RPA

an interim balance

Stefan Holzleithner, 16.08.2021

Six months after the first RPA lighthouse project, it is time for RO-RA Aviation Systems to take stock and reflect on the past months. It was a continuous learning process with ups and downs, but the positive result speaks for itself.

After the initial project, there was a great response from the company’s employees with ideas for process automation and reducing repetitive tasks. We ranked the suggestions according to effort and benefit and started with the quick wins. These are projects where a high benefit was expected and the effort seemed comparatively low. With this approach, we managed to inspire the initially hesitant employees and extract the maximum benefit for the company.

One of the most successful bots is the one to facilitate the release of assembly orders. Before the bot, an employee had to regularly check all future production orders to see whether all the required components were available and then release them. Now the bot checks the ERP-System under the supervision of an employee and automatically releases the orders if the conditions are met. This corresponds to about 80% of the order volume.

All implemented projects together result in an annual cost saving of €30.000. In addition, €10.000 in non-recurring costs could be avoided.

Nevertheless, it sometimes happened that the amount of work was underestimated and thus the programming caused just as much effort as was saved in actual work. Each of these projects was part of a learning process for new methods and problem-solving approaches to be able to select RPA projects more effectively in the future.

In summary, the demand for new automations is high and the acceptance for the new technology among colleagues is high too. To all responsible for Digitization out there, I could highly recommend to give RPA a try, like MS PowerAutomate, which we used or the market leader UI-Path.