Production Office Downtime Costs Manufacturers Money
Inefficiencies in the factory office seem to be tolerated far more than on the shop floor. Maybe this is because excessive admin is often seen as a given in office environments. However, there is such a thing as too much admin, and this leads to time and money lost every week.
The cost of admin
Unnecessary admin consumes around 1,000 hours a year, which totals 42 days or 21.5 hours per week. When the total of excessive admin is taken into consideration, it becomes clear that this must have an impact on production schedules. The following behaviours are commonplace in many production offices and are often the reason for repetitive and excess admin:
- Searching for information, data or documents
- Updating out of date data and documents
- Chasing people for review and sign off
- Inputting data into different systems
- Verifying data, information
- Revising schedules for new orders forced in by sales
- Unplanned schedule changes because of machine breakdown
- Materials arriving late or, worse, not ordered at all
The chances are your business can identify with some, if not most, of these. If you have been wondering why production is slower than expected – it is time to start investigating. The impact on production can be product delivery targets missed and incorrect parts manufactured or purchased, which can then affect your business margins, sales and reputation. Such an inconspicuous issue can have knock-on effects that ripple through the whole of your business, so it is time to address the issue before these worst-case scenarios.
What can be done to address these issues?
We find a common thread when discussing these issues with production teams. There are four main things that can have a significant effect on profits:
- People
- Data
- Process
- Technology
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People
One of the most significant issues many production teams understand is that people – even with the best intentions - create problems. They create solutions too, but often organisations don’t manage people processes very effectively. People are already incredibly time pressured, and this is when mistakes can be made. There are times when staff feel busy but in truth, insufficient tangible results are seen and it’s often due to excessive admin. You can sense the impact of this in the number of hours a day you have to direct processes, chase people, fight fires, react to the next crisis. It’s also likely that on your way you will create even more data than no one has time to manage.
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Data
Data can feel intangible for many businesses, and with good reason. It is often in varying formats, there is an abundance of it, and it cannot always be relied on to be accurate, complete or up to date. Much of this data is also security protected, so isn’t easily accessible when needed.
To help manufacturers reduce time, admin and errors, something such as a production and scheduling solution is vital in bringing this data together and making it useful. It can also increase the accuracy of data by using data from shop floor machines, rather than manual inputting of data.
Watch what significant improvements can come from investing in production planning and scheduling for your company.
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Process
Process is also something that is outdated across manufacturing. Emails are sent and meetings are had but it still often leads to chasing information or trying to solve problems after an event. The disconnect between high-level strategy and general workflow means that people can be working blind waiting for decisions from others. A surprisingly common problem seen in production departments across industry is how many times people are found to be working on different versions of a schedule. By providing a real-time plan, your team can work on a single version of the truth, and not have to chase for decisions and updates from other colleagues.
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Technology
We all know that manufacturers need to embrace technology to benefit from Industry 4.0. However, the purchasing of systems can often be disjointed, with no overarching business aim to investment. This isolated way of buying systems, such as finance, payroll, MRP or HR leads to several systems that do not integrate with each other. Not only is this detrimental to sharing data across systems, it also means that complete traceability is an incredibly difficult task to undertake and includes yet more documents.
Use and expand existing systems
Many factors affect profit and output – and they aren’t always obvious. The best initial step to start overcoming obstacles is using the data generated from your ERP effectively to get a wider picture of your business. Most legacy ERP systems are installed by accounts and focused on financial reporting, not manufacturing. Then, by choosing to expand your ERP with production scheduling software you start to proactively solve problems instead of just focusing on keeping production moving and dealing with the consequences later. Production planning and scheduling software can even model the impact of schedule changes before committing to production and forecast the impact on output and profit. This would allow you to start making decisions based on data and with predictable, quantified outcomes.
