ApplyIT's electronic minutes module

IT in Manufacturing

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September 2010 IT in Manufacturing

Breathe new life into production meetings with OpSuite.

ApplyIT has enhanced its plant operations OpSUITE to incorporate an electronic meeting minutes (EMM) module, designed to improve meeting effectiveness and operational performance.

In industry, meetings can be time-consuming and are often unproductive. On plants, information regarding operations is not always available when critical decisions need to be made. Situations on site can change significantly between meetings, often rendering the decisions taken at a meeting out of date. The larger the number of meeting attendees, the greater the opportunity cost – and the higher the probability that at least one person is missing information needed to make a decision. Without a common database of minutes and action items, issues are often not followed through and there is a lack of personal accountability for situations.

OpSUITE EMM is designed to improve efficiency during meetings and communication among individuals between them, allowing time spent on site to be more productive by linking meeting agendas directly to plant activities. During meetings, information from plant and business systems is automatically retrieved in pre-configured agendas that consolidate information and present it as key performance indicators (KPIs), allowing drilldown to the underlying source data.

Notes and actions are either supplied ahead of the meeting, or captured during the meeting to improve agility and operational follow through. Specific meeting items can be scheduled into the agenda of other meetings when necessary, with actioned items tracked and escalated if left unattended. Any operating concern noted in a FlexiLOG shift log may be escalated onto the agenda of a meeting where it is exposed to a wider forum and appropriate action may be taken.

Integration into ApplyIT’s OpSUITE, specifically OptiRUN, IntelliPERMIT andSmartSURE allows for maintenance, safety, quality, environmental and other key operating parameters to be efficiently reported through EMM at routine production meetings. These can then review personnel on shift, look at training and competency requirements, maintenance work orders, outstanding permits-to-work, safety incidents and shift log entries.

ApplyIT product development manager Scott Bredin says that OpSUITE EMM’s ability to pull operational information into a central repository where it can be made actionable is what makes the application unique. “A typical example might be a person on night shift noticing a problem requiring attention. Rather than noting the issue in the log and depending on others to take the issue forward for discussion, OpSUITE EMM enables details of the problem to be sent directly onto the agenda of the morning production meeting, where it will be prioritised and acted on without delay.

“OpSUITE EMM has enabled a radical change in the way information is gathered for meetings that are held on site, and the speed at which priority items can be identified and handled in the meeting.”

For more information contact Scott Bredin, ApplyIT, +27 (0)31 275 8083, [email protected], www.applyit.com

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IT in Manufacturing

ApplyIT's electronic minutes module

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