Abstract
The manufacturing industry's business processes and activities are now limited due to a lack of seamless integration, value-driven processes, business information, and dynamic optimization. To bridge the gap between traditional business operations and industry 4.0 smart processes, Industry 4.0 requires self-optimization, autonomous operation, and smart systems. RPA was utilised in this research to optimize business processes through business process reengineering to understand the effects of industry 4.0 smart processes on our current processes. A discrete event simulation approach was proposed to model as-is current processes and proposed to-be processes at a contract cosmetics and pharmaceutical company to draw an understanding and effects of applying smart processes.
In this case study, the finance department's business function was considered for business process re-engineering optimization through the application of robotic process automation. To this end, this study conducted validation of process eligibility of RPA implementation, evaluation of potential, importance, and classification of processes was done to analyse current processes before applying RPA through simulation and modelling. The results showed that the weights of the parameters such as transaction volume, FTE savings, time taken per run and sub-activities have got high percentages in the proposed model compared to the current model. The study concluded that the to-be proposed model presents a very high-level process optimization compared to the current and it is highly suitable for RPA for straightforward processes and sim-automation is suggested for complicated processes.
The research has proven that future research must concentrate on integrating RPA with artificial intelligence (AI) to improve workflow efficiency. RPA will develop more intelligent processes because of AI approaches, and it will be more effective at data mining and process mining. AI may be utilized to construct self-modifying RPA workflows that collect critical data more precisely and process it according to the demands of the users. Keywords: Business process reengineering, Industry 4.0, Robotic process automation, Optimization, Discrete event simulation.