Producing to the maximum

In the never-ending quest for better financial returns, manufacturing and process industries have been paring down their costs wherever possible. And no department has been spared in the quest for cost savings. So where is any further significant improvement in financial returns going to come from? The answer lies in maximising the returns on assets - both human and capital items.

Plant and equipment is one area that can easily be taken for granted. Yet it is possibly the area where the greatest contributions to the bottom line can be generated. The issue is not trivial and the improvement of the manufacturing process is dependent on measurement of key data points, understanding the results and effecting necessary changes. Smart manufacturers are beginning to realise that their plant and equipment is capable of producing at higher efficiencies, with greater resulting throughput and are turning to improved monitoring and reporting systems to provide the information to enable them to achieve these increases.

What is the equipment capable of producing?

This is an extremely vexing question. OEMs may well understate throughput so that customers are happy when they consistently produce at close to the stated figure. Other OEMs may well overstate to gain sales.

When engineers install the equipment in a production line, upstream and downstream issues alter this original hypothetical production rate.

In actual operation, other factors impact on the completed line's production capacity. Fundamental is the identification and understanding of the line 'bottleneck' because this will restrict the fastest possible line speed. Additional factors include downtime and idle time. It is not unreasonable to suggest that these relatively simple factors are not well understood by many manufacturers and yet these factors are controllable if they are effectively monitored and communicated in a timely manner. Figure 1 shows an analysis of the effective performance of a unit of production machinery.

How to monitor and capture downtime events?

It is an unfortunate fact that many companies in Australia have insufficient accurate information regarding when their production lines suffer downtime events, let alone what causes them to happen. Certainly, downtime events of significant duration are usually recorded, often manually, but there are many smaller stoppages that forever go unreported and therefore unrecorded.

Some companies have installed software to record information about events so that they can gain a clearer picture of what has happened on the production line. But again, most of the data is manually inputted. Additionally, it can sometimes take weeks to generate a meaningful report. So, action to address any issues can take weeks or even months to get under way.

The ultimate solution is to capture information on events as they occur, and to display this information in a meaningful way to maintenance staff, equipment operators or shift managers. When this is done, you can capture and display the time, place, cause and duration of every downtime event. Measurement is a fundamental precursor to control.

Operators can track their shift performance against production targets and relieving shift managers can see exactly what happened in the previous shift and take appropriate action. This can involve altering the schedule for planned maintenance or simply readjusting the production target for the new shift.

What to do with performance data?

Passive data is nothing more than information taking up space - on a computer, on a spike or in a drawer. It needs to be presented in a way that allows for actions to be planned and implemented.

If data is being collected and recorded manually, then it is essential that this information can be extracted in a logical format as often as possible and as soon as possible. Think of the data not as a record of what happened, but rather as a measurement against optimal performance. Presented in this light, business and operational decisions can be made that can lead to significant additional income through increased production.

If that same data can be recorded and displayed in real-time, then the whole enterprise can benefit.

Via a web browser, information being displayed on the floor can also be made available to others in the enterprise. Maintenance personnel, planners and schedulers, operators, engineers and production analysts can make decisions in real-time.

With open communications, this same information can also be made available to others who may benefit by knowing what's happening in real-time. Sales and marketing personnel, manufacturing management and executive management are just some of the enterprise stakeholders who may be able to take advantage of this information.

Therefore, such a system, coupled to a Continuous Improvement Program, can lead to companies optimising the performance of their production assets.

In essence, this monitoring and reporting function can be seen as an integral part of a company's other systems and functions (see Figure 2).

There is no doubt that for many companies further cost cutting is no longer a realistic option. Not only is it likely to leave them with fewer production and human assets, it is also likely to drive down morale.

The preferable action, for all concerned, is to optimise performance. And the methods outlined above are a good way to achieve this. Not only will this increase throughputs, but you will also empower staff to become part of this improvement process and this in turn is likely to raise morale.