Pinpoint your production losses
November 22, 2009 by david.evanson
Are you tired of working with sketchy and out-of-date production information? Are you frustrated because you know your lines can do better? Do you need an effective way to get your operators involved?
The XL800 Productivity Appliance exposes production losses in real-time and motivates your operators:
XL800 is easy. It can be installed by your team, so there are no expensive integration charges. We provide a simple installation guide and free technical support - all the tools you need for a fast and easy install.
XL800 is a great value. Our complete solution includes a rugged plant floor visual display, data warehouse and integrated performance management suite, £2910. You can even try it FREE!
What’s the next step?
- Call me at +44 121 447 8520 (we’ll focus right away on solving your biggest challenges)
- Start a FREE trial (try XL800 in your plant with OFX technical support)
- Request an online meeting (see XL800 live and in action)
- Download an Executive Summary (learn more and show XL to your team)
How good are your Performance Review Meetings?
July 27, 2009 by samirshah
Have you ever wondered……
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We have all the relevant performance reviews is place but I don’t know how effective they are?
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We review our downtime regularly but I am not sure that we are focussing in the correct areas?
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I am sure we can achieve more in the current performance reviews but I don’t know what I should be doing to make them better?
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I believe that some of the meetings we have are a waste of my time and I am not sure what I am supposed to contribute in them?
Regularly, we come across sites that have these questions and don’t know what to do about it. For this reason we have developed an audit criterion that focuses on meetings objectives and outcomes and identifies areas that are being performed well and highlights improvement opportunities.
The first thing we would advice a client to do is to list all the current performance review meetings they have on site with the relevant outcomes required, purpose for the meeting, attendees with their required contribution, meeting frequency and consequences for non-attendance. This highlights gaps where by the relevant attendees are not correct or it is not clear why the meeting is in place. In some cases we have found that the meetings were put in place historically due to an unknown reason and are not relevant anymore. By clearly defining the items mentioned above makes everyone aware of the reason for attending a certain meeting and what will be required from them. This ensures that an attendance to a meeting is not just a waste of time.
Once all your meetings are clearly defined and everyone who attends knows the reason why they are there, you should set up an audit structure that enables you to understand how well the meetings are achieving the desired outcomes. By forming a habit of having a meeting audit timetable, it will ensure that your meetings are continuously delivering a positive result and any revamp of a meeting can be carried out should the objectives outlined are not being achieved.
Some of the things we look out for in a meeting that has been clearly defined with a purpose and objectives to find out if it is achieving its desired outcomes is listed below:
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Was the meeting fully attended?
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If not, were there any consequences for non-attendance?
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Were actions from previous meeting reviewed for effectiveness?
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Were there any consequences for not completing actions within allocated time?
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Did the meeting run to time?
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Was the meeting focused on objectives at all times?
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Was accountability assigned to each of the actions?
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Were targets assigned to each of the actions?
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Was the meeting outputs documented in the relevant logs?
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Were the overall objectives of the meeting achieved?
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If further information was required, was it followed through to the area of the issue?
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Was there an action in place to resolve the root cause if different to actions assigned above?
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Did any coaching take place after the meeting? E.g. what went well and could be improved
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Intent of Review -Did the review contribute towards a positive effect on line performance?
We mark each of the relevant questions above in a meeting and give it a score with a quality and effectiveness rating for the meeting. This enables the meetings to be reviewed and feedback given to the facilitator of the meeting to make it better.
This is all part of the continuous improvement philosophy and helps you keep track of all the relevant reviews you have in place to improve performance. If the performance reviews are not effective, your improvement efforts will be limited to the quality of these reviews.
We have several of these performance tools that can help you identify areas of improvement and enables you to progressively move forward. If you would like to know more about these tools, please get in touch and find out how we can help you achieve your desired outcomes.
Post on OEE that caught my eye
April 13, 2009 by david.evanson
I just had this article on OEE hit my google alerts and think you may enjoy the authors thoughts on the pros and cons of OEE measurement.
What’s interesting for me is that whilst he acknowledges the power of electronic capture systems the article is very much based on manually calculated OEE.
See what you think:
The Good and Bad of OEE
David Berger, P.Eng., Contributing Editor to Plant Services, PlantServices.com
David Berger, P.Eng., contributing editor, says overall equipment effectiveness is a powerful, meaningful metric if youre aware of what it excludes.
Planning Optimisation
February 27, 2009 by samirshah
Why Optimise Planning?
Traditional view of industry - Push the products out into the market
- - Keep producing even when there is no demand
- - Keep the factory running all the time
- - Keep lots of stock
Lean approach - Demand from the market pulls products
- - Only produce what you can sell
- - Don’t produce to hold in stock
- - Keep minimum/no stock levels
“To keep a balance between reducing overall warehousing costs and be able to satisfy varying demand (e.g. seasonal) as well as maximise availability at the production facility companies utilise both the push and pull approach”
For this reason it is necessary to pay particular importance to optimising production planning.
There have been conflicting views between the corporate strategy for planning and the site strategy for what should be planned. The reason for this is related to how the departments are measured and targeted. At the corporate level it is all about reducing cost and increasing the flexibility to deliver where as at site level it is all about maximising performance measures such as OEE. This leads to very little synergy and a lot of animosity between the corporate planning department and the site production department.
The ultimate aim should be to deliver the products at the right time, at the right price and at the required quality to the customer.
At the corporate level there needs to be an understanding about the plant/line capability. This is the actual delivery capacity of the line. The key element to understand is that if the number of products to be made is large the actual availability to produce will be low reducing the actual capacity due to the number of changeovers required. To have the maximum capacity available, there needs to be a strategy to have as many long runs of product as possible and minimise need of the changeovers as much as possible.
At the site level, there needs to be an understanding that there are requirements to produce small runs of certain products due to their demand profile and to keep the warehousing costs low. Once the amount of products to be made is received from central planning, the site scheduling department needs to look at scheduling the production runs that will maximise the line availability by looking at combining production runs that are required at different times and by looking at minimising changeover times by scheduling product runs that require minimum operations (therefore time) to changeover. The site can look at ways to optimise their changeovers by implementing quick changeover programmes such as SMED and by looking at technology and innovation to eliminate changeovers all together between different product runs.
Therefore to summarise:
- Understand what product types are runners, repeaters and strangers - Please read an article on “The Reflective Supply Chain in Manufacturing” By John Hicks and Patrick Lee
- Decide on minimum buffer (stock) quantity for each product type
- Determine production batch size of each when minimum stock quantity is reached - this may vary on future demand and seasonality
- Put together a production plan to make products that have reached their minimum stock quantity - decide between product mix and volume required by taking into account plant/line capability with a view to maximise plant/line availability
