Performance Management Series: Optimizing Production Processes

This blog is a part of a performance management series where we discuss optimizing your manufacturing processes. These posts aim to help you do more with less. Today, we will uncover optimizing your processes and equipment through production optimization.

What is production optimization?

Production optimization focuses on enhancing efficiency and productivity across all operations by addressing process deficiencies and designing goods that are simpler to produce.

Downtime, late deliveries, scrap, and rework negatively impact profitability and product integrity. Today, manufacturing has become increasingly competitive, and customers have higher expectations around lead times and product quality. As a result, consumers pressure manufacturing businesses to innovate and streamline processes to meet these expectations efficiently.

Optimizing production processes offers several benefits for manufacturers. First, it reduces downtime by ensuring efficient production schedules and regular equipment maintenance. This enhances machine effectiveness and helps to meet production timelines. Second, improving product quality minimizes waste and rework and ensures customer satisfaction. Inefficient processes can directly impact product quality, increasing the cost due to rework and additional resources needed. By improving processes, production optimization enhances product quality. Third, optimizing resource allocation by streamlining manual tasks allows for more efficient use of labor resources.

To get started on improving your production process, you must look at your people, processes, and technology.

People

Optimizing production processes can help identify areas to improve the efficiency of your human resources. Real-time data can identify operators at the wrong place and time. It can help you monitor operator performance throughout every step of the production process. You cannot effectively assess how well each job is executed without measuring all operations.

Processes

It's important to regularly dedicate time to analyzing downtime and bottlenecks in everyday processes. While our last blog mentioned the importance of addressing the root causes of downtime, this one will share one practical approach to reducing downtime—analyzing and prioritizing the primary causes of unplanned downtime in production. You may have many causes of downtime; therefore, it’s important to address the most significant issues first.

You may also analyze bottlenecks, which identify constraints and blockages within processes that impede the production line's speed. By inspecting your equipment, you may find that one acts as a bottleneck for the next stage of production. Real-time data enables your operators to prioritize efforts on bottlenecks. Whether the bottleneck is a physical constraint or an operational issue like scheduling or missed opportunities to enhance setup time and reduce changeovers, cloud-based data, coupled with analytics and OEE software, can help mitigate disruptions effectively.

By gathering data to visualize bottlenecks, operators can adjust the work-in-progress (WIP) flow or other input materials to enhance uptime. Optimization guided by clearly visualized data can benefit various aspects such as workflow, equipment layout, material quality, and more.

Technology

Manufacturers are adopting Industry 4.0 and IIoT to precisely identify quality defects throughout different production stages. Additionally, they have started using artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI and ML) for real-time data analysis, facilitating comprehensive and effective production optimization. Using these insights, companies can optimize production rates throughout the manufacturing process.

Machine monitoring technology can provide you with the real-time data you need to improve your production process. Using data, companies can identify trends and patterns to refine existing processes, whether it involves layout adjustments, optimizing material flow, or enhancing communication. By employing interconnected equipment and sensors, businesses can monitor production and gain real-time insights into every stage of the manufacturing process. These systems automatically generate data-driven reports and statistics, offering system-wide traceability.

Developing a culture of production optimization

Production optimization will increase productivity and efficiency by addressing the shop floor layout, rearranging machines and tools, introducing new work-in-progress (WIP) procedures, and training operators.

However, improving production processes is not a one-time task. Manufacturers need to monitor progress over time, assessing the effects of interventions on production performance. This ongoing evaluation enables businesses to consistently enhance their production processes, staying competitive in the ever-evolving industry landscape. Therefore, production optimization is most effective when it becomes part of your company's culture.

Having insights into the precise impact of different deficiencies can aid in prioritization and decision-making. Tracking specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is a common and effective method. These indicators need to be measurable, pertinent, and significant. For example, a factory might monitor production performance using metrics such as uptime, yield, and defect rate. Common KPIs include First Time Through (FTT), Mean Time Between Failure, Mean Time to Repair, and Production Schedule Attainment, among others. These KPIs measure efficiency and serve as an early detection system for potential problems.

It’s also not enough to keep progress to yourself. Data should be open and shared often with the whole company. To increase buy in, it's crucial to ensure that insights derived from data analysis are shared throughout the organization. This includes making data accessible to employees at all levels, from the shop floor to the executive team.

You will reap the benefits by implementing production process optimization across your manufacturing facility through continuous improvements towards set KPIs, which are then shared with employees at all levels of the organization. This focus will include improved productivity, enhanced performance, reduced costs, and advanced innovation. By analyzing data, facilities can identify areas for improvement, streamline operations, address quality issues, cut costs, and foster innovation.

Alora and production optimization

Wouldn’t it be nice if the above process changes were easy to implement via a proven solution? Alora’s machine monitoring solution provides manufacturers with real-time assessment of equipment health, empowering operators and managers to shift away from reactive maintenance practices and ultimately saving time and maintenance costs.

Alora provides reasons for downtime, which you can prioritize to reduce downtime and improve processes. See data at both the machine and job level, deriving efficient and actionable insights from real-time data and conditions, enabling process optimization across various environments.

Alora also has native integrations with popular ERPs to provide additional operational, job, and process data. This can be useful in understanding your current capabilities. For example, the sync with the ERP can show you historical information about the throughput of operations on specific machines. This allows you to see which machine can most efficiently produce a part.

Our real-time data which can be displayed via intuitive dashboards and reports offer swift solutions for action, ultimately reducing operating costs.

Contact us today for a demonstration.