Power Platform Use Cases in The Manufacturing Industry

The manufacturing industry today is often plagued with manually interpreting large amounts of data which involves tedious and complicated procedures. The probability of humans making an error is substantial.  

 At the same time, it is difficult for businesses to visualize data without the help of any powerful tool. There is a serious need for a platform to pose as an effective solution for all the complex issues faced by present-day firms and corporations. With the help of advanced technology, we can embrace it fully to improve our processes.  

  Microsoft Power Platform is a category of high-class products and services to build innovative yet simple business solutions that help visualize data and automate business processes. 

  The Power Platform allows organizations to harness the increasing flow of data to make fruitful interpretations. Microsoft Power Platform has several advantages that will give the industry the upper hand. The tool empowers manufacturing industries with an enterprise-grade platform that allows industries to unleash their huge potential.  

 Power Platform’s Role in The Manufacturing Industry  

There is a lot that companies get with the Microsoft Power Platform. It allows companies to generate valuable conclusions from data, deploy powerful applications, and leverage the power of AI. The solution offers firms the ability to reduce manual action, expand production, and organize business processes in the manufacturing industry.  

 Moreover, Power Platform has the power to replace old paper-based sign-off processes and transform businesses by offering relevant and accurate data to employees. With the Power Platform, firms are able to keep track of their trading and manage sales & accounts.  

 As a result, the Power Platform removes complexities by providing employees with easy-to-use tools to create apps, reports, chatbots, and dashboards with services in simple GUI, making the entire process hassle-free. 

 Microsoft Power Platform offers four products that work seamlessly together in simplifying everyday manufacturing processes and chores.  

    1. Power BI connects large amounts of data and makes it easier to interpret. Interactive reports, dashboards, and attractive visualizations make data analysis effortless. Power BI dashboards allow seamless data extraction from the Microsoft platform and further integrate it with other cloud-based solutions. 

  2. Power Apps offers users drag-and-drop features that build an effective user interface for mobile applications. The solution enables users to explore their creative side and build apps that operate on any modern web browser. Power Apps also offer various community plans that help discover hidden talents, and allow professional developers to solve business problems with the help of incredible visual tools. 

 3. Power Automate automates business processes without working on lengthy codes. You can either design a template from scratch or choose a pre-designed template to kickstart the operations. Power Virtual Agents allows users to quickly build virtual chat agents without coding. Based on user responses, virtual agents find suitable solutions for the problems. Businesses build adaptive cards in bots to make user interaction more personalized. Companies can create an FAQ bot using the Q&A Maker to deploy the bots at desired channels.  

 Reasons why PowerApps and Power Automate Are the First Choice When It Comes to Industrial Automation 

 Power Apps and Power Automate allow firms to set up their processes once and focus on other demanding tasks. These features are not helpful from a business growth standpoint but are also beneficial during regulatory or compliance checks. These features are very useful for manufacturers during times of unexpected regulatory checks.  

 For example, Power Automate gather easy approvals and communicate with external sources. Setting reminders, automating the delivery process, and saving time with quick approvals. 

Thus, these two features offer a relevant and practical approach to finding solutions to complex business problems. For example, various connectors allow seamless importing, exporting, and saving data. Microsoft PowerApps and Microsoft Power Automate have become the first choice for industrial automation. 

 Below are some top use cases that display how the manufacturing industry can streamline processes, enhance labor productivity, and increase revenue by instilling Power Platform in their operations. With an easy-to-use interface and low code approach, Power Platform has helped manufacturing industries to build mobile and web-based apps with completely custom UI. 

