Posts Tagged ‘manufacturing’

Productivity is a constant issue in today’s society. With the technological advances of past years, the demand for increased productivity has become very great. Improve your productivity can be simple, by following these ten quick tips.

1. Track your productivity, and note increases and decreases. Many factors can affect the productivity of a warehouse. Anything from weather to the day of the week can affect your productivity. If you keep track and note changes in productivity, you may learn effective methods to keep your employees productive.
2. Keep Areas Clean. A common problem for people is that their area is too cluttered. This means that employees waste countless minutes each day looking for something within their workspace. Allowing employees 5-10 minutes at the beginning or end of their shift will allow them to set up and organize everything to their liking for work.
3. Maintain Accurate Records. A major problem for manufacturers is their inventory. If a manufacturer runs out of a specific material, they may have to wait days for their supplier to restock. This wastes time and brings production to a screeching halt. Keeping your inventory records up to date will prevent running out of any necessary supplies to keep day to day operations productive.
4. Maintain Equipment. Another major issue for manufacturers is equipment. If a machine is not properly cared for, the likelihood of it breaking down and requiring intensive repairs is much greater. Maintaining equipment can also extend the life of your machines, saving your hard-earned money.
5. Optimize Layout & Space Consumption. One of the biggest inefficiencies is the location of materials and tools. If a material is in one corner of the plant, and the tool to work on such material is in the other, employees are wasting precious time wandering around the plant floor. This also increases the chances of them being distracted and wasting time chatting with other employees.
6. Automate When Possible. While some people worry that this eliminates jobs, automation can actually make the employee’s job easier, and overall increase productivity. Automation also reduces the risk for human error, resulting in more shelf-ready product.
7. Keep Morale High. This concept seems simple. If your employees are happy, they will be more likely to work harder. However, determining what increases morale can be hard. When reviewing the productivity records you have been tracking, note any positive changes in morale, and try and duplicate them. On a nice day, let employees out fifteen minutes early. This keeps the employees happy and speedy, which will increase your overall productivity by leaps and bounds.
8. Optimize Labelling/Paperwork. Employees need to know specific information about products and equipment. However, if they have to look at several pages to retrieve all the information they require, this can be time consuming, and confuse the employee. Try to optimize all the information they need so that it fits on one page. That way employees can carry the page with them and check it for reference whenever required.
9. Remember Training is a Priority. While training can be costly, showing an employee where you keep specific items they require will help them to work more efficiently. Learning where an item is the first time they are in the location will help them remember, rather than having to go and find it themselves.
10. Communicate with your employees. Communication is key between an employer and their employees. Not only will this help to keep morale high, employees may notice things you don’t. While you may think that a machine is efficient in it’s current location, your employees may note that it would be easier for them if it were situated somewhere else.

We’ve spoken a bit about continuous improvement on our blog, but we haven’t yet talked about WHY exactly it is important for manufacturers, and how exactly you can apply it to your business.

As a brief reminder, continuous improvement is the process of constantly making your business run more efficiently, with better effectiveness and producing better quality. On the most basic level, it is a series of small changes to improve your business, with the belief that building on all of these small changes will make a great bettering of your business. It is perhaps best stated by Edward Deming, as “the need to improve constantly and forever the system of production and service to improve quality and productivity and thus constantly decrease costs.”

This process is important for manufacturers, especially in our economic time, because it can help us to cut costs, to produce higher quality products at a faster rate, to reduce the amount of waste and deficient products we produce, and to remain competitive with other companies (both on a national and global stage).

Sounds like a great thing, doesn’t it? And there are many different ways in which you can apply continuous improvement in manufacturing, some of which are very successful and have become very popular. These include Kaizen, Just-in-Time and Lean manufacturing.

How are you applying continuous improvement in your business?

The aerospace and defense industry is one of the few sectors in manufacturing that is currently not only surviving but thriving amid the recession, despite the grim predictions  for job losses and bankruptcies among other Canadian manufacturers, plummeting oil prices, and the ever fluctuating CDN dollar. Employment rates and revenue are even continually on the rise.

In the past year, Bombardier Aerospace introduced their much anticipated line of CSeries jets.  Magellan Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney Canada invested big time in their Montreal and Winnipeg operations.

