Many manufacturers track important performance measures daily to ensure their plants are producing the correct product at the correct rate to meet production and customer delivery goals. Daily target values are important and are generally set for measuring significant internal functions. Feedback from actual production gauges how each step in the production process is performing. When a plant is successfully meeting daily target metrics, managers and supervisors can be confident that overall customer requirements will be met.
Improvements in plant efficiencies can be achieved by analyzing target values and changing production procedures to adjust goals upward. Too often, however, food and beverage processors consistently miss production targets.
Failing to meet production goals across the plant indicates problems on the processing lines. Unless these problems are corrected, conditions will ultimately lead to profit losses. Below are five key processing metrics and common reasons these targets are often missed.
1. On-Time Delivery/Schedule Attainment
Delivery of product to customers is the last step in a series of process steps that begins with receipt of order. Any misstep along the processing chain can lead to missed daily targets for meeting delivery commitments. Often, however, inaccurate inventory records are at the root of these problems. Incorrect inventory balances can mean production orders are incorrectly entered, and the product is not available when customer orders are being pulled.
2. Throughput
Failure to meet daily targets for throughput can most often be directly tied to processing issues along the line. Some of these include frequent equipment breakdowns, incorrect line run speeds, and wrong raw material types or quantities. Any time the line must stop or run slow, production is being lost. As a result, the line won’t meet the right product quantity, leading to missed production goals.
3. Changeover Time
When changeovers are in progress, the equipment being worked on is sitting idle and not producing. Meeting or exceeding daily targets for scheduled changeovers is essential to getting the processing line back up and running. Lengthy or excessive changeovers reduce line throughput and lower overall plant performance.
4. Yield or Quality Levels
Only product that meets specifications can be delivered to the customer. Rejects, rework, and scrap consume resources and lower overall process yields. Monitoring the volume of product rejects and causes for those rejects provides managers with the data they need to correct the source of the problems.
Production might miss daily target levels for quality because of incorrect or out-of-spec raw materials, incorrect fill amounts, incorrect or misapplied labeling, or lack of employee training. Having the right data from the production line is necessary to analyze and correct high levels of rejects.
5. OEE
One of the most important performance measures for most plants is overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). This metric consists of three critical values: availability, performance, and quality.
When these three values are multiplied together, the result is the all-inclusive OEE value for the process. Every step along the processing line can benefit from data gathered from OEE. Setting daily targets for both plant and process OEE is vital for management to understand overall performance as well as performance trends.
Gain Control of Processes and Reach Targets with Automated Data Collection
Worximity’s Smart Factory analytics software allows companies to utilize the latest digital processing line data collection technology to gather essential line performance data. Analyzing this data provides the information needed to correct problems responsible for missed production targets and reduced costs. By contrast, the usefulness of data collected via manual systems is minimal. Manual system limitations include:
- Delays between data collection and availability of results
- Inaccuracies with manually collected and analyzed data
- Limited scope/doesn't cover all operations
- Intensive use of resources
- High costs
- Distraction from more important tasks
In today’s competitive marketplace, food and beverage processors are implementing smart factory software to capture manufacturing data digitally and calculate results in real-time. Worximity Technology is the industry leader in performance monitoring systems via our Smart Factory Analytics system.
To demonstrate our Smart Factory analytics system’s capabilities, Worximity is offering a free seven-day trial for measuring OEE on one of your processing lines. If your facility qualifies, you’ll receive everything you need to capture real-time performance data and develop OEE values for one of your production processes.
Working with our consultants, you'll see how real-time results can help your operation meet and even exceed production goals. In addition, with insight from our extensive performance experience and database, you’ll learn how your processes stack up against others in your industry.
