Frédéric Gagnon, P. Eng.
Vice President of Digital Transformation and Smart Factory at Merkur
Frédéric Gagnon, an engineer passionate about innovation, has been working in the manufacturing sector for 20 years. Since joining Merkur, he has contributed to major projects, including the development of new products, the implementation and design of new technologies, and the improvement of business processes. For the past five years, he has specialized in supporting manufacturing companies in their digital transition and the evolution of their management systems.
In your daily operations, you may be responsible for coordinating production activities and ensuring that your colleagues work well together to transform strategic objectives into concrete actions.
If this is the case, it is your duty to provide the tools and environment conducive to helping your team members achieve the excellence goals set by the company. These tools, which are integral to your operations management system, must fulfill their mission of energizing communication and collaboration to make them more fluid, fast, and efficient.
In this article, our experts aim to inspire you with some recognized strategic avenues to equip your teams and aspire to operational excellence.
1. Adopt Operational Software for Specific Production Functions
Production teams handle a large amount of information daily to plan tasks, solve issues on the shop floor, coordinate maintenance, etc. The problem is that this information is still too often supported by cumbersome Excel files that require maintenance and multiple clerical operations. To remedy this, there is now an impressive array of software that can be integrated into the existing ecosystem to fulfill specific production functions.
These types of software are numerous and often recognizable by their acronyms (mostly in English): Advanced Planning System (APS), Manufacturing Execution System (MES), Warehouse Management System (WMS), Daily Management System (DMS), Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), etc. Each software focuses on specific production functions and aims to exchange data to facilitate the planning, coordination, execution, and control of tasks.
Selecting the right software requires a methodical and rigorous approach. Once deployed, these operational software solutions will allow you to automate many of your processes and procedures. You will achieve significant gains by reducing human errors, improving the visibility and quality of exchanged data, and speeding up the processing of this information.
It is also good to know that all these types of software are gradually integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI), whose uses are promising, for example:
- Predicting equipment failures to reduce downtime and maintenance costs
- Precisely detecting production defects to increase product quality
- Suggesting optimal periods and quantities of materials to order based on consumption history and market price trends
- Providing training and work instructions based on realistic scenarios
2. Benefit from the Right Tools to Improve Communication and Collaboration Between Teams
Good communication and collaboration tools bring numerous advantages: shared information is more reliable, response times between employees are reduced, and the instant contribution of each user fosters innovation. Again, the solutions are numerous and can present very different characteristics. A combination of several solutions is generally necessary within the organization to cover all needs. On the other hand, too many available solutions for an employee inevitably lead to inefficiency in information exchanges, which is counterproductive.
Communication tools are generally divided into two main categories: synchronous and asynchronous.
- Synchronous communications refer to real-time exchanges for direct and rapid interactions (Chat, Videoconferencing, phone, etc.)
Asynchronous communications refer to communications that do not require an immediate response and can offer more flexibility (Emails, Reports, Messaging, task manager, etc.)
Communication and collaboration must be supported by a good document management infrastructure whose role is to store and easily retrieve documents or information and share them with the right people.
The choice of communication and collaboration technologies must be thought out based on user needs. Even for this type of technology, it is recommended to develop a specification to position the necessary tools relative to each other and ensure they complement each other well. This way, you will avoid redundancy, which can translate into additional costs, and gain efficiency in exchanges and collaboration between teams.
3. Inspire Yourself with Agile Project Management Methodologies
Facing the rapid and frequent changes that inevitably occur in the organization’s operations requires flexibility that agile project management methodologies can provide. The Scrum and Kanban methods are among the most popular.
The Scrum method allows a team to focus on achieving specific objectives over successive short periods, called sprints (a few days to at most a few weeks). Short regular meetings, which could be 15 to 20 minutes per day, allow precise tracking of tasks and results, facilitating workload assessment and work adjustment.
The Kanban method stands out for its visual aspect, as tasks are positioned very concretely for the entire team to see based on their progress in the workflow (e.g., To Do, In Progress, Done). Visualization allows for quickly understanding where projects stand, identifying bottlenecks, and tracking progress in real-time. This method applies equally well to project tracking and continuous process improvement.
Applying agile management methodologies can therefore offer interesting benefits: they improve flexibility, collaboration, and efficiency to react more quickly to changes. Although their implementation may encounter challenges, a favorable organizational culture, adequate training, and stakeholder engagement facilitate their adoption and maximize benefits.
Conclusion
Integral to your operations management system, information exchanges and collaboration must be fluid, fast, and efficient to help your teams achieve the desired operational excellence. Adopting specialized software, implementing effective communication tools, and applying agile practices can bring numerous benefits to your teams and allow you to respond more quickly to changing customer needs.
Would you like to evaluate the possibilities of implementing one or more of these strategies? At Merkur, our experts have the experience to support you in this process thanks to a methodical approach based on the specific needs of your organization. Contact us to learn more!
