As a global manufacturer Fisher & Paykel Appliances needed its business processes to be transferable and understood across multiple sites around the world.
The company has manufacturing units in New Zealand, Thailand, Mexico and Italy and is bulding one in China.
Steve Clark, head of Risk and Assurance, says that a couple of years ago the company looked at the process framework. When it came to manufacturing, process was the over-riding motivation.
As a result, Clark sought a mix of global acceptability and something that anyone in the company could use.
“It was around clarity and visibility of process, speed to train and to; do the tasks, and to maintain quality standards from a global point of view," he adds.
“We discovered Promapp, which ticked all the boxes.”
Founded in Auckland in 2002, Promapp is process management software that helps companies build, improve and share their process knowledge from a central online repository.
It drives process improvement by simplifying process mapping, so that business teams can own and improve their own processes - it is browser-based.
Fisher & Paykel launched pilot field trials, using Promapp's embedded video for training. Manufacturing took the lead during the trials, which were then extended to supply chain and services (including IT, HR and finance).
Clark says Promapp is a tool for projects, which has grown organically, driving quality and consistency.
“It's about continuous incremental improvement.”
Promapp CEO Ivan Seselj believes that to achieve global consistency, people can capture and share hard-won institutional knowledge using Promapp and make it available to users online.
“They can embed videos and images to help staff understand how to perform complex tasks so they can get it right first time and teams can add local processes in their own local language," he adds.