Why It’s Vital To Get Your Manufacturing Best Practices Right The First Time Round!
Every manufacturer wants productive, streamlined factories that maintain a high output of good-quality items while minimizing wastage of materials and time. But just knowing what you want to achieve does not mean it’s easy to implement. What does “productive” mean to your factory? How many products do you need to produce a day for your factory to be considered productive? There will inevitably be some wastage in every factory but how much is acceptable in yours? All of these are questions manufacturers must consider. To know if you are performing well, you have to have defined what “well” means to you. That’s where manufacturing best practices come in. Best practices tell you what to shoot for and help you focus their efforts towards benchmarks that make a difference to your bottom line.
Essentially, best practices allow you to plan properly and everyone knows what happens when you don’t have a plan. As Benjamin Franklin put it, “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”
Having well-defined best practices gives you a starting point from which to examine your factory’s processes, identity which processes add value for your customers, and which don’t add value and can be eliminated. You can set your own best practices based on what is most valuable in your industry and culture but there are certain key areas you should take into consideration in your quest for a more streamlined factory:
Track Metrics
It is virtually impossible to improve on something if you do not apply measurements to see how much progress you are making. With new technologies on the rise due to industry 4.0, there are now many options available for those who want to get a better handle on what is actually happening in their factory. Software solutions can track anything from how much each machine is outputting to how productive staff are. Tracking metrics helps you work out where inefficiencies lie and take steps to resolve issues. If you want to have a more efficient factory, it is advisable to have some system in place for tracking metrics as well as a system for analysing metrics and implementing change based on these findings.
Manage Waste
Waste is one of the biggest fears of every manufacturer and rightly so. Waste costs manufacturers millions of dollars each year. To effectively manage waste, you should incorporate best practices for waste management into your goal planning. Waste is a broad term that can encompass many types of waste. Here are some ideas to help you start thinking about managing waste:
Downtime – How will you minimize downtime on the factory floor? Can you streamline processes to avoid machines sitting idle for long periods of time?
Over-production – How much waste is acceptable? Are you ordering the right quantities of raw material? Are you making more product than you can sell?
Defective merchandise – How will you minimize the production of defective merchandise. Can defective merchandize be repurposed back into production?
Proper use of talent – Are you using staff to the maximum. How will you ensure that talent is properly utilized in the factory? Do you have a protocol in place for the correct hiring of the talent you need?
Transportation waste – What is your system of transporting goods? Is it efficient? Are you maximizing the use of shipments or are you sending our half-full shipments that are not full? How can you manage production to ensure more efficient usage of transportation.
Preventive Maintenance
It is generally cheaper to maintain machines than to fix them when they go down, which can cost factories a lot of money in downtime. Make sure you have a maintenance schedule in place and that you are servicing your machines and equipment regualrly to ensure you maintain them in peak condition.
Suppliers
To avoid unnecessary hiccups in production, you need to make sure your supply chains are well-planned. Best practices for any factory must include monitoring supplies and ensure that deliveries are scheduled to arrive when needed. If your factory employs software for stock management, this can be automated into your factory process. It is never a good idea to wait until supplies run out completely to order more. It sounds obvious but many factories fall down on this rung.
Overall Organization
Every factory process should be looked at to ensure it id efficient and fits well with the other processes in the factory. Whether this is done using enterprise management software or not, it is important to ensure that every factory process has pre-planned and agreed-upon best practices.
Safety
Often overlooked, safety on the shop floor is critical to the success of any factory. make sure you adhere to best practices for worker safety. Accident are a liability that cost factories huge amounts of money each year. Showing your workers that you have best practices around safety and security will make them more loyal and have more faith in you too.
Over to you
While creating best practices might seem like an unnecessary drain on your time, this could actually end up saving you time, and money too. Manufacturers who commit to creating and adhering to best practice will reap the benefits of seeing whether they have achieved their goals and knowing where they need to focus more effort if they have not. Overall this translates into better-run and more efficient factories. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Think about your processes early and you will that the result of this extra bit of planning will have been worth the effort.