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The di­gital road to con­tinu­ous im­prove­ment

Home / News  / 2021  / The di­gital road to con­tinu­ous im­prove­ment

Bre­men, Ger­many

When it comes to di­git­al­isa­tion, we of­ten first think of the devices we hold in the palms of our hands, or the com­puters at work. But di­git­al­isa­tion goes fur­ther than that – it’s as much about the pro­cesses that hap­pen be­hind the scenes that provide value and make our lives easier and more ef­fi­cient. One of the best ex­amples of this is DPMS- the or­der to in­voice solu­tion – a ma­jor turn­ing point on KAE­FER’s di­gital LEAN jour­ney.

What is DPMS? Simply put, it’s a di­gital or­der-to-in­voice solu­tion cov­er­ing all KAE­FER’s ser­vices. From the very first step when a re­quest is re­ceived, through scop­ing and cost es­tim­ates and then au­thor­isa­tion, plan­ning and per­form­ance mon­it­or­ing, DPMS stream­lines the pro­cess and makes it fully trans­par­ent at every junc­ture. This is not just good for the cli­ent, who can see ex­actly what is hap­pen­ing at any point, but it also provides for greater ef­fi­ciency on KAE­FER’s part, as it makes all the re­sources re­quired for a pro­ject or pro­cess vis­ible and, con­se­quently, op­tim­is­able.

Putting productivity first

The un­der­ly­ing goal of DPMS is con­tinu­ous im­prove­ment, which is a nat­ural part of KAE­FER’s LEAN jour­ney. Live data en­ables fact-based de­cision mak­ing and greater con­trol, whilst the auto­ma­tion of re­pet­it­ive func­tions provides time for other, more pro­duct­ive tasks, to name just a few ways DPMS can im­prove the pro­cess. On top of that, re­sources can be al­loc­ated more ef­fect­ively and work­ing hours can be used in a more tar­geted way, tack­ling the jobs that need to be done on a pri­or­it­ised basis. The key is elim­in­at­ing un­ne­ces­sary steps on the road to com­plet­ing a pro­ject by giv­ing stake­hold­ers a de­tailed over­view of all the pro­ject ele­ments in one place. DPMS also makes daily work on site safer, easier and more ef­fi­cient. Ac­cord­ing to Marc-An­dré Lang, DPMS End-to-End Pro­ject Man­ager at KAEFER, “in­form­a­tion is entered once in­stead of sev­eral times, like would some­times be the case with ex­cel and pa­per spread­sheets. This makes the pro­cess easier to fol­low. Work al­loc­a­tion and ex­e­cu­tion can be man­aged by the Su­per­vi­sor and Fore­man, al­low­ing them to fo­cus on their team in­stead of ad­min­is­tra­tion. We de­ve­loped DPMS to­gether with our col­leagues in con­struc­tion for use on the sites they work on every day and we did it in a very agile way. That makes work safer and more pro­duct­ive.”

Keeping the show on the road

Have you ever been in a situ­ation where a cer­tain pro­cess is delayed when the in­di­vidual re­spons­ible for it goes on hol­i­day? That’s just one of the situ­ations DPMS can pro­act­ively work to im­prove. “DPMS is about mak­ing things pro­cess de­pend­ent rather than people de­pend­ent,” says Saur­abh Desh­mukh, Team Lead DPMS Global Roll-out. “By hav­ing a cent­ral pro­ject man­age­ment tool in which all re­sources, cap­ab­il­it­ies and man­power are clearly vis­ible and or­gan­ised, we can keep things mov­ing, re­gard­less of which in­di­vidual is work­ing on the pro­ject at any given time.” This em­phasis on pro­cess in­de­pend­ence provides greater peace of mind and, when com­bined with real time pro­cess flow in­form­a­tion, can provide ad­di­tional value to cli­ents. “DPMS al­lows us to be even more ef­fi­cient and giv­ing real time in­form­a­tion about work ex­e­cu­tion to our cli­ents and KAEFER site man­age­ment, al­lows bet­ter plan­ning, fore­cast­ing and daily man­age­ment,” Dr. Al­ex­an­der Faber, Head of Cor­por­ate Op­er­a­tions Ex­cel­lence at KAEFER com­ments. “The fo­cus of KAE­FERs LEAN Jour­ney is to em­power our em­ploy­ees to con­tinu­ously im­prove their daily pro­cesses and DPMS goes a long way in mak­ing that pos­sible. Our em­ploy­ees on site work more ef­fi­cient as a team and they gain qual­i­fic­a­tions in work­ing with di­gital mo­bile and desktop solu­tions.”

The proof is in the pudding

Put simply, DPMS works for your be­ne­fit. It is used on over 70 sites in 10 coun­tries by over 1,500 users and ever since it was in­tro­duced in a few key mar­kets, the num­ber of un­ne­ces­sary steps elim­in­ated in the ad­min­is­trat­ive or­der to in­voice pro­cess has been 29% in Brazil, 37% in Sweden and 24% in South Africa, to name just three cases. For cli­ents in the re­gions where DPMS is used, it has be­come a unique selling pro­pos­i­tion. “In Brazil, for ex­ample, DPMS of­fers cli­ents real in­nov­a­tion. The fact that the sys­tem is also cus­tom­is­able of­fers fur­ther be­ne­fits and al­lows our teams to take a be­spoke ap­proach to the widest vari­ety of pro­jects,” Sandro Bar­rach, Man­aging Dir­ec­tor in Brazil, adds.

A win-win scenario

The Di­gital Pro­ject Man­age­ment Solu­tion is a lo­gical ex­ten­sion of KAE­FER’s LEAN jour­ney and is avail­able for the en­tire or­gan­isa­tion to use and profit from. By har­mon­ising and stand­ard­ising pro­cesses, whilst ac­count­ing for the in­di­vidual as­pects of pro­jects at the same time, DPMS helps achieve mar­gin tar­gets more eas­ily, re­duces or­der to in­voice time, vir­tu­ally elim­in­ates pa­per­work and sub­stan­tially im­proves trans­par­ency and pro­ductiv­ity. In short: it provides be­ne­fits to our cli­ents and every­body at KAEFER.