There is many a business that relies on a production line to create and sell the products that make them profit. However, finding a good way to create your products isn’t enough. You should be looking more closely at how you can make it more efficient which, in turn, will make it a lot more cost-effective. Here are the four most effective principles of an efficient and productive production line.
Loss awareness
One of the most important approaches to manufacturing efficiency is to know how to find and reduce loss where it happens. This is perhaps most succinctly and thoroughly detailed by the lean manufacturing principles that have been put in place in factories across the world. Finding sources of loss, such as the loss of machine availability due to equipment failures and unplanned losses, or performance losses due to employee idling, or other issues such as bottlenecks, can help you figure out where your attention should be going first and what problems are most holding back your production capabilities.
Automation
Human error (or simply problems in human performance) have long been one of the biggest causes of lost time in the production line. It’s only human for people to idle occasionally, to make mistakes, or to not work quite as hard as they could. Addressing systemic issues that keep them back from their productive potential is one way to help fight this issue, but the use of technology such as a modular automation system can be a lot more cost-effective. Automating more of your production line can mean that it all works much faster overall, leaving less room for human error or human idling.
Equipment reliability
Another of the main principles of efficient manufacturing management that has been very widely adopted is that of OEE. OEE stands for overall equipment effectiveness and represents how reliable the machinery and tools that you use are. There are OEE calculating solutions that can help you get a better idea of just how much loss is caused by your equipment, due to short-term failures, big fixes, needs for replacements and so on. Aside from training your team to help better maintain your equipment and perform preventative maintenance, you should also look at the practice of ordering spare parts ahead of time for those that are most likely to fail first.
Safety
If there’s one thing that can shut down a whole production floor, it’s an injury or an accident. Any place that uses manufacturing machinery is a more dangerous work environment than most are used to. Ensure that you care for the health and safety of your team and reinforce your policy through appropriate signage on the wall, floor markings to dictate walkways and dangerous areas, by making personal protective equipment more available, and by investing in training to help them better know the risks and how to navigate them.
Efficiency isn’t something that you achieve, it’s something that you can keep striving for. As such, you should follow these tips but always be on the lookout for new ways to sharpen how you manufacture.
