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Digitalising production: where to start?
Digitalisation doesn't have to mean everything at once. We propose an order of steps that delivers results quickly without stopping the plant.
"Digitalisation" sounds like a big, expensive, intimidating project requiring everything in the company to change at once. In practice, successful digitalisation is a series of small, useful steps building on each other, each delivering tangible value before moving to the next.
The proposed order of steps
1. Work orders — replace paper orders with digital ones with clear statuses (waiting, in progress, done), visible to everyone who needs that data, without hunting for papers around the plant.
2. Warehouse — introduce accurate real-time stock, with clear material receipt and issue, instead of a monthly stocktake that is already stale a day after it's done.
3. Sales — connect quotes and orders directly to production, so an order automatically opens a work order instead of someone manually passing the information by phone or email.
4. Analytics — add an overview of plant load and bottlenecks, so management sees where a jam is forming before it becomes a serious problem delaying deliveries.
Why exactly this order
Each step delivers concrete, measurable value on its own and doesn't require you to stop and wait for the next step to be useful — work orders improve plant organisation immediately, even before the warehouse module is added.
The company progresses gradually, with minimal risk to ongoing work — each step is small enough to test, adjust and stabilise before the next layer of complexity is added.
This gradual approach also builds workers' trust in the system — when they see the first small step actually makes their job easier, they accept the next steps with less resistance than when a completely new, complex system is imposed all at once.
Nikola Cerić
Founder & CEO, Manage IT
More than 10 years of software development experience — in his own company and in major IT companies across the Balkans.