Everywhere you look, the headlines make grim reading:- broad and pronounced commodity inflation; sugar prices continuing to rise; cost of sweeteners at multi-year highs; wheat and flour prices predicted to go even higher; fuel prices going through the roof; soaring packaging prices and the Food Price Index at all time highs ... and all this being exacerbated in the UK by the unusually dry Spring.
The food and beverage press is full of stories about plant closures and redundancies as many manufacturers struggle to keep their heads above water, often unable to pass on cost increases to their customers. This usually demanding manufacturing environment with narrow quality tolerances and stringent delivery deadlines is getting squeezed from all angles.
Rob Brannan of Gemba Solutions, (who have been helping manufacturing companies secure their competitive edge for many years), says that taking a data-driven approach to making production efficiencies will often highlight some quick wins that will make an immediate impact on costs as well as offering a sustainable strategy for ongoing improvements.
“You need to start with a good understanding of how your production processes run now, where the problem areas are and what’s causing them”, said Rob. “Base your improvements on solid data that tells you about the levels and reasons for unplanned down-time, rework and process rejects. Find out how and why set-ups, changeover times and machine stoppages affect production speed, and see the impact of delays caused by staff waiting for raw materials, maintenance assistance etc. Use the data you gather to target your biggest problem areas first, focus your efforts on the issues that will give you tangible benefits quickly.”
To get the biggest impact, Rob feels that reaction time is key: “If there’s a problem, having the right information immediately will enable you to focus team efforts on root cause and make the necessary changes so that production speed and quality are protected. Automated data collection systems can really help with this. Collecting data manually is often a good starting point and gets your staff into the mentality that data is important, but manual systems that are slow, can become error-ridden and take up valuable time that could be spent doing value add activities. Automated systems capture every stoppage as it happens – there is often an abundance of minor stoppages that can go unrecorded in manual systems because they’re small, regular issues that have become part of the normal process, but they can add up to quite a big problem. So, with automated systems, you get more complete data in real-time, which means you can isolate and eliminate problems immediately, rather than finding your on-time delivery slipping before anyone realizes there’s an issue”.
“Don’t underestimate the power of the data you gather – sharing this type of information with your employees can reap huge benefits”, said Rob. “I’ve worked with clients who have seen significant production improvements, not only from the hard benefits that people associate with efficiency gains, but also from the softer benefits, such as making staff more aware of production metrics like cycle times, yield and achievement-to-target on a real-time basis.
It’s obvious to me that understanding your processes and making targeted improvements based on accurate and timely data will result in cost savings, increased profits, motivated employees and happy customers – all desirable at the best of times, but particularly relevant under the current economic pressures which are sure to result in the survival of the fittest only.”
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