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When your business takes care of its own manufacturing, it can save you a lot of the running costs you might see by outsourcing it, entirely. However, it also means that you’re much more responsible for the successes and failures on the production line. To that end, here, we’re going to look at what you can do to avoid the mishaps and errors that can end up costing you greatly.
Know your sources of loss
The biggest issue for any manufacturing line is the question of efficiency, and what you can do to help your line run more efficiently. One of the best things you can do is to take the time to identify your most frequent sources of loss. If it’s due to human error, then more effective and thorough training or even automation might be the key. If it’s down to equipment failure, then new equipment or a more thorough preventative maintenance schedule can help you manage it.
Know your components and composition
While it might be the role of the team on the floor to put them all together, you should make sure that you have a thorough understanding of what your products are made of and how they are put together. For instance, you should know what a gasket is, where it goes in your product, and what it’s used for. This way, if you need to make improvements or replacements of materials or components, you can much more quickly pinpoint problems such as in the event of frequent faults in production due to poor component quality.
Know how your inventory is stored
Aside from knowing what every component and material is used for in the manufacturing process, you should also ensure that you know where they are and how they are moved. An inventory control system for your manufacturing process can ensure that you’re able to track down materials or components you need when you need them, and you can track volumes of them over time as well. This way, you can prepare ahead and order what you need to ensure that you don’t find yourself stopping production because you ran out of the components that you need.
Know the importance of safety
One of the worst things that can happen on your production line is an injury. Whether due to machine malfunction, human error, or otherwise, an injury can halt work for a significant period of time, deprive you of a worker, harm your team’s morale, and lead to potential financial and legal disputes over the injury. Taking the time to put systems in place that prevent manufacturing accidents is crucial. This can mean ensuring thorough safety training, providing the necessary PPE, installing more machine guards, and more regularly evaluating the risks associated with each workstation and what can be done to mitigate them.
With the tips above, you can make sure that you’re doing what you can to prevent loss, keeping your finger on the pulse of the production line so you can make what improvements are necessary, whenever you need to.
