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The role of automation in improving the quality of enterprise business

processes
To cite this article: A V Bataev and I S Davydov 2020 IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 986 012015

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III Quality Management and Reliability of Technical Systems IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 986 (2020) 012015 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/986/1/012015

The role of automation in improving the quality of enterprise

business processes

A V Bataev1 and I S Davydov2

1
Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, Polytechnicheskaya, 29,
St.Petersburg, 195251, Russia, [email protected]
2
National Technology Initiative Center for Advanced Manufacturing Technologies based
on the Institute of Advanced Manufacturing Technologies of Peter the Great St.
Petersburg Polytechnic University Polytechnicheskaya, 29, St.Petersburg, 195251, Russia

Abstract. The enterprise has to determine and manage numerous and interrelated activities for
successful work and to maximize profits. According to the international standard ISO 9001-
2011, the activity using resources and managed in order to transform inputs to outputs can be
considered as a business process. Using a process system in an organization along with their
identification and interaction, as well as process management aimed at obtaining the desired
result, can be defined as a “process approach”. The object of this study is a business process that
is one of the key concepts of the international standard ISO 9001-2011. This standard establishes
the requirements for quality management systems and describes the principles of applying the
process approach, the essence of which is continuous process management. The article deals
with the individual business processes in the enterprise and their subsequent task automation
with using information technology. An automated application was proposed within the study that
provides automatic search for part sizes that do not correspond to the tolerance field, automatic
construction of control charts of average values and ranges, as well as calculation of process
reproducibility indices.

1. Introduction
Enterprise performance requires special attention to business process management. To do this, models
and process charts are made up, audits are conducted and their performance is analyzed. As practice
shows, there are problems associated with the coordination of functions between divisions, document
management, and the high cost of time for performing the same operations. The solution to such
problems is often included in the list of short-term goals of the enterprise. [1-2]
Employees of the enterprise, who have to constantly work with large amounts of data, take direct
participation in the creation, maintenance, control of all processes. It is possible to reduce the workload
of employees aimed at supporting business processes through automation. One can automate both one
process and several processes, while creating a single information space at the enterprise.
Employees of the enterprise, without which it is impossible to manufacture any products, take direct
participation in the creation, maintenance, control of all processes but the degree of human participation
in business processes can be reduced by automation.
Automation is the application in the production of technical facilities, methods, and control systems that
exempt a person from direct participation in production processes.

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III Quality Management and Reliability of Technical Systems IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 986 (2020) 012015 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/986/1/012015

The purpose of automation is to increase productivity and labor efficiency, improve product quality,
and human working conditions. [3]
The tasks of automating business processes become increasingly relevant. This is due to analyzing the
effectiveness of business processes and determining the causes of identified inconsistencies in most
cases, it turns out that the main problem of modern enterprises is the lack of automation and databases
to systematize the accumulated information [4]. A large percentage of routine operations, which are
manual input, search, data analysis, become a source of errors, loss of time, and a decrease in employee
motivation in general.
The main means to solve the problems of automating business processes is the implementation of
information technology and the development of special programs and modules.
The implementation of such programs in various functional units allows making the information
accumulated at the enterprise clear, accessible, and structured, as well as reducing the share of the human
factor and unnecessary paperwork. [5]

2. Key research findings

2.1. Tasks for automating business processes

The main criterion for the functioning of the process approach is the continuous management of
processes and their optimization.
Business processes are divided into three groups:

1) Main processes. They serve as the basis of the enterprise. Processes add value to the consumer. For
example, manufacturing, logistics, marketing and sales, procurement, etc.
2) Supporting processes. They provide the activity of the main processes. For example, technical
support, accounting, staffing, equipment maintenance, etc.
3) Control processes. The main function is the management of the enterprise. For example, economic
planning, strategic development, paperwork, etc.
Automation covers all business processes operating at the enterprise. It can be used to solve both local
tasks at the level of one small business function, and larger tasks covering a whole chain of
interconnected business processes. [6-8]
Automation of accounting, client accounting, document management was most widespread, since they
are precisely connected with the processing of large volumes of information.
Procedures for automating business processes can be divided into three types, which are presented in
Figure 1.

Figure 1. Types of business process automation.

1) Automation of the process.

In this case, one or two specific tasks are solved within one department, related to the simplification of
work with individual documents. For example, the development of software modules for graphing,

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III Quality Management and Reliability of Technical Systems IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 986 (2020) 012015 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/986/1/012015

tooltips, formatting spreadsheet cells depending on the specified parameters, generating reports, moving
folders to the archive, sending letters at the click of a button, etc.
2) Automation of several processes.
This type of automation covers two or more processes and is achieved through specially designed
programs, which usually include a database for accumulating and storing information, input and data
exchange forms, and reports for analyzing these data.
Enterprises independently develop client-server applications for order management, procurement,
internal audit documents, statistical data processing, production planning, etc.
3) Automation based on the creation and implementation of special systems covering a complex of
interconnected business processes.
Such automation systems allow us to make all processes transparent and to monitor the progress of
production in real-time and competently manage the enterprise, while receiving maximum profit. [9]

2.2. Creation of automated applications within a single business process

A stable production process ensures the quality of engineering products. The stability control of the
technological process is implemented on the basis of the standard GOST R 50779.42-9.

