Digitally ticked off: More safety and automated documentation of monitoring at BASF, thanks to digital checklists in Power Apps and Microsoft Teams

The challenge: An analog, paper-based process 

A tanker with a capacity of 40 cubic meters is being maneuvered toward the plant’s filling facility. Standing next to the approaching vehicle is a filling facility operator holding a clipboard. She checks off each step in the process and then adds her signature. The tanker is now in position and connects to the facility. Another check mark, another signature. She then removes a sample that needs to be tested before the load can be emptied. It’ll take a while for the results. She makes yet another check mark and adds her signature for the final time that day. Over at the bulletin board, she hangs up the checklist next to nine other lists ready for the next shift. Her colleague will then carry on the process.

This is part of the daily routine at BASF’s Xemium^® plant: hazardous substances have to be emptied out of various batch containers, processed, and then safely refilled as finished products. “Since any spill of a hazardous substance can harm people and the environment, one of our top priorities is to ensure we follow the safe, structured, and clearly defined procedures mandated by law,” says Torsten Tietz, Operations Manager of BASF’s location in Ludwigshafen, Germany. “We record our compliance with these procedures in checklists that can be up to twelve pages long. Our employees meticulously document each step they carry out, sign to confirm, and have it all verified by a colleague.” For companies like BASF, there’s no getting around these checklists: for each tanker being emptied, the laws for governing dangerous goods stipulate the monitoring and documentation required and that these documents are stored for a certain number of years. This paperwork is filed in innumerable folders so it can be produced during audits. In the past, this purely paper-based process made controls and audits extremely complicated. To find potential errors, the company had to perform spot checks on each individual document. “We wanted to get away from paper for various reasons, such as making completing checklists more straightforward, adding another level of safety, and simplifying both internal and external audits,” Tietz says. That’s why Microsoft teamed up with system integrator Campana & Schott to furnish BASF with a checklist app based on Power Platform, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft Azure.

The solution: Digital checklists with Power Apps as an additional safety barrier

Now when filling facility operators carry out an emptying procedure, they complete a digital checklist via an app on their mobile device. This app is built on Power Apps and Power Automate, which are opened through Microsoft Teams. Operators can check off each process step as it is performed. Only once a given step is completed and marked green does the app activate the next step. No more pens or piles of paper notes—it’s all digital. Stefanie Syring-Börger, Change Manager for Digital Transformation in Production at BASF, thinks that this alone offers a huge benefit: “The digital procedure provides additional safety.” It also promises to make life easier during the frequent internal and external audits. “The system automatically produces clean digital documentation and saves it in the database. Nothing can get lost and nothing can be overlooked,” Syring-Börger says.