Production Optimization
Darshika Srivastava
Associate Project Manager @ HuQuo | MBA,Amity Business School
What is Production Optimization?
Production optimization comprises a range of activities related to measuring, analyzing, modeling, prioritizing, and implementing actions to enhance productivity. Product optimization addresses these manufacturing problems:
With production optimization, a company is in a better position to understand and manage its production processes and bottlenecks. Manufacturers optimize the system for productivity and delivery times. As a result, sales increase, and the company can think about expansion plans for the future.
Production optimization also monitors a range of performance through indicators, while encouraging employees to be responsible for eliminating wasteful practices. Some other benefits are reduced production times, improved productive capacity, and better quality--all at lower production costs.
Free E-Book: Which Type of Analytics is Right for You? Reporting, Predictive Analytics, and Everything In Between
Which type of analytics is right for you? Find the best solution for your business needs.
How does Production Optimization Work?
As with any process, production optimization works with the company first, identifying the main issues it has in its production process. Once done, the organization needs to have proper goals put in place, and a manager must be able to answer these questions:
Once all these questions are answered, the company needs to consider the various modeling, simulation, optimization, and control methods it will use. What is the input to each of them? Is it people or capital, natural resources, or return of investment issues? Is the organization looking to compete with others in the market, address a new law that has come in, or simply adapt to market demand? What are the variations the organization faces in each of these factors and why are there variations? What are the optimal input parameters? How are these optimal input parameters maintained? Are they always the same?
These considerations will continuously optimize and improve over time. Companies should learn how they can find and update newer sets of optimal input parameters, especially because products and raw materials change constantly. The optimal production criteria is determined by:
Most production optimization methods make use of a major cost function analysis along with numerous input parameters (factors that can be controlled or not).
Benefits of Production Optimization
Production optimization can change manufacturing operations and make it efficient on multiple levels. There are a range of benefits that the organization can achieve if optimization is implemented correctly:
领英推荐
Try TIBCO Spotfire - Free Trial
With TIBCO Spotfire, the most complete analytics solution in the market, easily discover new insights from your data.
Production Optimization Techniques
After setting the foundation for production optimization, businesses can use these methods to implement optimization:
Forecast Market Expectations
Every manufacturing business must estimate needed production volumes. Unfortunately, most organizations do not have estimates for future sales. Sales can be forecast by looking into historical sales data and prevailing market trends. With advanced reporting tools in place, an organization can access accurate insights into the company’s sales and inventory.
Manage Inventory
A key tool to production planning and optimization is a quality inventory management process. This process is difficult to manually accomplish and should be automated.Automating the inventory management system will help a company view what resources it has on hand at any time. With a quality inventory management system, production planners can track inventory levels and automate stock replenishment. Automated systems can even forecast inventory requirements.
Prepare Staff for Production
Businesses should make sure both equipment and a workforce is available at all times. For good production optimization, it is important to estimate how many employees are needed in the production process and what their competency should be. Providing employees with the right tools and the necessary training on advanced machinery is essential.
Standardize Steps and Time Management
Every production process needs to know where and when each step occurs and how much time it takes to complete. Keep in mind that not all stages occur in sequence--some occur in tandem, while some others follow a set series. Once the process has been mapped, it becomes easier to understand how long each process may take to be complete. For any repetitive activity, it is best to standardize the process.
Also, documenting all similar activities in the manufacturing process sets a baseline for the future, should there be a change in routes or timings of newer manufacturing processes. Creating a baseline helps companies speed up the production planning process.
Identify Possible Issues
The best way to anticipate possible problems in the production process is to collect historical data on similar jobs. With access to processing time, materials used, and failures, a company can apply the failure mode and effects analysis technique to analyze risk possibilities and reduce the chances of them occurring. With failure mode and effects analysis, a business will be able to study its processes in-depth and find ways to reduce the impact of any potential issues in operations.
Communicate Plans
Employees must be aware of all the plans to optimize production, which can be done via manufacturing software. The plan, related work orders, and production schedules can be shared so that employees are aware of their responsibilities at all times and can check on the production system at any time.
Production optimization does what every business hopes to: constantly produce quality products in optimal time, keeping with the demands of the market.