A manufacturing process is a repeatable operating activity that can be improved to drive operational efficiency. Maintaining a high level of efficiency is critical due to its massive impact on customer satisfaction, total production, and quality. While it’s a time-consuming process to bring about considerable gains through process efficiency, it’s necessary to do so to achieve long-term business goals. The following are some of the important strategies that will help you enhance process efficiency on your manufacturing floor:
Identify bottlenecks
Identifying bottlenecks that are slowing down your production processes is a crucial step that helps you increase productivity and speed up manufacturing. While bottlenecks stay in one place, they seriously affect the whole production line.
When setting business goals, it’s advisable to identify bottlenecks and assign a dollar value to them. Machines or processes that have the longest wait times or machines that use the highest percentage of their capacity represent bottlenecks. Once you prepare a list of all the potential factors affecting your manufacturing efficiency, remove the most expensive bottlenecks first. The bottleneck situation is more complex when there are queues at several process steps.
Engage your employees
Recognizing the importance of employee engagement is an effective way to improve process efficiency. If your workers aren’t truly engaged in their work, your process efficiency will suffer. Inadequate training is one of the factors why industrial employees participate in incorrect practices. Therefore, engage your employees and put special emphasis on the training of line managers and technicians. Your facility can improve output by more than 50% if you properly train and motivate your employees.
Develop a preventive maintenance plan
Inadequate maintenance procedures lead to machinery breakdown no matter how efficient your production processes are. This is why manufacturing experts view equipment maintenance as a key part of process efficiency. Scheduling routine checks is a good start, but you have to develop a sound preventive maintenance strategy and avoid maintenance mistakes in the long run. Some of your machinery might need more immediate inspections.
If your technicians or operators observe abnormal levels of tension, unusual wear patterns, or other strange behavior of a machine several times in a short period, it’s time to investigate further and be more proactive. Consult preventive maintenance experts who can help keep your machines up and running. Your team members should also know how to report a problem or notify managers. This happens when you connect routine maintenance with process efficiency.
Reduce disruptions on your manufacturing floor
Unnecessary movement on your manufacturing floor can affect productivity. If you think you need to cut out unnecessary movement, change your floor layout to enable employees to do their job with limited movement. Dead and unnecessary machine parts or tools should be removed from the floor. Maintaining clean and organized production lines can increase the manufacturing process efficiency by 10%.
The strategies we have discussed won’t produce results overnight, but they must be implemented to improve process efficiency and, eventually, your bottom line.
About Quality Millwright
Quality Millwright takes pride in helping companies maintain their equipment and enhance operational efficiency. We offer services ranging from rig servicing and preventive maintenance to electrical and machining. Contact us for more details!
