Start Smart: Find Value Streams In Your Business With Smart Manufacturing

Manufacturers are tasked with reaching ever-increasing goals—with fewer resources. Trying to optimize your manufacturing operations without the right people, processes and technology in place makes it harder to reach those goals. What can you do to be more efficient? Start smart. To find out what starting smart means for you, learn how smart manufacturing can help you find value streams in your business.

1. SMART MANUFACTURING IMPROVES PRODUCTIVITY

Smart manufacturing means leveraging production data and information to make better decisions about manufacturing processes and create value for your business. What are the production inefficiences that are costing you money?

Manufacturing facilities are rated for a certain production capacity. How can you reach your full production potential within that capacity? Start by taking a holistic view of your production lines and discovering your bottlenecks — the areas where your equipment is not running and producing up to its full capacity. Do you have idle equipment? Is there a blockage in the production line? Is your scheduling and inventory management as efficient as possible?

Once you identify what is stopping you from reaching your production potential, quantify the monetary impact of your bottleneck. If it is a $20,000 issue for your business, it probably doesn’t make sense to apply a $50,000 solution. Quantifying the impact on your business helps you determine whether to expand and add production lines to meet demand or find a solution to do more with the equipment you have. Using smart solutions to do more with less maximizes your return on investment.

2. SMART MANUFACTURING IMPROVES PRODUCTION QUALITY

Quality has two components. One is about optimizing your product quality by improving consistency and meeting quality benchmarks to reduce waste. The other is about traceability and documentation. How are you documenting your quality checkpoints? If you are still manually recording data with pen and paper, it’s time to digitize your process.

Using a quality management system to automate and digitize documentation processes eliminates human error in recording data, and having digital records makes it easier to go back and find information when you need it. Production quality can be tracked from the raw material to the finished product to the customer site, so when a quality issue arises, you don’t have to spend time digging through stacks of paper to discover the cause. You can quickly assess the origin and perform a root cause analysis to prevent future quality issues.

Even in thriving organizations, the costs of poor quality can be 10-15% of operations. Using smart solutions to improve quality improves profit and creates value for your company.

3. SMART MANUFACTURING IMPROVES WORKFORCE EFFICIENCY

Smart manufacturing isn’t just implementing technology to solve a problem. It takes a culture change in your facility. Do your workers know what your company’s big picture goals are? Start by showing your people how their individual efforts help the company reach those goals. Then, use smart manufacturing solutions to optimize the people you have on staff and help them work more efficiently.

There are a few ways smart manufacturing increases workforce efficiency. First, automating decision-making processes (or entire processes) reduces or eliminates human error. Second, digital technologies can train employees and help them work more efficiently. Instead of devoting people, resources and time towards training new employees, solutions like augmented reality, virtual reality and digital work instructions can instruct employees in real time as they work.

Lastly, overexertion, falls, slips and trips, and contact with objects and equipment make up more than half of all work-related injuries in the U.S. Using technology to automate processes or reduce workload prevents injuries and keeps your workforce safe and productive. Using smart safety devices and robots takes the burden off your work force, reduces the risk of injury and frees them up to perform higher value production tasks.

4. SMART MANUFACTURING MITIGATES RISKS

Using smart manufacturing to mitigate risks doesn’t necessarily add value to your business, but it does protect your value. Are you able to create value without exposing your data and your business to cyberattacks or unplanned downtime? Manufacturing was the most targeted industry for cyberattacks in 2022, so it is important to consider your cyber approach as you evaluate digital technology. Start by performing a cybersecurity assessment to identify your current assets and vulnerabilities, and develop a cybersecurity plan to protect your digital assets and intellectual property.

The average manufacturer deals with 800 hours of downtime per year. How much more product could you produce in that time? How much more profit could you make? How many more ways could you bring value to your customers? Digitizing maintenance schedules to perform predictive maintenance is one way to avoid unplanned downtime. A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), like Fiix, collects historical data and analytics on equipment to generate schedules and work orders for maintenance. Performing condition-based maintenance instead of time-based maintenance helps you prevent issues before they occur and avoid the risk of unplanned downtime.

If you have goals to grow your business, save money and be more efficient, it’s worth seeing what smart manufacturing can do for you. To start smart and learn more about ways to improve productivity, quality and workforce efficiency, reach out to your Van Meter account manager or call 1-800-247-1410 to connect with one of Van Meter’s smart manufacturing experts.

Where Can Smart Manufacturing Help You Improve?