There’s a famous saying from the philosopher Heraclitus which says, “Change is the only constant in life.” That still rings true today, even in the manufacturing industry. As technology improves or new challenges appear, manufacturing processes are forced to adapt quickly. When these changes are introduced, though, the outdated and unnecessary processes are often forgotten about and remain in place instead of being eliminated.
In a world where every second of time is valuable, having any superfluous procedures included in production is a misuse of your plant’s time. Reducing even one step of the entire process can exponentially increase your overall efficiency. How can you identify if you have any unnecessary processes? Watch closely for the following signs that will signal when it’s time to eliminate or modify an aspect of your manufacturing procedure.
Wasteful Activities
If you work at a manufacturing plant, you know there’s been an increased focus in our industry on lean manufacturing. Lean manufacturing principles are focused on generating as little waste as possible without losing any productivity. When trying to make processes leaner, many manufacturers will initiate a value stream analysis, which displays the flow of production along with the time and materials needed at each step. This visualization can be helpful for identifying delays or inefficiencies in production that are disproportionally generating waste. Research from the Lean Enterprise Research Centre has indicated that up to 60% of all production activities are “waste,” meaning they add no value to the end customer. If the benefits of these processes don’t outweigh the costs, it will be worth it to devise other ways to accomplish those steps or add more value.
Supply Chain Delays
For some manufacturers, it makes sense to keep a healthy inventory of raw materials on hand in case of supply chain disruptions or emergencies. However, others may find that keeping such a high volume is actually slowing down the flow of their overall supply chain, or even creating quality issues in their day-to-day operations. If you find your team is having to order more raw materials each week, it may be more efficient to make larger bulk orders once a month to eliminate repetitive actions. You might also decide to reduce your inventory to remove extra steps needed to manage such an extensive supply and free up time to be spent on more productive activities.
Defects and Breakdowns
One of the biggest signs it’s time to make a change is ongoing maintenance challenges or product defects. If you’re continually having quality issues with a particular machine or technique, you’re likely regularly spending long periods of time on additional maintenance. In these cases, it may be time to invest in new equipment that will require less time and resources spent on upkeep. Improving the quality and consistency of your products with better equipment can produce a huge ripple effect across your organization. Fewer defects will leave customers feeling more satisfied, you’ll spend less time and money on repairs, and you can better maintain all of your other equipment.
Using Unnecessary Time
While analyzing your plant, it can also be advantageous to look for potential ways to combine two or more steps in the production process. If you’re able to accomplish two steps at once, the payoff from time savings can be huge. For example, instead of blocking out additional time for machine maintenance, find time to clean or repair one machine while others are being used. If these tasks can be finished between runs throughout the day, your plant can eliminate the need for after-hours maintenance work. Removing even one link of this process means you can limit the extra payroll hours or even increase the number of production runs to generate a higher overall yield.
It can be daunting to make a significant change or eliminate a production step altogether. You may be worried that the modifications could throw off your entire production schedule, or that you’ll never find extra time to fit in maintenance throughout the day. However, if your plant uses advanced planning & scheduling software, your team will be able to easily identify changes without reconstructing the entire system.
Our software, VirtECS, uses customizable virtual plant modeling to outline a plant’s physical constraints. The model can be adjusted at any time to reflect updates or test potential improvements. The end goal of VirtECS is to produce an optimized plant schedule that will keep production running as efficiently as possible. For more information on how VirtECS can improve your plant’s efficiency, click here to download our software overview.
