MANUFACTURING INSIGHTS OPINIONManufacturing firms have made great strides in improving their productivity over the past 10 years. Much of the credit goes to continuous improvement methodologies such as lean and Six Sigma. These initiatives have eliminated wasteful activities, introduced greater consistency, and provided a measure of control. In fact, our research shows that companies with mature continuous improvement programs enjoy faster revenue growth and higher profitability.
However, manufacturing firms still rely on paper-based forms for processing. High levels of paper clutter, manual completion, and duplicate keypunching represent areas of waste that most firms have not addressed. This is particularly true for operational activity ó incoming material, production processes, and finished goods shipping. Some information collection has been automated, largely to support transactions relative to a company's enterprise resource planning application, but the majority of information collection is less structured and a great candidate for digital capture technologies.
The central benefit of moving to digital capture in manufacturing lies largely in removing these wasteful paper obstacles to fully realizing the potential of continuous improvement activities. Document management becomes less costly as the storage and retrieval of important reference information becomes more streamlined. And the information itself becomes more complete, accurate, and timely. An additional benefit of the technology is the shift to electronic processes, which is certainly in line with companies' efforts to be more environmentally sustainable.
Manufacturing Insights recommends that manufacturing firms look at technologies such as digital penñbased information capture and document scanning as enablers to capturing these benefits. These technologies are intuitive to use and provide a rapid return on investment. The investments integrate and complement continuous improvement activities.
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