Efficient manufacturing workflows can help businesses reduce waste and cut costs, ensuring a manufacturer remains competitive in the marketplace. Manufacturing workflows also work hand in hand with proper inventory management to help ensure businesses run optimally.
The nature of manufacturing means a company can always iterate on its workflows: improving, simplifying, and scaling processes that work. Let’s dive deeper into the importance of good manufacturing workflows.
Manufacturing workflows are a form of quality assurance. A workflow produces repeatable business processes that create consistent, high-quality new products.
Your manufacturing workflows are essentially a series of manufacturing processes, each one forming a link in a chain. One thing that can cause workflow issues are bottlenecks.
Bottlenecks are anything that restricts or limits the production process. Your manufacturing workflows won’t produce the results you need if the bottlenecks aren’t addressed with optimizations. When we use the word “bottleneck,” what precisely are we looking for?
Bottlenecks usually have these characteristics:
Bottlenecks are typically centered around two types of causes:
Typically there are two heuristics for thinking about how to resolve bottlenecks:
Of course, these are high-level ways to think about solutions to concrete problems. Brian O’Neil, planning manager with Bemis Manufacturing Company , is on the ground optimizing manufacturing workflows every day for a manufacturer shipping more than 100,000 units per day. These are a few of the strategies he’s used to improve the manufacturing workflows in his company.
Manufacturers who cross-train their employees are adaptable. They have the ability to adapt to changing production schedules and unexpected events quickly.
“It’s having enough of the right people who are cross-trained and prepared to help out in whatever capacity is needed,” Brian explained. “It’s also being able to help people hit key metrics and that everyone knows what those metrics are and how to achieve them.”
Cross-training employees comes with important benefits:
Job rotation is a necessary supplement to cross-training. Cross-trained employees receive consistent training to ensure their skills do not deteriorate. Cross-training is a necessary refiner that forces firms to look at their policies and procedures.
As the name suggests, the 5 Whys method is about asking why. It’s a Six Sigma causal chain that enables teams to quickly identify the root cause of any particular problem. The premise is simple. When you encounter a problem, bottleneck or challenge, you repeatedly ask “Why?” until you get to the root of the problem.
Brian says, “When you get down to it, it’s usually down to five [whys], and you have your best answer.”
Here’s why it works.
Asking why enables you to work through the many layers of symptoms masquerading as causes until you arrive at the root of any particular problem. It’s common for the answer to one problem to lead to another question. However, while this method is called 5 Whys it often takes less than five questions to find the root cause of a given problem.
By using the 5 Whys you’re able to:
Just like with algebra, you’re able to check your work with a “therefore” chain. Using the five whys, you’re able to make systematic process improvements to your workflows, optimizing both performers and systems.
Smart manufacturers identify and rely on key metrics that drive the business so they can diagnose its health.
At Bemis, Brian leads production meetings where they go over eight key metrics. Each metric has a specific goal attached to it.
If you’re looking to consistently improve your workflows you’ll want to set, establish and monitor in real-time the key metrics driving the business.
Structuring your business around these core metrics can help your business find inefficiencies in workflows. When combined with these other strategies, firms are able to consistently streamline workflows.
When Bemis implemented these changes, the results were positive and immediate. Brian quantified the value in his department, stating, “We saw a first-year production increase of 10 percent and 30 percent the second year.”
Batch production is a traditional tried-and-true production process, but it comes with several downsides:
With one-piece flows, a single item is completed for every one item that’s started. The focus is on finishing a single product from start to finish with as little “in-between work” as possible. Operations are often placed in a U-shaped configuration with the flow moving from right to left, counterclockwise.
One-piece flows can be faster, more efficient, and require fewer resources than other manufacturing workflows. Using one-piece flows, it’s easier to cross-train employees and further improve productivity as a result.
How did this work for Bemis? Brian says, “I didn’t really believe in the one-piece flow. People are just always using the batching process. And actually, when we did the one-piece flow, the quality of the part was better and we actually got more product out than we did before.”
The results spoke for themselves. Once Brian saw this in action he changed his mind and is now a believer in one-piece production workflows.
Manufacturing workflows always allow room for improvement. They’re essentially a form of quality control for manufacturers: repeatable processes manufacturers use to create consistent, high-quality products.
Use these strategies to continually optimize your workflows. Start by identifying bottlenecks and use one of these proven strategies to improve them, which will get your business on the road to producing exceptional workflows.
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