Top 5 use cases Of the Microsoft Power platform

  1.Lot tracking application in PowerApps 

Power Apps creates purchase orders, tracks inventory, records revenue, and prepares merchandise for invoicing. Before Power Apps, Excel was responsible for the entire communication process. An FMCG company made the most of PowerApps by automating its food processing lifecycle. The company received multiple invoices for raw materials daily from dozens of vendors. The receiving and validating process was manual, which consumed their time unnecessarily. They wanted an internal application that performed complete tracking seamlessly. PowerApps Lot tracking application made it easy for them. The shop floor and purchase department used the application to scan and track items without hassle. The reconciling process was less time-consuming and reduced the amount of manual entry and rework.   

 Learn More: How an FMCG company automated their food processing lifecycle using Power Apps 

  2. Invoice processing using Power automate 

Ultimate OCR (Optical Character Recognition) for businesses is a practical document processing solution built to speed up the automation process. This allows error-free extraction in minutes, thus reducing the time to process documents. As the entire process is automated, manual tasks and human errors are reduced.  

 A US-based agricultural product manufacturing company was looking for a solution to automate their invoice processing and eventually help them drive fast, error-free approvals. Beyond Intranet built a custom Microsoft 365 AI solution using OCR that automates the invoices meta-tagging and approval process in SharePoint Online. The process not only ensured high data accuracy, but multiple users could work on the common platform simultaneously without any reduction in the efficiency of the forum. The entire solution was cost-effective as the company could easily extract data from multiple sources. 

   Learn More:  US-based Agro products manufacturing company leverages Power automate  

 3. Decision-making with Data Visualisation 

For manufacturers in the hardware products industry, Power BI can assist them in seeing real-time, easy-to-read charts and data at a glance. The data that’s curated into a single location can provide valuable insights for decision-makers, who rely on statistics to implement changes or grow the business. But this is only possible if Power BI is used accurately. A leading North American-based manufacturer and designer for architectural hardware products, faced a similar problem. Their stakeholders were not impressed with the reports due to the poor performance and load times, dull and cumbersome reports along with outdated data architecture. Beyond Intranet resolved it by segregating reports for sales, orders, accounting and inventory. This helped them optimize their existing Power BI reports, optimize complex SQL procedures, and much more.  

 Learn More: How a North American based Manufacturer leveraged Power BI perfectly 

  4. Resource Effectiveness with Report Management

 One of the most tedious exercises is report management. It becomes even more challenging when a growing complexity of device production and testing projects in multiple locations with numerous skilled resources are working on them. A manufacturer of audio-video products in the USA faced a similar dilemma. Beyond Intranet helped them create resource management dashboards on Power BI instead of the usual SSRS reports since Power BI has robust capabilities for data visualizations. This resulted in the company making better decisions on task and resource allocation. Ultimately, the dashboard helped the company present valuable insights and detailed reports to stakeholders. 

 Learn More: How a US-based Manufacturing company transformed their management dashboard    

 5. Maximize ROI with Power Apps

Businesses that struggle to find a cross-platform business application with low code make the most with Power Apps. Leveraging Power Apps, businesses can calculate the economic viability of sending an immediate response to service calls outside of their core operating hours. Due to the tremendous savings from avoiding unnecessary callouts, there is an instant return on investment for businesses while getting an intuitive platform.   

With the help of  Microsoft PowerApps, making any reforms or introducing any new program within the industries is not tricky as PowerApps save time, energy, and effort. 

Conclusion

From building business applications to customizing and extending their offering for their solutions, Power Platform creates roadmaps for customer attention and retention and enables manufacturers to leverage the support of technology to limit the time spent on tedious processes.  

The Power Platform assures a complete makeover of the business operations by continuous development, support, and maintenance of existing processes. Not only you get seamless integration of Power Apps with other data systems without losing data, but you also get access to various consulting services that help design and develop apps while encouraging employees to use the app without much hassle.   

Beyond Intranet has successfully facilitated users with various services of Power Platform that redefine businesses by building innovative apps or customizing the existing ones while reducing the processing time for documents and bringing extensive cost savings to organizations. So, if you are looking to integrate with Microsoft Power Platform, associating with Beyond Intranet is an excellent decision to make.