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Product category: OEE and Lean Manufacturing in process control
News Release from: Gemba Solutions | Subject: Production efficiency
Edited by the Processingtalk Editorial Team on 15 February 2008

How you can have your cake and eat
it....

Richard Stone, MD of Gemba Solutions, talks about why production efficiency improvements are key for food and beverage manufacturers

The need for manufacturing companies to work as efficiently as possible is well-documented - most organisations understand that identifying and eliminating waste, and increasing quality and customer satisfaction, will give them a competitive edge that leads to lower costs and higher profits In the current economic climate, these issues have become paramount to many companies, but the food and beverage industry has some specific pressures that can be very positively impacted by optimising production efficiency:

* Product and ingredient freshness and shelf-life make production planning and inventory control more complicated and line stoppages can result in serious levels of waste as perishable goods are scrapped.

* Stringent hygiene requirements mean extra attention to cleaning processes, increasing set-up and changeover times.

* Demanding customers with very narrow quality tolerances and high expectations of fast delivery lead times can result in greater numbers of rejects and higher levels of finished goods (delivery lead times can sometimes be shorter than production lead times, and some customers impose fines for late delivery).

* Outside influences, such as the weather, can have an unpredictable effect, not least in creating variable levels of demand (ice-cream obviously sells faster in hot weather).

Factors such as temperature and humidity can also have a serious impact on the production of many food products, causing machine stoppages (for instance, as dried ingredients are affected by moisture in the air) and necessitating additional machine cleaning processes.

* A shift in demand towards healthy eating products and a focus on environmental issues have created new and changing production requirements.

The current credit crunch has made life even more difficult, particularly for producers of luxury foods and beverages, and the need to be more flexible to customer requirements and produce more for less has become vital.

So, the need to make improvements is clear, but what's the best way to start? Richard Stone, managing director of Gemba Solutions (providers of software and services that assist companies in achieving production efficiencies), has been helping companies address these issues for many years: "In order to make efficiencies, you need to start with a good understanding of how your production processes run now, where the problem areas are and what's causing them.

Base your improvements on solid data that tells you about the levels and reasons for unplanned down-time, rework and scrap.

Find out how and why set-ups, changeover times and machine stoppages affect production speed, and see the impact of delays caused by staff waiting for raw materials, maintenance assistance etc.

Use the data you gather to target your biggest problem areas first, focus your efforts on the issues that will give you the biggest return".

Measuring is key, but knowing that a line has stopped is pointless without understanding why, so getting to the root cause of the problems is vital to making effective improvements: but to get the biggest impact, Richard feels speed is key: "If there's a problem on Tuesday morning, don't wait until you see the report in the Friday production meeting to find out.

You need to know immediately in order to get to the root cause and make the necessary changes so that production speed and quality are protected.

Automated data collection systems can help with this.

Collecting data manually is often a good starting point and gets your staff into the mentality that data is important, but manual systems can become error-ridden, take up valuable time that could be spent doing something else, and are slow.

Automated systems capture every stoppage as it happens - there is often an abundance of minor stoppages that can go unrecorded in manual systems because they're small, regular issues that staff have learned to live with, but they can add up to quite a big problem.

So, with automated systems, you get more complete data in real-time, which means you can isolate and eliminate problems immediately, rather than finding yourself knee-deep in rejects before anyone realises there's an issue.

Don't underestimate the power of the data you gather - sharing this type of information with your employees can reap huge benefits.

I've worked with clients who have seen significant production improvements just by making staff more aware of production metrics like cycle times and achievement-to-target on a real-time basis.

But beware - data alone won't make a significant difference, unless it's grounded in a culture of continuous improvement.

It's obvious to me that understanding your processes and making targeted improvements based on accurate and timely data will result in cost savings, increased profits, motivated employees and happy customers - all desirable at the best of times, but particularly relevant under the current economic pressures which are sure to result in the survival of the fittest only".

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