Digitizing Manufacturing Excellence – Proof of Value in 8 weeks!

Powerful Manufacturing Excellence tools can make a major difference to efficiency, cost and operator engagement. However, implementation of many Industry 4.0 projects is much too slow which is often a key factor in their failure and holding back manufacturing’s digital revolution.

There is an alternative – with the right technology and approach, the business case for digitizing Manufacturing Excellence can be proven in weeks rather than months or years. This unlocks huge potential to transform operations and deliver Return on Investment in the time it would have taken just to plan a project using conventional technology.

Results

A great example is a major project with a global chemicals company where Cyzag was able to prove the value of their Manufacturing Excellence suite, Cypher.team, by identifying savings in just 8 weeks.

Cyzag implemented the product and delivered results in the first pilot site in South America in this period. Only 12 weeks from the start of the pilot phase in 2019, Cypher.team was delivering value at a second plant and over the following 6 months it was implemented at 21 of the company’s plants in 11 countries.

Since then the rollout has continued to a total of over 65 sites, many of which were delivered during the COVID-19 pandemic. All of those implementations were handled remotely from Cyzag’s HQ in London, UK with Cypher.team in use by operators within an average of 3-4 weeks.

At every plant, savings were identified and ROI was proven in weeks. This was achieved with:

• A standardized approach to gathering and contextualizing process performance data
• Embedding Manufacturing Excellence methodologies in a consistent way
• User-centric cloud-based software with rapid acceptance and adoption by operators
• No-code/lo-code design enabling rapid configuration in any plant or process
• An extensive library of ready-built models reducing config time

The Challenge

Many process manufacturing plants want to both digitize their operations and deliver process performance improvements through Manufacturing Excellence with $millions in savings at stake.

Common problems across the sector include: multiple legacy tools that create complexity and hinder collaboration; low data maturity and a lack of contextual information for operations.

Manufacturing software projects often mean implementation cycles of months or years with big project teams on both sides and big budgets to match. Volumes of documentation are produced and ultimately many projects fail to meet user requirements with rigid, generic tools. This all takes so long that engagement and huge amounts of value are lost, pushing ROI into years, not weeks.

The Solution

An alternative approach is highly focused cloud-based technology that is best-in-class for key elements of process manufacturing. The purpose-built nature of this type of software means it is highly relevant to users, dramatically reducing the learning curve and the need for training.

Time-to-value is also dramatically reduced by putting users at the heart of implementation. This means starting and finishing the project with operators. By ensuring that software makes their work more engaging and enabling them to make more frequent and more informed decisions, a culture of manufacturing excellence can be quickly developed.

Good cloud-based, agile software is also continuously and rapidly evolving, much of which is driven by a strong relationship with a wide user base. In the case of Cypher.team, more than 80% of new features are built as a result of direct user feedback. This means that value continues to be delivered throughout the lifecycle of the solution.

Conclusion

Delivering proof of value in just weeks is a real opportunity, even in complex manufacturing processes. This can be achieved with the right combination of purpose built, cloud-based software and a user-centric implementation approach. For Cypher.team, average savings are $400k per plant per year so ROI is realized in unprecedented timescales.