According to the AIAC (Aerospace Industries Association of Canada), based in Ottawa, the aerospace sector directly employed 82,000 Canadians in 2007.  This is a significant increase from the 79,000 employees working in the industry just a year prior.  Aerospace revenue increased by half a billion to $22.7B.

Aircraft parts, components, and planes, jets, etc. account for 55% of  the overall revenues for the aerospace sector, the majority of which is generated by exports, especially to the US and European countries. Military sales increased by $5 billion last year, a rise of 18% from 2006.

Helping to fuel the exponential growth of the aerospace sector (no pun intended) is the increase in commercial air travel. The Current Market Outlook for 2007-2008, released by Boeing, predicted that air passenger travel will increase 5% per year, and cargo travel by 5.8%. The forecast extends these numbers for the next two decades.

Quote for April 22nd, 2009:

“The modern airplane creates a new geographical dimension. A navigable ocean of air blankets the whole surface of the globe. There are no distant places any longer: the world is small, and the world is one.”
- Wendell Willkie

According to Wikipedia, “lean is centered around creating more value with less work.” Lean manufacturing is basically creating a more streamlined process where we learn from our mistakes and reduce waste – whether physical waste or wasted time. It uses both innovation and problem solving to produce better results. The concept of “lean principles” comes from the Japanese manufacturing industry.

There are many different areas that lean manufacturing principles can be applied. They are all effective when applied to your business correctly. Some of the easiest lean manufacturing principles to implement are as follows.

Waste elimination allows you to continually keep a lookout on ways that you can reduce waste. For example, to eliminate wasted products, take the time to examine the products at various stages in the manufacturing process. This way, defects can be detected before reaching the final stages of production.

Organization of the work area can definitely be of great benefit in the lean manufacturing process. This helps prevent wasted time and makes things much easier to find. The 5S Program focuses on workplace organization.

Map your processes – write down every step involved in a process. Are all of the steps necessary? Can any of them be combined or modified to be more efficient?

So how can you implement lean manufacturing principles into your own manufacturing plant?

There is no set method that is guaranteed to work in every situation. The best way to start, however, is to take a really good look at how things currently happen at your business. Analyze what the problems may be, and how you can best solve these problems. Look at challenges and opportunities. Take a look at what can be easily eliminated, or modified to work better. These will determine what processes you should use to implement the changes that need to be made. Some possible programs include the 5S Program and Kaizen.

Lines of credit have almost completely dried up in this recession, and it’s harder than ever for businesses to fund their new development projects.  Ontario’s Advanced Manufacturing Investment Strategy (AMIS) is a great venue for Ontario manufacturers to pursue. What’s more, AMIS is available to companies from all manufacturing sectors in Ontario. The $500 million dollar provincial program focuses on:

• industrial R&D
• design/prototyping/engineering
• new/ advanced products/materials
• advanced manufacturing processes
• robotics/software development
• waste reduction
• energy conservation

AMIS, when granting a loan, can provide up to 30% of the total eligible costs of a project (up to a limit of $10M). This funding is given in the form of a repayable loan. The loan is interest free and principal free for up to five years, providing the company receiving it meets job and investment targets mutually agreed upon between the company and the province. After that period, the repayment rate is the province’s cost of borrowing, plus an additional 1%.

To be eligible, projects must create and/or retain at least 50 jobs. Alternatively, the projects must invest $10 million over the 5 year period. The costs eligible for the loan (excluding ongoing costs of production or operations) include:

• research and development
• equipment and machinery
• materials
• construction/facility improvements
• training
• overhead
• labour (one time only)

The terms for the loan are negotiated individually. After completing the application process, most companies receive word of the province’s decision within a relatively speedy 45 calendar days. This sometimes may take longer for the more complicated applications. The Minister of Finance, along with the Minister of Economic Development, approve or deny applications based on the guidelines of the AMIS Assessment Committee.

What’s more, for those manufacturers who regularly claim for SR&ED, receiving an AMIS loan has no impact on SR&ED eligibility. The AMIS loan is not affected if a business has already received an SR&ED return or income tax credits.  Companies that have received AMIS funding often include extra cash procured by SR&ED towards their projects. In fact, any business that has received SR&ED credits is more likely to be meeting the AMIS eligibility requirements.

For more information about AMIS, visit http://www.ontariocanada.com/ontcan/en/progserv_amis_en.jsp