Fraser Thomson from manufacturing execution systems specialist Cimlogic, reveals six essential changes your business should make in 2015.
In 2015, customers will be demanding lower prices without sacrificing product quality. Manufacturers need to make sure efficiency is at the top of their list of New Year Resolutions.
Sustainable savings can derive from implementing smarter manufacturing processes such as supply chain technologies. Making even the smallest of changes in these 6 areas can significantly lower operating costs, boosting the bottom line.
1 Be informed – Having a lack of visibility and knowledge into production processes and inefficiencies can impair the quality of decision making. Implement processes and systems which provide the data and information needed to collaborate between departments.
2 Ditch the paperwork – Using paper based manual systems can result in inaccurate information and cause poor decisions to be made. Replace paper based systems with electronic systems to benefit from accurate real-time manufacturing intelligence.
3 Improve quality – Fixing quality problems can be time consuming and costly. Eliminate common quality problems and reduce the number of defect products.
4 Track and trace – Reduce the cost of product recall and the damaging affect to brand reputation caused by poor quality products. Track and trace a product from ‘Farm to Fork’ for increased product quality, safety, transparency and improved recall responsiveness.
5 Use less energy – With rising manufacturing energy costs and the need to meet social responsibility policies, it is key to drill down into the factors that impact energy efficiency of existing assets and machinery, in order to eliminate unnecessary energy costs. Savings start with monitoring and recording energy consumption; so identify the activities that waste energy and put a strategy in place to reduce them.
6 Keep getting better – CI is at the heart of any lean initiative and so having a dedicated CI team in place from day one is important to drive the process and journey forward. The role of the team is to get buy in from operators and stakeholders so that everybody understands what role they play in the improvement process and that they see the potential value of the program, departmentally and companywide. Evolving an improvement culture and strategy across the whole organisation is vital to a successful CI program.
For more information please contact Cimlogic on or email [email protected]
