One of the activities of the Rotating Company is the overhaul of electric motors. An expert assessment must be carried out before the work can begin. To improve this procedure, all the steps were digitised, which can only improve speed, correctness and customer friendliness.
The Rotating Company (TRC) might seem like a new name on the market, but it is actually the holding company for Motoren Francoys and Pump Fleet Services, which together have more than 50 years of experience with technical partners of professional and industrial customers in managing the complete life cycles of rotating equipment, including electric motors, pumps, reduction gear, drives, fans, blowers and generators. The company consists of the Francoys Motors departments, which specialise in the overhaul, servicing and sale of electric drives, and Pump Fleet Services. The company, whose customers are mainly in Belgium and northern France, is distinguished by its reliability and short delivery times, for which it can rely on a large stock of parts, extensive machinery and specialised employees. Offering high-quality solutions with very short lead times tailored to the customer is a real challenge, for which the company is constantly working on an appropriate approach.
Digitization of expertise steps
One of the most important activities is the maintenance of motors, which can be done in very short time frames. Before effective maintenance work is carried out on a motor that has been brought in or collected, an expert assessment must be carried out. This step is needed to determine what exactly needs to be repaired and to estimate how many work hours this will take. This report is used to draw up a quotation which is then sent to the customer for signing. It is therefore important that the assessment is as thorough and complete as possible. The operator who carries out this assessment is also supported by TRC’s Azumuta digital guidance & check system.
With this in place, TRC wanted to take things a step further by automating the rest of the reporting procedure. Via Azumuta's online platform, it is possible to send a trigger (REST API call) when the expert assessment is completed. In this case, the trigger is captured by the Microsoft Power Automate platform, which then automatically retrieves the entire expert report in Azumuta. Power Automate then starts an approval flow that enables the production manager to review the report. If the report is complete and correct, it will be automatically forwarded to the ERP system, where the report will be linked to the correct order number or dossier. The ERP system has a portal where customers can view these reports themselves. They therefore no longer have to be manually linked or forwarded to the customers.
If the report turns out to be incomplete, the production manager can 'reject' it and the operator can resume or supplement the report. If the operator then goes through the last step again, the whole flow starts again.
Based on this expert report, a quotation is drawn up and sent to the customer. The operator will only start the work after this has been signed.
Efficient further handling
The actual work is guided by the Azumuta platform in the same way. Once everything has been done and the necessary quality checks have been performed, this will trigger the Power Automate platform, which will then retrieve that report in the same way and send it through the approval flow.
At some steps in this process, tests are performed with certain measuring devices. These devices also generate reports that are also automatically linked to the respective dossiers via the Power Automate platform.
Nothing but benefits
This approach involves much less manual labour. No more files have to be downloaded and no more PDFs have to be created and moved to the right place on the network share. The manual linking of the reports in the ERP system is also a thing of the past. All this now happens automatically.
The approval flow now also ensures that no unfinished expert reports go to the people who have to create the quotations. This flow makes everything run much more efficiently.
The complete automation of the expert report procedures was carried out in collaboration with Sirris, supported by the Voka Digihub process. TRC can now further expand this method of automation itself to other activities or flows within the company.
Are you interested in the realization of such automation or would like to know more about it? Then don’t hesitate to contact us!
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