Every manufacturer knows, there’s always room for improvement. Settling for existing productivity rates can hold you back in the market and limit your profits. So, how do you go about improving your manufacturing process? Keep reading to find out.
What is Manufacturing Process Improvement?
Manufacturing process improvement refers to a strategic approach to analyzing and optimizing workplace tasks. This is aimed at improving productivity and efficiency while minimizing waste and costs at every stage. Ultimately, it boosts profitability. Manufacturing process improvement has quite a wide scope ranging from increasing production output to improving product quality and streamlining delivery schedules.
Key Strategies for Manufacturing Process Improvement
Manufacturing process improvement strategies differentiate themselves from quick fixes by taking a systematic approach toward change. Thus, the solutions are more likely to be enduring and effective.
You can use many different strategies to improve manufacturing processes. Some businesses choose to focus on a single strategy while others combine techniques to meet their unique needs. Here are 6 strategies that have proven to be effective.
1. Lean Manufacturing
Lean manufacturing focuses on eliminating waste to increase efficiency and profits. Here waste goes beyond products that do not meet quality standards. It also includes over-processing, excessive inventory, machine idle time, time wasted transporting materials and products, unnecessary human effort, and so on. Did you know that poor quality can account for 15-20% of your sales revenue?
By cutting down on this ‘waste’ lean manufacturing techniques save time and costs. Simultaneously it improves finished product quality and thereby helps businesses stay agile.
There are several tools that support a lean manufacturing approach to improving manufacturing processes. These include:
- 5S
This stands for 5 steps that help workplaces stay clean and organized – Sort, Straighten, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain.
- Kaizen
When translated from Japanese, Kaizen means continuous improvement. It involves identifying problem areas, observing current systems, testing improvement ideas, implementing effective ideas, analyzing results, and standardizing solutions to complete the loop.
- Value Stream Mapping
This involves using a flowchart to break a process down into individual steps and identify the value of each step. Based on this analysis, you can change or remove steps that are not adding value to the product.
- Root Cause Analysis
This problem-solving methodology focuses on understanding the root cause of a problem by asking a series of questions.
2. Standardization
Standardizing processes ensures that a task is always completed in the same manner irrespective of the employee responsible for it. This boosts operational efficiency and productivity while reducing costs and the risk of defects. Standardizing processes also minimizes the risk ambiguity and makes it easier to identify bottlenecks and problem areas in a production workflow.
It involves documenting the guidelines and steps for a process along with relevant contingencies, ensuring all employees have relevant training, and making the SOP easily accessible to them. As and when changes are made to any step in the process, update the standardized guidelines so everyone stays on the same page.
3. Automation
Technology plays a big role in improving manufacturing processes. There are probably many tasks within your manufacturing process that can be automated. For example, IoT devices can collect real-time manufacturing data and predict maintenance requirements.
Automated technology can process repetitive tasks with quicker results and consistent quality standards. This allows businesses to redirect human resources to tasks better suited to their unique capabilities. Further, automation helps improve safety standards by reducing the need for human intervention in high-risk processes.
4. Production Flow Management
Managing production flow refers to optimizing the flow of materials and products throughout the production facility. This is aimed at enhancing overall efficiency by ensuring materials required for a process/ task are available on time.
The Kanban system is an effective tool for production flow management. Here tasks are defined on individual cards. These cards are then organized along columns on a visual board. As a task moves from one manufacturing stage to another, the position of the associated card shifts on the Kanban board. This allows everyone involved to know what is being done at any given point in time. In turn, team leaders can redirect material and human resources to where they are most needed to prevent a bottleneck from developing.
5. Improve communication & escalation
2-way communication is critical to manufacturing process improvement strategies. Poor communication often causes misunderstandings and may even create bottlenecks. For example, emails for material requisition may get lost in a cluttered inbox. Similarly, when faced with an issue, being able to escalate the issue to the relevant team, find a solution, and quickly convey it to the production team saves time.
Tools like Fabriq act as a central communication hub to streamline shop floor collaboration and communication. These digital boards enable real-time data sharing at the click of a button. For the production team, this becomes a single point of reference to access operational documents, production targets, training photos and videos, workstation standards, etc. In addition, when an issue arises, it allows employees to easily create tickets with supportive visual aids. And, once a decision is taken, it ensures the information flows back just as efficiently.
6. System Digitization
Monitoring real-time shop floor activity is critical to identifying potential bottlenecks and opportunities for improvement. When you’re running a large manufacturing set-up, relying on manual efforts for this may not be enough. Minute details may get missed out. There’s also a risk of human error when noting production metrics. Hence, the need for digitization.
Using digital dashboards can help manufacturers overcome this issue. To begin with, these digital tools can be directly connected to IoT devices for data collection. Further, the graphic representation of the data makes it easy to understand. In turn, it makes patterns and trends easier to identify and supports data-driven decision-making.
Key Metrics for Measuring Manufacturing Process Improvement
Irrespective of the strategy chosen, you must monitor the effects of the change to see how it impacts your overall productivity, efficiency, and profits. Some of the most useful metrics for this are:
This measures the efficacy of a particular machine based on available production time, potential and actual performance, and production quality.
- Cycle time
It is the total time required to complete a process.
- Lead time
This is the time lapsed between order placement and delivery.
- First Pass Yield
How to assesse production quality. You can calculate this metric by dividing the number of units that pass quality inspection standards on the first screening by the total output.
- Defect rates
This refers to the percentage of defective pieces produced as compared to the total output.
- On Time Delivery (OTD)
This is the percentage of orders completed and delivered on time.
Getting Started with Your Manufacturing Process Improvement
A commitment to improving manufacturing processes not only optimizes costs and performance but also improves customer relationships and your brand image. After all, customers are bound to be happy when delivery timelines are met with high-quality products.
It’s what every company wants and Fabriq can help you get there. From enabling real-time data sharing for streamlined communication to making SOPs and Kanban boards accessible, Fabriq can play many roles in your manufacturing process improvement efforts.
Want to know more? Request a demo to discover how to improve your manufacturing process with Fabriq.
