6 Ways to Increase Your Production Plants Efficiency
Production planning is a crucial part of manufacturing processes. It is required to help manufacturers meet consumer demand while minimizing production time and costs by improving workflow, reducing lead times, and optimizing the use of the plants, equipment, and raw materials.
Without a solid production plan, you will have difficulty achieving your objectives, maximizing productivity, reducing and avoiding waste, creating quality goods, and fulfilling orders.
Below are six ways you can implement to improve your production planning.
Forecast Consumer Demand
The first thing you need to do is forecasting consumer demand to find out how many products you have to produce for a certain period of time. The easiest way to do it is by reviewing your historical data. However, you will find it difficult to get accurate forecasts if you do not have an advanced reporting tool.
With a good inventory management system, you can easily analyze consumer demand for certain products and find out your inventory turnover ratio, since the data can be generated automatically, so you can get precise forecasts of fast and slow moving products.
You also need to consider external events that might change current consumer demand. For example, new market trends, economic slowdown, or new marketing campaigns that could increase or decrease the demand for your products compared to what happened in the past.
Take control of your inventory
Good inventory control helps you avoid unnecessary procurement costs, ensuring that your facility always has adequate supplies of materials, and stocking the right items at the right time.
With a good inventory management system, you can set up minimum inventory levels and receive alerts whenever your inventory levels approach that number, automate orders to your suppliers, calculate inventory turnover, forecast inventory needs, and much more.
Ensure Your Staff Availability
In addition to ensuring the availability of your materials, you also need to ensure the availability of your staff. Estimate the number of employees needed in the production process and make sure you put the right people in the right jobs. Provide them with supporting tools and extensive training on the use of certain tools and technologies used by your company.
Standardize All the Steps
Start by mapping all the steps of your production process. Consider which tasks need to be sequenced or have to depend on other tasks, and which ones occur simultaneously or independently.
After the process mapping is done, you will find out how long it will take to complete the entire process. Document repetitive activities in your manufacturing process for future use and utilize it as a baseline for establishing routes and times in the upcoming manufacturing processes.
Identify Potential Issues Before They Occur
Anticipate all the issues that might occur in the production process by collecting historical information related to similar work experiences, detailing actual time, materials, and failures that happened in the past.
To make it easier for you to learn and determine ways to reduce potential problems in your manufacturing business operations, consider conducting a failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA).
Convey the Plans
Last but not least, communicate your strategic production planning to employees who will implement it. Aside from delivering the plans directly, you can also post your plans, work orders, and production schedules on manufacturing management software and grant access rights to your employees so they can go through them whenever needed.