3 Manufacturing Productivity Improvement Ideas Worth Your Time and Effort
Without a doubt, the best manufacturing improvement idea generators are the people doing the work. Be it a manufacturing floor with complex equipment or a simple forklift route from production to a warehouse, employees are a business’s first line of defense against losses and inefficiencies.
So throwing away employee suggestions about improving operations shouldn’t be done, but encouraged.
That’s why Lean Manufacturing concepts encourage production managers to empower the employees to identify waste in processes and help with continuous improvement.
Often, managers and other decision-makers are overly focused on the results, which is not a good way to control profit and limit production issues.
In most cases, it’s about the process, not the results and output.
It makes perfect sense: if a manager focuses on improving manufacturing processes, the results will also improve as a result.
That’s why in this article we’re going to share process-focused 3 manufacturing productivity ideas to inform your continuous improvement effort.
1. Evaluate Your Existing Workflow
Addressing manufacturing pain points like delays and inefficiencies requires you to take a closer look at your current workflow. Everything involved in the workflow — employees, technology, equipment, inventory, etc. — as well as the procedures and the movement of work-in-progress (WIP) should be monitored and analyzed.
Lean manufacturing strategy proposes value stream mapping (VSM) as a method for determining and monitoring projects for inefficiencies. Essentially, the purpose of VSM is to detail the specific actions that must be taken throughout the entire process to achieve the end result.
Recently, material flow tracking with real-time location systems has emerged as a way of investigating workflows and identifying inefficiencies within them. Basically, it involves using location tags attached to WIP, employees, and moving equipment and tracking their movement in real time.
The analysis of the recorded movement during shifts and other periods of activity allows the manager to see the entire process in a digital environment. As a result, identifying waste and inefficiencies becomes much easier, as the manager can discuss the situations that require clarification with the workforce.
For example, the process illustrated in Figure 1 below — an internal logistics process involving a forklift — shows that:
- The forklift’s driver has chosen to go through the warehouse (W at the top right corner of the image) during the ride from the Unloading area (U) to the final destination (W at the bottom left in Figure 1). This leads to longer process times and increased the risk of collisions with the active personnel and moving equipment in that area
- Eliminate this transportation waste and develop a more effective internal logistics routing.
If you’d like to read about other findings from this case study, I invite you to check it out here: Reducing Transportation Waste With A Real-Time Asset Location System.
2. Give the 5 Whys Technique a Try
The 5 Why technique is one of the Lean approaches that seek to determine the root cause of inefficiencies and issues in manufacturing processes. The name pretty much says it all, as the technique involves asking the question “Why?” multiple times in a row to understand the problem and explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying it.
The input from the employees involved in the processes you’re evaluating is tremendously important here, as they can give you the information to see beyond the superficial issue. So, here’s how to do the 5 Whys analysis:
- Write down the problem affecting the productivity of manufacturing/internal logistics processes
- Gather the employees involved in these processes and make sure that they understand what you’re trying to achieve
- Start a discussion with them by asking the first “Why?”
- Write down plausible answers given by employees and try to distinguish between real causes and symptoms
- Ask “Why?” four more times. Each time, try to frame the next question in response to the answer.
As a result, you and your employees can identify the root causes of the problem affecting the productivity of your processes.
3. Use Continuous Improvement Software
Adopting the culture of Continuous Improvement is important to make sure that your effort to reduce inefficiencies is consistent. Thankfully, you don’t have to be there on the manufacturing floor every day to look for improvement opportunities. You may automate this process by using special software.
For example, real-time asset location systems that we’ve briefly discussed above are an example of software that can help to do just that.
Read 5 Ways to Support Continuous Improvement (Kaizen) in Production with Real-Time Tracking to know how businesses are already benefiting from this software.
For businesses, the ability to track employees and assets involved in manufacturing processes given by real-time location systems is important because they:
- Make process analysis much easier by eliminating a lot of paperwork and guesswork
- Eliminate the need to draw spaghetti diagrams manually
- Make manufacturing processes more predictable and reduce overproduction
- Help with performance reporting and analysis by making digital, easy-to-use reports.
Moreover, the manager can track teams or individual employees and evaluate their activity and performance to develop solutions for maximizing their productivity.
Final Thoughts
The manufacturing floor is most productive when managers and employees work together on continuous improvement and elimination of waste and inefficiencies. Hopefully, this read was interesting and helpful to you with starting your own productivity improvement projects.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to use continuous improvement software and track your employees and moving assets, feel free to visit our website indoorway.com or chat with our lean manufacturing experts.
