Why can manufacturing businesses tackle the most pressing problems on the floor? Could Continuous Improvement be the solution? Let’s find out more.
Manufacturing companies have been facing new challenges since the start of the decade, including supply chain issues and shortages of workers. However, many leaders in the industry aren’t confident in their ability to overcome these challenges. This is due to the inflexibility of their legacy manufacturing systems.
These antiquated systems are holding companies back, stifling growth and innovation. But high-value solutions exist that can help them better leverage their data, boost efficiency and meet cost and production targets. In this article, we’ll look at how Continuous Improvement (CI) solutions can make the difference.
What is digitalised Continuous Improvement?
Disjointed processes and siloed systems have long held back traditional manufacturing. Problems are often discovered too late due to poor tracking. Often, leaders focus on the loudest or most apparent issues when it’s something more deep-rooted that is the pressing matter to solve.
Digitalized Continuous Improvement solutions are different. They’re closed-loop and agile, helping factories to focus on the root causes of issues, alleviate bottlenecks and streamline the problem-solving process.
Discovering bottlenecks
Digitalized CI helps you discover and analyse bottlenecks, so you can take measures to eliminate them. CI excels in helping you understand why something is a bottleneck, not simply that one exists. For example, it provides insights into whether a bottleneck is linked to downtime, product mix, quality, or something else.
The thing about bottlenecks is that they’re dynamic. A blockage in one place can create another one somewhere else. Understanding how this happens and the relationship between bottlenecks is exceptionally challenging. Digital CI solutions help you know where to place your focus. Studies show it can increase efficiency by as much as 20%.
Analysing performance
Once you’ve discovered your bottlenecks that affect your production and their underlying causes, it’s time to eliminate them. Again, performance analysis inside your CI solution helps teams make the correct changes.
Your CI solution will show your CI team where the most production time is being lost, whether it’s a unit, production line, factory or the entire production network. Armed with this information, you can make the necessary improvements, such as:
- Adding production capacity
- Altering shift patterns
- Reducing waste
- Driving through cost reductions
When you allocate your time and resources to the problems that need to be solved because they affect performance, rather than just the ones that shout the loudest, you can be more productive and unlock significant financial benefits. What’s more, you make your company more sustainable, which is so important in today’s world.
Find out more
ThingWorx DPM is a digitalised Continuous Improvement solution that helps companies make sense of their manufacturing processes and solve their biggest problems. By improving your CI tech, you can keep your company competitive and deliver better results.
