forms can optimize the checking of access to the plant by carriers, the verification of documentation of orders arriving at the plant and the receipt of raw materials.

Manufacturing

In maintenance activities, the digital forms facilitate inspections of installations with preventive or corrective work and allow for reviews of fire protection equipment, among others.

In the field of safety, digital forms can be used in Occupational Risk Prevention (ORP) or in surveillance rounds.

On the other hand, digital forms optimize the Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) process, which involves the maintenance and production departments.

Quality

Digital forms facilitate product inspections, such as assays, tests… When the raw material arrives at the plant, for example, samples can be taken and labeled so that the laboratory team can perform their analysis and determine the results.

Warehouse

With the digital forms it is possible to keep an exhaustive control of the placement of the products in the warehouses and to carry out the inventory of finished product and of materials and spare parts.

Expedition

At the time of transport, the digital forms allow checking the product loading on the truck, picking references per order and checking the vehicle status.

After sales

In the customer service area, digital forms can be used to conduct satisfaction surveys, manage incidents and verify the quality of the delivered product.

Why integrate FIELDEAS Forms into your manufacturing processes?

There are many tools on the market that allow you to digitize forms, but FIELDEAS Forms has integration in its DNA.

As our experts explain, we do not enter companies to replace corporate systems, but we position ourselves as a transversal layer to all the systems that are used on a daily basis.

Thus, the main features of FIELDEAS Forms digital forms are:

• Standardization of processes. This solution allows each area of the company to report the same information in a standardized way.
• Ability to plan and assign tasks.
• Design of advanced customizable validation workflows. It is the customer himself who designs the validation flows.
• It improves the time to analyze and create reports because the information is obtained in real time.
• Centralizes information in a single channel or application. All departments use the same tool for data collection.
• Ability to export data in real time. Our connector and API layers allow data to be instantly returned to source or end systems.
• Personalized notifications to the different work groups.

In addition, digital forms in FIELDEAS Forms manufacturing processes have a number of great added values:

• Offline operation that adapts very well to different work environments.
• Advanced data types, such as signatures, QR, videos, voice notes…
• Geolocation and versioning of responses.
• Control of response times.
• Interactive run-time warnings for out-of-range data.
• Integration with corporate systems.
• Assignment to internal or external users.
• Linked forms.
• Conditional fields and regular expressions.
• Final report (PDF).

Integration with corporate systems

FIELDEAS Forms is an integrative tool, we not only replace paper or office automation tools for data collection, but we integrate with layers of IoT, ERP, MES, CMMS, CMMS or PLM, among others thanks to our APIs.

In addition, we do this integration in a bidirectional way, so that we can capture data from these systems and return them with the results of the executions.

Conclusions of digital forms in manufacturing processes

All of the above derives in a conclusion and a main advantage, the reduction of Time to Market. The implementation of digital forms in the production process of a company is a matter of days and, once implemented, the process of control of the production process is a matter of days. is expeditedThis allows the product to be on the market in a shorter period of time than when using paper forms.

Thus, the integration of digital forms in the life cycle of the product in manufacturing involves:

• A competitive advantage. This is a tool that with a single click allows you to publish a form to as many field users as you wish.
• Lowerdevelopment costs , since it is a non-code drag & drop tool. In this way, our users are able to design their own forms in a very agile way.
• Online feedback. Information is obtained in real time, allowing for more agile decision making.
• Adaptation to changes. Template versioning can be performed without interrupting data collection activity.
• Streamlining of administrative procedures.
• Increase in the company’s innovation.

If you want to see how FIELDEAS Forms digital forms work and how they can help you to optimize the life cycle of a product in manufacturing, do not hesitate to request your demo and our experts will show you all its advantages.