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Enterprise profile: Goodrich Aerostructures Service Center 鈥� Asia (GASCA), a business unit of American company Collins Aerospace which supplies aerospace and defence products, specialises in the maintenance, repair and overhaul of aircraft nacelle systems and airframe composite components for major airlines.
Problem statement: GASCA's sales and marketing quotation process requires staff to manually key in data and perform calculations for about 70 price quotations each month. This is further complicated by the fact that no two quotations are the same, as every client has different repair and maintenance needs, each with different costing. So generating one quotation is a tedious, time-sapping task which takes 58 minutes on average.
Impact achieved: After engaging the School of Business to optimise the workflow with robotic process automation (RPA), GASCA has slashed the time taken to generate one quotation to just four minutes under optimal conditions. This works out to 94.5 man-days saved a year. Pleased with the productivity gains and the staff鈥檚 mastery of new skills, GASCA highlighted this project at a signature company event that showcases its proudest achievements.
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Over five months from March to August 2023, Pay Yu Xuan and Shannon Quek, both third-year students from the School of Business, worked closely with a team of four customer accounts executives from GASCA鈥檚 sales and marketing team to implement RPA 鈥� which deploys bots to take over repetitive tasks.
The students took charge of everything, from developing the RPA script to updating the user manual to trouble-shooting. For about two months, they were also on site almost every day to handhold the staff through the entire process 鈥� which included fielding requests for help after office hours.
Along the way, they kept fine-tuning the RPA script as the GASCA team gained confidence in running the program and began offering feedback, such as wanting the software robots to perform more tasks. This not only helped Yu Xuan and Shannon polish their RPA skills, but also honed their people and communication skills.
鈥淲e are student interns after all, and these are adults we're dealing with,鈥� said Yu Xuan. 鈥淲hen an adult comes to you and asks for something, you have to learn to let them know nicely if something is not doable.鈥�
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The pair quickly bonded with their appreciative clients, who lavished them with food. 鈥淏reakfast, lunch, tea break. When we worked overtime, they also gave us dinner,鈥� Shannon recalled with a laugh.
Earning the trust of the executives and training them to successfully run the robots and troubleshoot problems on their own was gratifying. 鈥淟ike watching your kid grow up,鈥� as Yu Xuan put it.
So happy was GASCA with the results that it had Shannon produce two videos on how RPA has benefitted the company. These were played during its Kaizen Leadership Week event, which also serves to update GASCA鈥檚 parent company on its key successes.
Senior lecturer Albunus Ng is most proud of how Shannon and Yu Xuan developed not just a strong bond with the GASCA team, but also a highly practical and user-friendly RPA solution.
There have been instances where some robots ended up as "white elephants鈥�, he noted.
鈥淚'm one who is very hesitant to give you a super complicated robot that theoretically meets all your requirements, but you have no idea how to use it,鈥� said Mr Ng.
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