To improve the quality of manufacturing parts at a machine-building enterprise, a procedure for

selective dimensional control was created, by which eight samples of castings obtained in each of the
nests of the mold were periodically selected. Measurement data was entered in the checklists - MS Word
format files. However, the post-processing of the results was not automated. [10]
To solve this problem, an application was created that automatically searched for dimensions of parts
that did not correspond to the tolerance field, automatically built control charts of average values and
ranges, as well as calculated the reproducibility indices of the processes Cp and Cpk. [1, 11]
The application for building control charts is an MS Excel file. The first sheet of the file - a table with
the results of measurements of the controlled parts obtained in each nest of the foundry mold (control
sheets), is manually filled by the operator. Figure 2 shows a view of the control sheet for slot 1.

Figure 2. Type of checklist.

The process of detecting defects after entering measurement results and constructing control charts is
automated using the VBA programming language. When entering dimension values in the control sheet,
this value is compared with the controlled size recorded in three cells. The nominal dimension value is
indicated in the cell of the “Main Projection” column, the lower tolerance field - in the “LTL” column
cell, and the upper tolerance field - in the “UTL” column cell. If the value of the monitored parameter
is outside the tolerance field, the corresponding MS Excel table cell is highlighted in red. [12]

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III Quality Management and Reliability of Technical Systems IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 986 (2020) 012015 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/986/1/012015

Control charts are built for each controlled size. The values of average sizes and ranges for building
charts are calculated according to measurements of controlled sizes.
Figure 3 shows the algorithm for constructing charts of average values and ranges.

Figure 3. An algorithm for constructing control charts.

When the "Create charts" button is clicked, the number of controlled sizes is automatically determined
by the data of the checklists [13]. Next, an array of the form array (1 To pos, 1 To all) is formed for each
size, where pos is the number of positions and all is the number of sizes obtained during control. The
first three numbers of each line of the array correspond to the nominal size, upper and lower tolerance
fields, respectively.
To build control charts for each controlled size, a new sheet is automatically created in the MS Excel
workbook with a name that matches the position number indicated in the list of controlled part sizes.
After the array is formed, sheets with the name “pos.” are automatically created, into which an empty
template table is copied for entering the control results. The data for calculating the average values and
ranges for the groups corresponding to the nests of the foundry mold are entered in the template columns,
8 values - in each one. To this, the data array of the first sheet “Sheet1” is transposed. Values of nominal

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III Quality Management and Reliability of Technical Systems IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 986 (2020) 012015 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/986/1/012015

sizes, upper and lower boundaries of the tolerance field are also automatically entered in the
corresponding cells. The resulting table of input data for calculating the average values and range for
groups is presented in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Source data for calculating average values and ranges.

The program fills in the templates of sheets "pos№" and the construction of control cards in sequence.
After filling in the template, the number of groups is automatically calculated and the average value,
range, and standard deviation for the entire data sample are calculated for each group. These values are
automatically recorded in a table cell.
Based on the obtained data, the values of Cp and Cpk are calculated by the formulas:
𝑈𝑇𝐿−𝐿𝐶𝐿
𝐶𝑝 = (1)
6𝜎
where UTL is the upper tolerance limit; LTL is the lower tolerance limit; is the standard deviation.

𝐶𝑝𝑘 (𝑃𝑝𝑘 ) = min[𝑃𝑃𝑈; 𝑃𝑃𝐿] (2)

PPU and PPL are upper and lower process suitability indicators.
PPU and PPL are calculated using the formulas:
𝑈𝑇𝐿−𝑥̅
𝑃𝑃𝑈 = (3)
3𝜎
𝑥̅ −𝐿𝑇𝐿
𝑃𝑃𝐿 = (4)
3𝜎
where UTL is the upper tolerance limit; LTL is the lower tolerance limit; 𝑥̅ is the average value; 𝜎 is
the standard deviation.
The results of the program are presented in Figure 5.

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III Quality Management and Reliability of Technical Systems IOP Publishing
IOP Conf. Series: Materials Science and Engineering 986 (2020) 012015 doi:10.1088/1757-899X/986/1/012015

Figure 5. Automated application results.

3. Conclusion
Today, information technology is implemented to raise all the processes of managing an industrial
enterprise to a new qualitative level and ensure the achievement of new horizons in all areas of activity;
When the work is done in accordance with the requirements of the standard GOST R 50779.42-99 (ISO
8258-91), automated statistical control of the production of automotive components was organized at
the machine-building enterprise;
The results of the calculations and the constructed control cards can be used to interpret the casting
process;
The introduction of an automated application has improved the quality of manufacturing parts of
automotive components by preventing defects;
The cost-effectiveness analysis allows us to conclude the feasibility of introducing an automated
application that would pay off within twelve months.

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