Digital inspection software
nSpek – The Standard in Digital Inspection reporting software for heavy industries.
What are heavy industry?
A heavy industry operates in a sector that requires the management of heavy and large products such as large and heavy equipment and various installations (like heavy equipment, large machine tools for machining, commercial or industrial buildings, and large-scale infrastructure). They often contain complex or numerous processes.
The term heavy industry generally refers to activities that require the use of very important tools and intense capital in order to exist. Commodity production or processing sectors such as mining, metallurgy, steel, petrochemicals, stationery, and primary processing chemistry can be considered as examples of what is commonly classified in heavy industry. Some activities with a mechanical or electrical nature, such as shipbuilding or power generation, are also good examples.
For these reasons, heavy industry has a higher cycle rate in terms of investment and employment, thus digitizing the process of collecting data through form management software is now the new standard.
Why should heavy industry pros use digital intervention software?
Quite simply, in the era of Industry 4.0 and since the acceleration of innovation in digital transformation in the year 2020 (covid), working with paper and with manual transcription is a very expensive disadvantage. As in the mining industry, the future of your organization depends on your ability to modernize quickly. (we recommend you read the article cited in the previous sentence).
For example, the transportation and construction sector and their upstream supply activities were the bulk of heavy industry throughout the industrial era, as well as some capital-intensive industries. Traditional examples from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century included steel, artillery production, locomotive manufacturing, machine tool construction, and heavier types of mining.
All these machines, vehicles, tools, work environment, as well as the health and safety of employees, must follow strict standards, and be inspected regularly.
What is a digital inspection?
These heavy industries have always been inspected for as long as there have been standards to be met. Audit data collection has always been recorded on paper. While digital inspections are inspections carried out by technicians using an electronic tablet to record the results. On some platforms, inspection results can be printed or automatically added to an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or sometimes dubbed IMS (Integrated Management Software). The best software will forward the results and recommendations directly in a database like SQL.
What are the drawbacks of using paper?
Here are some of the difficulties of working with a non-digital inspection form:
- Paper can lead to a lack of storage space.
- Security issues.
- Likely to be exposed to physical damage and loss.
- Bulky document transportation.
- Editing and transcription problems.
- High costs.
- Limitations and delays in communication and collaboration during critical situations.
- Environmental damage among others: having an impact on the reputation of the employer brand.
Paper forms were a great way to do a good inspection job 20 years ago because it was the only way. Quality control technicians would ignore the mishaps of the disappearance of their paperwork, health, and safety auditor supervisors would ignore illegible writing, and customers would ignore coffee stains and dirty fingerprints. Some organizations would go so far as to rewrite the inspection properly yet another time, either by themselves or using up the valuable time of an administrative assistant, before showing their reports to the client, investors, or their superior.
The main problem with a paper inspection is that there are no two inspections alike. Imagine how different inspections are from four different technicians. Now multiply this in several locations, and you start to get an idea of the magnitude of a lack of standardization. For your efficiency and quality gains, it is important to use inspection software that allows control of the workflow when desired.
From the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, as the chemical and electrical industries developed, they involved components of heavy and light industry, which soon went well for the automotive and aviation industries. Modern shipbuilding (since steel has replaced wood) is considered heavy industry. Large systems are often characteristic of heavy industry such as the construction of skyscrapers and large dams during the post-World War II era, and the manufacture/deployment of large rockets and giant wind turbines throughout the 21st century.
We thrive on technology, so there is almost no excuse to not digitize your paperwork anymore.
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