SafetyChain Blog

The unrealized gains of the manufacturing world – internal audits. They’re widely understood as important, but their benefits are commonly unrealized by plant management. When executed correctly, internal audits can drive efficiencies and improve your bottom line. However, there are several mistakes plant management typically makes when conducting internal audits that hinder their effectiveness.

Problem-solving production issues is an essential aspect of Lean manufacturing, but often becomes challenging if manufacturers use problem-solving methods and tools that don’t align with the type of problem being addressed. Choosing the wrong problem-solving solution is typically a result of incorrectly identifying or defining the problem.

In the fast-paced and ever-changing global supply chain, operational agility and efficiency have become crucial for manufacturers to survive and grow. Lean manufacturing, a practice that aims to eliminate waste and any activities of non-value, has become an essential tool for organizations looking to improve their operations. However, Lean is not just a methodology, it is a philosophy that requires a mindset shift across the entire organization to drive continuous improvement.

Every manufacturer is familiar with Root Cause Analysis (RCA), yet even with well-known methods in place, plant management can struggle to identify incident trends and pinpoint areas of improvement. While you can’t improve anything that isn't measured and analyzed, misguided analysis can have adverse effects on operations and prevent safety improvements necessary to produce high-quality products. 

The Dilemma

The process of turning raw materials into finished products is a massive team effort that requires the unification of all the people, processes, and equipment to achieve a common goal. Unfortunately, the systems traditionally used to facilitate efficiency often work in opposition to this goal, especially enterprise-class software.

Effective teams need a shared understanding of their goal and the progress across functions, including production, quality, and compliance. Only with a shared understanding can they take the right actions and make the needed course corrections. This level of coordination cannot happen with siloed information and data that is hours, days, or weeks old.

The manufacturing industry is no stranger to labor shortages. In our webinar, Addressing Labor Shortage: How to Increase Uptime While Empowering Employees attendees agreed that high turnover and an inability to hire skilled workers were their two largest challenges. Jeremy Tancredi, Partner at West Monroe consultancy with over 20 years of experience in operational productivity for large distribution clients, covered several methods to overcome these issues.

Adopting the right technology and instituting new and innovative ways for process optimization in manufacturing is crucial to staying competitive in the manufacturing industry. For example, a leading frozen foods company with nine plants - used SafetyChain QMS to try and determine the cause of a faulty lot of frozen dumplings. In two hours, they were able to use technology to diagnose the root cause, make the appropriate adjustments, and save hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We’ll go over the right steps to take to ensure you’re using the right resources for your process optimization, potential challenges to process optimization, and guidance for optimizing your processes.

It is no secret that visibility is essential to optimizing your manufacturing operations. With incoming materials and outgoing orders all tracked and managed from a spreadsheet or paper forms, it is near impossible to understand what is truly happening on your plant floor, let alone where you should focus your improvement efforts. 

In our recent webinar, You Can’t Fix What You Can’t See: Three Ways to Shine the Light on Optimizing Operations, participants were asked if they could express how their operation is performing without leaving their chairs. Not surprisingly, 35% said no, and that’s not uncommon. In the competitive world of manufacturing, process manufacturers are faced with the challenge to gain true visibility into their plant operations and optimize with the resources available — this is not an easy task. However, with the right approach and tools, it is possible.

The majority of the attendees at our Demystifying Industry 4.0 webinar agreed the world isn’t slowing down and won’t stop changing. A major factor in that change is the speed at which technology evolves. Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) are major parts of the ongoing shifts happening in manufacturing and production.

How do we balance time and money when it comes to plant maintenance? It’s common for many organizations to rely upon reactive maintenance, and fixing problems as they occur. While this method can seem cost-effective initially, the costs will increase over time with extended downtime and greater unpredictability. Proactive maintenance, however, while generating a higher upfront cost, can lower overall maintenance costs, reduce equipment and employee downtime, and significantly increase asset availability.