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Robotic Process Automation In Manufacturing Industry: A Revolution

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Jagdip Kumar, Head-IT, Cosmo Films Limited

Jagdip is a specialist of large IT projects in Transforming Business

In today’s time, the speed with accuracy is the mantra for any successful organization. Most of the manufacturing organizations today have various automation tools to execute business transactions with greater speed along with data accuracy. Interfaces are available between various systems like ERP, CRM, Supplier Portals and Manufacturing Execution system to achieve greater speed and accuracy in business process execution. Organizations have tried to deploy automation processes successfully in all the areas but if any process needs manual intervention at any step, it becomes a bottleneck and the whole objective of automation is defeated.

The major objective for any organization is to achieve an end- to- end process automation without any manual interventions. With the help of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), this issue is resolved to a great extent with improvements in accuracy and cycle time and increased productivity. Any business process which requires data processing at a large scale and needs manual

intervention for verification process is best suited to qualify for RPA.

Manufacturing industries can automate various processes by using RPA with better controls. For instance:

1) Master Data creation i.e. vendor master, customer master, material master etc. could be fully automated with the help of RPA
2) Customer payment receipts into ERP can be fully automated which results in better execution of the processes like credit limits, cash discounts, faster delivery to customers etc.
3) Bank reconciliation of vendors & customers could be a business case for RPA
4) Booking of vendor invoices received into ERP system could be a good case for RPA
5) In other words, reading the information from one system and posting the transaction on another system is a good example of RPA implementation.

Depending on the nature of the business and individual requirements, other business cases can be built to utilize the RPA technologies. Many software programs are available to develop RPA as per business requirements. Before implementing RPA in the system, one needs to build proper business cases which can help in generating high ROI on RPA implementation.

In any manufacturing organization, almost in every function, people indulge in many mundane and repetitive tasks which can be automated with some changes into the existing business process. Initially, a company should start with 4-5 boats and after achieving successful results, can target the Complex Process Automation (CPA). If RPA is effectively used, the transaction process time can be reduced by 50 percent to 80 percent based on the process requirement and number of applications involved into the process, while it will also cut costs, drive efficiency and improve quality. Chat boats are getting used very commonly now-a-days, which is a very good example of RPA success story.

As per the Gartner forecast, the Robotic Process Automation market will grow by 41 percent per year, though this growth will be tempered by new next-generation AI products. Organizations implementing RPA defiantly will be able to take advantage of early movers.

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