Manufacturing companies are constantly striving to meet targets and achieve goals. Some of these goals include boosting sales, reducing manufacturing costs, increasing the bottom line, improving production efficiency, and reducing downtimes.
These goals aside, increasing efficiency can help towards meeting other targets. Why? Because it reduces unnecessary costs and increases performance, profit, and productivity. The following five tips can help companies improve manufacturing efficiency.
1. Check for Issues in the Current Workflow
Checking the workflow is one of the first steps a company needs to take when they want to improve manufacturing efficiency. In a nutshell: if the workflow is left unsupervised, manufacturing companies will not be able to detect where there is room for improvement. Not only that, all other aspects of the workflow, like performance, assets that frequently break down, worker efficiency, among others, must be checked.
2. Detect Bottlenecks
When a supervisor checks the current workflow at the plant, he will probably find at least one bottleneck in the production process, or maybe more than one.
Bottlenecks are not found just in production lines; they can be administrative as well. Detecting this kind of problem is essential to improve efficiency in manufacturing, as it helps find problems and their solutions more effectively.
3. Reduce Waste
There are different types of waste: time, energy, space, materials, among others. Fortunately, when checking the workflow and identifying bottlenecks, unnecessary processes, wasted materials, underutilized spaces and other problems come to light.
Solving these issues helps reduce waste, improve efficiency, and even generate income.
On the other hand, the use of more efficient practices, materials, and equipment can cut the processes that create excess waste.
Besides, as recycling is such an important practice nowadays, manufacturing companies should recycle and reutilize waste whenever possible. Otherwise, they can sell recycled materials to organizations that have a use for them.
4. Upskill Employees
Improving efficiency is not just about improving equipment, but also the people involved in the process. One of the most common and efficient ways to improve efficiency is to upskill employees so that they learn how the machines work and how to look after them properly. If the employees work efficiently, the business will reduce waste and meet targets.
5. Guarantee Preventive Maintenance
Among the major drawbacks in achieving manufacturing efficiency are equipment failures and breakdowns. Ensuring that preventive maintenance is carried out is key to prevent serious damage.
Some companies embrace the preventive maintenance concept; that is, they perform regularly scheduled maintenance tasks even though the equipment works fine. These companies routinely use apps like ELT (Equipment Life Tracking), as they help facilitate maintenance, increase efficiency, and reduce costs.
Guaranteeing preventive maintenance helps companies in many ways.
Preventive maintenance, through inspections and scheduled maintenance tasks, helps detect potential problems with the equipment. Therefore, engineers can fix them before they get worse and cause serious damage.
Also, with preventive maintenance, machines work steadily and reliably, reducing downtimes and improving manufacturing efficiency.
Efficiency Is Key to Improving Manufacturing Processes
Many manufacturing companies focus on improving efficiency. Although there is always going to be interruptions, bottlenecks, and breakdowns, some problems can be solved with suitable strategies, one of which is preventive maintenance. It will not only improve efficiency, but will also reduce safety incidents, and the cost of future breakdowns and repairs.
At 4i Platform, we understand these setbacks and help businesses to reduce waste and boost productivity. Click here to book a demo.
