Process efficiency in your business - the future is minimalism

Process efficiency, Aka being lazy.

If I had a ￡1 for everyone who told me I was being lazy just for effectively planning my work, I wouldn't need to work.

I was raised on my families farm, we kept beef and dairy cattle and also produced wheat grain for sale to merchants. Profit margins were minimal, cutting once tractor pass out of our crop production was often the difference between profit and loss.

At 16, I started my apprenticeship in manufacturing, having already done 3 years part time around school and my commitments on the family farm. I worked for a small company that unbeknown to me was failing. In my 18 months there I went from sweeping the floor to lead CNC machine setter looking after 5 CNC machines, 5 manual machines and training two operators. Each 12 hour shift I gained something like 60 hours of machine time per day and I was there 6 days a week.

Using my farm experience I cut out many wasted steps in our process and by the time the bank called in the overdraft we actually a long way to recovering from the 6 previous years of decline. Had we had another 12 months at that pace we would have returned to profit. What had happened previously as margins had tightened the previous employees had become to set in their ways to adapt. I came in fresh and was not inhibited by the practices of 20 years earlier. I had the opportunity to allow my can do attitude to develop into a confident will do attitude.

Following the banks loss of patience, I took a temporary role with a nearby company who made blinds on a sub contract basis for other blind companies. They started out by importing automated blind manufacturing machines from Australia. The sub contract manufacture came about when smaller customers couldn't justify machines of their own. As their factory was only ever set up for demonstrations, the manufacturing was a mess. Using my previous experiences, I optimised their operations to complete production in the minimum steps possible. I then applied this to the onsite servicing and maintenance which covered around 300 machines across the country. Whilst I only ever intended this to be a temporary role, I remained a contractor to this company until they ceased trading in 2008 and then I incorporated the servicing and maintenance into my own business. Since 2008 I have been the only factory trained engineer on the market.

I did another 2 years in employment before setting up on my own. To date I have designed and manufactured 132 mold tools and 73 press tools. I have fulfilled automotive supply contracts for 1 million machined components per year. I have optimized my tooling customers workflow's and automated product handling between manufacturing ops. Typically I have trimmed 10-20% off their operational costs. On one occasion I slashed a staggering 85% off. Whilst id love to say this was all down to my own brilliance, all I actually did was brought the operation in line with standard practice.

This mentality of cutting process down to the minimum has a big impact in manufacturing as everything costs real money, most of which is required upfront. Upfront investment in manufacturing rarely filters down to where its needed, so minimalism is the future.