WHEN THE MACHINE IS DOWN, THERE’S NO MONEY ROLLIN’ IN…
How two simple actions can reduce your machine downtime and ultimately improve your bottom line.
Manufacturing: the process of converting raw materials, components, or parts into finished goods that meet a customer’s expectations or specifications (BusinessDictionary). If you ask any plant manager, most should say their goal is to make the most products with the least amount of defects in the least amount of time. Simple, right?!
Not quite. So many factors will get in the way of that goal, and one of the most influential ones is DOWNTIME. When the machine is down, there’s no money rollin’ in.
Downtime: The Productivity Impediment
Without a doubt, machine downtime is one of the largest sources of production loss for manufacturers. Unplanned downtime costs industries across the world billions of dollars every year in lost revenue. In the automotive industry alone, many studies show that unexpected downtime costs up to $22,000 per MINUTE!
Unfortunately, it can be caused by a plethora of things: changeovers, preventative maintenance, unexpected breakdowns, and more. Figuring out how to decrease these factors has been the dream of manufacturing teams forever. Methods like Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing try to relieve the pain, but problems still exist. And often, you don’t even know what they are or where they’re coming from…
Know What You Don’t Know
In 2009, Michael A. Roberto published a book called Know What You Don’t Know: How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen. And no, the book wasn’t all about implementing automatic sensors or installing an industrial Ethernet plant network. It’s all about how problems remain hidden all the time in organizations because of fear, complexity, or any number of reasons, but the best leaders uncover and attack the problems before they become deadly.
Where Do I Start?
How does that apply to us? Being able to know which machines are producing effectively and which are causing the most problems is the first step. We need visibility. If we aren’t tracking downtime religiously, reducing it will take longer and cost more. Identifying the root cause of downtime is easy when we track it and use data analytics to pinpoint issues. We have to know what the problem is before we can solve it.
Harness the Power of Data
Visibility can empower your team to take measures to correct and prevent downtime. A huge reason why things don’t get improved in some of the clients we work with is that leaders are using subjective metrics or “tribal knowledge.” And of course, they’re trying to put out the largest fire or the customer screaming the loudest.
We prefer no fires and no screaming customers. But how do we get to that point? We take the subjectivity out of the equation, and make decisions that are data-driven.
If you aren’t tracking downtime yet, it’s time to start.
“Okay, I’m doing that but still not seeing results. What’s next?”
That’s always the question we get asked by our clients. They know there’s value to tracking downtime but are often not actually acting on the numbers. How do we quantity the ROI?
Once you know the leading drivers of downtime, and you know which operations are your bottlenecks, you can take specific actions to reduce the downtime in those areas. Some of those actions could include moving an operator from one machine to another, moving staging areas or materials to reduce changeover times, changing the timing or order of operator actions, and much, much more.
But until you have the data, you can’t determine which actions will have the biggest impact. If you try, you risk solving the wrong problem at the wrong time, which wastes time and energy.
Here are a few things that happened with our clients when we started tracking downtime, reporting it to leadership, and executing projects to reduce it:
Example 1 — Machine Repair Services
Problem: People are being pulled in different directions, so longer and longer lead times on re-builds were costing their customers lots of lost money on downtime.
Solution: AMEND helped them determine a way to measure lead times as a primary metric, which was affected by a number of factors, including downtime.
Results: In ONE WEEK, AMEND led a kaizen event and determined that material staging improvements could make a drastic improvement. A 65–68 day lead time was reduced to a 3–4 day lead time.
“The end result was miraculous for us.” — Operations Manager
Example 2 — Plastics Manufacturing
Problem: As the backlog of orders keeps growing, and our team is pulled in so many directions, how do we keep our machines running so that we meet our shipment demand?
Solution: AMEND created a live, updated-in-real-time dashboard that measured downtime by machine, operator, location, and product. By pin-pointing the largest areas of downtime, AMEND tackled the root causes with increased focus and dedicated staffing in those areas.
Results: In only three months, the company had increased its total shipments by 30%, driven by reduced downtime and increased visibility.
“Without the help from AMEND, our team would never have been able to achieve this on our own.” — Owner and CEO
Example 3 — Firearms Manufacturing
Problem: With out-dated equipment, regular breakdowns, and a huge backlog of work, this company was constantly determining how to get the most bang for their buck in an environment riddled with constraints.
Solution: AMEND created a live dashboard that measured downtime by location, machine, time, and total cost, and was then able to pinpoint the areas that needed the most focus. We moved resources to the most important areas and created new standard operating procedures for operators to make more product in the same amount of time.
Results: With visibility and dedicated support for the specific cell, downtime for that area decreased by nearly 50% in the first month, and by about 20% plant-wide, driven by this improvement.
“With AMEND by our side, we had completely changed how we were managing our day-to-day business.” — Senior Director of Operations
