Three Tips for Improving Manufacturing Productivity and Reliability
Planning a productive and reliable operation is like piecing together a thousand-piece puzzle. With so many moving parts, people and products in a factory, it can be hard to see how all the pieces should fit together in the best way possible. To help you with your big picture goals, here are three tips for improving productivity and reliability for your operation:
1. USE DATA TO IMPROVE PROCESSES
Using data can help you make informed decisions, but what good is data if you do not have a way to store and access it? Instead of digging through a paper-based filing system, a Manufactuing Execution System (MES), like Plex, allows you to digitally manage your production records and processes to increase accuracy of information, quality and throughput.
An MES platform provides more visibility into how your operation is running, so you can improve efficiency by allocating resources where they are most valuable. Instead of looking at your files to see how your production was doing two weeks ago, you can see and visually understand your production rates in real time. With greater visibility and data, you can proactively improve your production processes instead of reacting when something goes wrong.
2. BE CONSISTENT TO INCREASE UPTIME
If your systems are not reliable and suffer downtime, productivity will also suffer. An overarching control platform, like Plant PAx, provides consistent configuration and operator experience. With Plant PAx, if something goes wrong on one line, the configuration and the troubleshooting process would look the same as it does on all of your other lines. Even if you are not in the location experiencing the problem, accessing PlantPAx via the cloud allows you to diagnose and address issues from any location more quickly.
A quality management system (QMS), like Plex QMS, can also make quality checks and traceability easier. If you have a quality issue in the plant, you can review your digital records to identify where and when the quality issue took place, so you can remediate the digital quality check to catch it next time. A good QMS makes continuous improvement easier and faster.
3. DEPLOY ROBOTS TO INCREASE WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY
Workforce challenges are tough, sometimes leaving you with too few employees to carry out all the required tasks, and productivity can suffer. Using robots to automate tasks is a great way to increase production without needing a larger workforce. Robots do not get tired and do not need breaks. Why hire three different people for three eight-hour shifts if one robot can do the same task for 24 hours straight?
Robots are also more reliable, as they reduce human error. Once a robot is programmed, it will perform the same function the exact same way every time. Utilizing a robot frees up workers who otherwise would have been performing the same mundane tasks, so those workers can then go fix or focus on other quality problems and provide additional value to your business.
What are you doing to increase productivity in your operation? How could accessing certain data or automating specific processes help you improve? Let us know which solutions interest you, sign up for PlantPAx training, or contact your account manager to see how we can put the pieces together to help you improve.
