1 real-life Business Process Automation example in Industrial, manufacturing and engineering

1 real-life Business Process Automation example in Industrial, manufacturing and engineering

Automation is different in industrial, manufacturing and engineering environments because digital workflows are tightly coupled to physical production, plant uptime, quality control, and supplier coordination.

The manufacturing examples show that even administrative processes like invoice correction or SOP creation have outsized operational impact when they reduce bottlenecks, improve standardisation, and keep engineering, finance, and shop-floor teams aligned around throughput, safety, and cost.

Business function

Industry

Komatsu Australia Automates Invoice Processing with Power Automate RPA

Komatsu Australia, the local arm of the global construction and mining equipment manufacturer, used Microsoft Power Automate and AI Builder to build a Robotic Process Automation solution for invoice fixing. Going from licence purchase to a production RPA solution in just four weeks, the automation saved 300 hours per year on invoicing for a single supplier and is being expanded to cover all suppliers.

Use Case
Automated invoice processing and correction using RPA to eliminate manual data entry and fix supplier invoices across legacy systems
Tools
Microsoft Power Automate
Input
Supplier invoices requiring manual correction due to errors or format mismatches in legacy systems
Process
Power Automate Desktop flows combined with AI Builder automatically detect, process, and correct invoice data across Windows and web applications without human intervention
Output
Corrected, validated invoices ready for approval and payment processing, with errors resolved automatically
Outcome
Saved 300 hours per year on invoicing for one supplier alone; deployed from licence purchase to production in 4 weeks; solution being expanded to cover all suppliers
Discrete manufacturing
Finance
See all 8 Business Process Automation examples