For many companies, they spend the majority of their time doing work behind the scenes in order to get their products into stores. While marketing and sales staff is certainly a core part of any business, the manufacturing process takes up far more time, money, and effort. Having a good manufacturing process is the core that all good businesses are built on.
Companies like Apple or Microsoft would not have been able to get where they are today if they did not have a solid production line. This is because creating their products is the first domino in a long line of falling dominos that end with the customer purchasing their item. So without this first step succeeding, the rest of them would fail as well. They can’t make money off of product sales if there are no products to sell.
That is why knowing how to speed up their manufacturing process is so important. If they can make the process go faster without sacrificing quality, then they can end up making more of their product in a shorter amount of time. This will ensure that they never fail to meet the demand for what they supply. Here are a few ways that they can improve the speed of their manufacturing process and improve their company as a whole.
Train the Staff In Multiple Areas
There is some confusion among industry professionals regarding whether it is better to have specialized workers or generalized workers. The reason why it is so hard to determine which one is better is that one option improves product quality while the other improves product production speed. So it begs the question of which area is more important to them as a business owner.
However, since this article is all about improving their production speed, it obviously makes more sense that they would want to go with a more generalized staff. Once they have the superior product quality established, starting to generalize their staff should not impact the product quality because the standards have been already set.
When they have staff that are only trained on one or two specific areas of production, it means that the staff are unable to successfully do anything else. So if a couple of people ever call in sick, the number of workers that they have who can fill in will be limited. This could cause massive backups on its production line and cause a large portion of their products to get delayed. Depending on what they are selling and how many units their company regularly produces, this could end up meaning thousands of dollars in lost sales.
However, when they train their staff to work in many different areas of the production process, then the workers are much more capable of filling in for someone. their production will likely still be partially slowed down when a few of the workers are not there, but at least the negative impacts will be minimized. So when training their staff, be sure to educate them on how to properly complete one or two areas of production that are similar or close to their main area.
Modernize the Techniques and Equipment
Outdated production processes can significantly limit what a company is capable of doing. No matter what industry they are in, keeping their competitive edge requires that they stay up to date on the latest and greatest industry techniques. So if there is a massive development that makes a certain part of their production much easier, then they need to know about it and implement as soon as possible.
A good example of this is finding areas within their manufacturing process that are currently done by hand which could be made much faster if done by a machine. Introducing automation into their company can be a great way to increase production speed. Despite what some industry professionals seem to think, automation is not a scary thing. They do not even have to go fully automated if they do not want to.
There are many different types of equipment that can improve the speed of certain tasks without fully automating the process. For example, if their production process involves attaching and sealing lids onto containers, then they might currently have workers doing this by hand instead of using a lid press machine. However, this is a big mistake because doing so ends up taking way longer to get the same end result. So they should really consider investing in a lid press machine for their Denver business to help significantly speed up their manufacturing process.
If they have more sensitive tasks involved in their manufacturing process, such as mixing certain amounts of chemicals together, then they might think that doing this by hand is the best way to ensure accuracy. However, humans are prone to make mistakes and are, once again, slower than machines.
With today’s technology, it is really easy to set up machine-run processes that guarantee that their product specifications are met. Then include an enclosed industrial control panel for their Denver business and have a worker operate it. That way, if any mistakes do happen, the worker should be able to catch them and correct the machine.
Limit Number of Material Transfers
There are going to be multiple steps within their manufacturing process, each of which probably requires its own area with its own equipment. That means that when something is being transferred from area to the next for each step of the process, it is just sitting and wasting time. The longer that their products spend transitioning between steps, the more time is lost.
That is why they should try and limit how often materials need to be transferred or how far the materials need to go whenever transfers do happen. Even if they only eliminate a couple of seconds between production steps, that will still end up being hundreds or even thousands of minutes that they end up saving each year. They could spend that time manufacturing even more products and therefore getting even more sales.