While the image of the smart factory keeps evolving, one thing remains the same. It’s more important than ever to create integrations and connections between systems to make sense of and utilize the endless stream of data manufacturers are collecting. Only through powerful integrations and the advances of automation can manufacturers eliminate the need for manual work, save time, and prevent mistakes.
The integration between two systems is like the music created by two separate instruments. Each system has its purpose or its own tune. Yet only together can they bring your quality management to the next level. In this current development cycle, the AlisQI product team will focus on this topic. Why should manufacturers consider integrations? How do these integrations improve their factory’s infrastructure? And what’s next on the AlisQI agenda? Let’s find out.
Quality data arise everywhere, in your organization and in the entire supply chain. Capturing this data and being able to interpret it is key for the factory of the future. Heightened connectivity – between people, people and machines, and between individual systems – contributes to this. To achieve this connectivity, manufacturers need to advance from traditional quality management – stop using disparate systems, and work together rather than in silos with minimal cross-functional ownership.
Next to automation, we see integration as one of the vital components of quality management. We believe that it should connect processes, departments, and teams within the organization as well as include an organization’s suppliers, partners, and customers. For that, organizations have to step up their quality management and adopt an omnipresent view.
And if omnipresent quality is not a good enough reason to consider integrations, the few use cases highlighted below will surely change your mind:
Leveraging integrations, manufacturers can improve their bigger IT infrastructure and enjoy multiple benefits. From substantial time savings when transferring, processing, and analyzing data to improved testing and reporting, and allowing the team to respond faster and be proactive rather than reactive.
They can also enjoy a shift in their focus – since this will allow them to spend less time on operational tasks and more time on improvement. Take your QMS for example, configure it once, and you’ll get prompt alerts and smart notifications about even the smallest changes in quality. One step further, integrating your QMS with other systems makes this robust, fail-safe, and easy to deploy.
Integrating applications is nothing new. Despite this, most companies treat this opportunity as an afterthought rather than a priority. In most cases, they build integrations after adding new applications or on an as-needed basis.
Sure, integration may have been cumbersome and expensive traditionally. But with the modern integration tech available today, it’s easy to develop the bigger ecosystem of a manufacturing plant. Moreover, you no longer need to be a computer science graduate to create integrations. iPaaS and other modern technology democratize the integration landscape, making it accessible to citizen developers.
For us, integration is one of the cornerstones and not an afterthought. We know that a modern, cloud-based QMS is not a standalone application but it’s part of a bigger IT infrastructure. Using AlisQI, manufacturers can connect a large variety of systems – the MES on the shop floor, ERP systems throughout different facilities, IoT sensors, lab instruments, and their supplier or customer portal. We leverage modern technology to consume data from external sources, as well as provide access to all data in AlisQI for external tools. This includes both raw data as well as aggregated data.
In this new development cycle, we will add several integration features to articulate our vision of integration.
In conclusion, manufacturers can leverage integrations and the advances of automation to fine-tune their quality management. At AlisQI, integrations are a cornerstone for quality management and not an afterthought. Your QMS is the ideal hub for the factory of the future, connecting a large variety of systems and making quality management smart and omnipresent.