Many companies have now recognized the importance of digitalization and prioritized it accordingly. However, they are not sure where the best starting point is and how process digitization should be implemented. The core issues here are procurement and supplier management as well as the creation of customer and supplier documentation for their products. Pioneers in plant engineering use cloud-based processes to carry out these processes efficiently, particularly in the areas of cross-departmental collaboration and coordination with external partners and suppliers.

Smart administrative control processes

The digital transformation of administrative control processes in the company is preceded by an analysis of the existing business processes and workflows. The following questions should be answered: What are the goals? Where do problems occur? What improvements should be achieved? What (optimization) measures are necessary? Examples of this could be an automated workflow with all parties involved, real-time access to documents or deadline tracking and escalation management.
Often, it is only through the intensive analysis of existing processes, also involving external IT service providers on a case-by-case basis, that it is possible to identify which processes are "causing pain". Once these questions have been answered and a suitable solution provider has been found, the next step is to model the business processes. The company's own organizational structure can be used as a basis for this. Based on this, cross-departmental and cross-company business processes and workflows are modeled using BPMN 2.0 (Business Process Model and Notation Language) and stored in the selected system.

Organize using a cloud solution

In addition to large order volumes, project management in plant and mechanical engineering also has to meet high documentation requirements resulting from the contractual and legal framework conditions of the client or the respective sales country: Clean and complete supplier documentation is essential in order to be able to complete project acceptances on time. In addition to the project and product-specific documents, safety documents, guarantees, certification, approval and authorization documents or maintenance manuals must be provided for each component of a system. As a result, supplier documentation can quickly comprise up to many thousands of documents. These are sent as email attachments and made available via download servers. The different input channels make it difficult for project managers to keep track of which supplier has already provided which documents.

If information or documents are missing or incomplete in the supplier documentation, this can lead to delays in the progress of the project, which in the worst case can also result in contractual penalties. At the same time, exchanging documents by email and via various download platforms reduces the efficiency of projects. Additional time has to be spent on manually managing the data and data exchange is often not sufficiently secure. It is also difficult to maintain an overview of the completeness of all documentation components.

Central digital documentation

The procurement process with digital supplier documentation.

© Fabasoft

Error-free and centralized documentation is essential in order to be able to properly process technical documentation in mechanical and plant engineering across organizational boundaries. A cloud-based system that can meet the requirements of all parties involved - from component and system manufacturers to plant engineers, authorities and clients - in a timely and effective manner and in accordance with the required safety standards is ideal for this purpose.

Procurement with digital supplier documents

If such a system is used and the procurement process is also digitalized with regard to supplier documentation, procurement can look like this: The plant manufacturer transmits its order to a product manufacturer. The order is received in SAP and transferred to the digital supplier documentation solution, broken down into order items with the associated trading parts. In the next step, the product manufacturer specifies its sub-suppliers for the individual commercial parts and commissions them. The component orders are received by the sub-suppliers in the respective ERP system. Production of the components begins.

At the same time, each sub-supplier is given access to their 'repository' in the cloud-based supplier management system and can enter or directly create all specified documentation components. Document statuses and automated workflows are used to transmit and process all documentation-related information in an organized and traceable manner. The product manufacturer can quickly and efficiently check the documentation status of the individual sub-suppliers and take corrective action if necessary. Once the documentation for all items and commercial parts is complete, it can be transmitted to the plant manufacturer, also via the supplier documentation in the cloud. To do this, the plant manufacturer is either given access to the supplier documentation or the documentation is transferred to the plant manufacturer's system via an interface.

In order to manage supplier documentation efficiently, the system should offer the following functionalities:

- Automated processes for compliance and efficiency.

- Dashboards for a better overview of all documentation components.

- Deadline management so that delivery dates can be met.

- Template management to ensure that all documents meet the plant manufacturer's requirements.

- Document status to show which documents are not yet complete.

- Intelligent search to save time when accessing individual documents.

- Numerous standardized interfaces for easy connection to various systems (SAP).

- Structured filing for each subcontractor.

Advantages for project progress

All suppliers involved in a plant can provide their own documents directly online according to a previously defined scheme for the overall documentation. This works across countries and continents and not only provides traceability. The documents can also be accessed directly at any time in the latest approved version. In the area of conflict between laws and standards, contracts, economic factors, language requirements and strict deadlines, the cloud-based supplier documentation succeeds in setting standards that are easy to implement for the respective sub-suppliers. As a result, supply chain stakeholders and end customers benefit from reliable data that is complete and clearly traceable.

The dynamic documentation

The status overview of the individual documentation components.

© Fabasoft

The digital (product) documentation enables the end customer to continue using the documentation after the project has been completed. Until now, the documentation was handed over at the end of the project and was therefore 'frozen' at this stage. With the cloud-based supplier documentation for a system, documents, updates and revisions can be entered on an ongoing basis. The technical documentation is always up to date.

Security as a key function

Modern cloud services offer sophisticated identity management as well as role and authorization concepts. This is the foundation for compliance in communication with external persons and companies and is therefore an important prerequisite when many project partners are working on a project and data access must be logged precisely.

Two-factor authentication ensures access and data security right from the login stage. Reliable end-to-end encryption ensures that data is never transmitted unencrypted. Each user is defined via the responsible role and an authorization concept in the project. These two tools can be used to design flexible workflows that comply with the BPMN standard.

Andreas Dangl is Business Unit Executive for Cloud Services at Fabasoft.

© Fabasoft

In addition to these security aspects, data storage with regard to the
EU GDPR must be taken into account. The location of the cloud infrastructure determines legal security, liability towards cloud customers and often even the access to stored company data permitted by the respective legal system.

A reputable cloud service provider can provide a range of certifications and test certificates. In addition to the standard ISO certifications for information security and data protection, such as ISO 27001 and ISO 27018 as well as ISO 9001 for quality management or ISO 20000-1 for IT service management, there are other certifications for cloud products. When it comes to IT security and the protection of personal data, the C5 certificate should be emphasized - based on the 'Cloud Computing Compliance Controls Catalogue', or C5 for short.

Published by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), it specifies the minimum requirements that cloud service providers must meet. These environmental parameters ensure transparency with regard to system description, jurisdiction and locations of data storage, data processing and data backup, disclosure and investigation powers as well as certifications. The fulfillment of well over 100 criteria is certified by independent auditors and subsequently contractually guaranteed by the cloud provider. This certificate should therefore be taken into account when selecting a cloud provider.