The Value of a Continuous Improvement Mindset in Manufacturing

There is one certainty across all manufacturing sectors and that is change. While change comes in a variety of forms, every manufacturer can count on change and must be able to adapt in order to remain competitive – and this is especially true with the onset of Industry 4.0 in manufacturing. Companies can never get too comfortable or they risk becoming complacent. A business that is not growing and evolving over time is likely a business that is stagnant and dying. This is why a continuous improvement approach is vital to manufacturing health – and fortunately, technologies like Matics manufacturing analytics that leverage Industry 4.0 innovations are ready to help.

Matics solutions help manufacturing sites gain a greater awareness of performance, improve internal communications, and cultivate a culture of continuous improvement. Our tools enable companies to improve capacity planning in existing plants and evaluate when to add a new site, drawing on historic and real-time data. As more and more businesses upgrade to Industry 4.0 technologies, Matics enables this transition to be smoother.

?

Why a Continuous Improvement Culture Is So Critical

Successful companies are never satisfied and always have their eye on the next innovation and next performance level. Even during the “good times”, these manufacturers are busy identifying how to make things even better. With the right mindset, continuous improvement becomes engrained in the company culture and delivers several critical advantages that can make or break a business:

• Large Productivity Gains:? incremental improvements that optimize operations and minimize waste typically yield more optimal equipment and labor utilization.? This leads to huge productivity gains that positively impact speed to market, delivery timing, and customer satisfaction.
• Enhanced Quality: one of the biggest benefits of continuous improvement is more streamlined processes that produce higher quality products. When downtimes and waste are eliminated and opportunities for error are minimized, shops typically observe higher levels of customer service, efficiency, and quality.
• Cost Savings: productivity gains and increased product quality of course lead to cost reductions. When it comes to continuous improvement, personnel are often the source of great improvement ideas that result in efficiency gains that further lower costs.?

?

What Does Continuous Improvement Look Like?

The concept of continuous improvement is intertwined with lean manufacturing and seeks to identify and implement incremental improvements to an existing production process. Similar to lean practices, the goal of a continuous improvement approach is to remove waste and add value to operations through optimization across all levels of the organization – empowering personnel to actively engage in the improvement process.?

There are various methodologies that can be used to implement the concept of continuous improvement across an organization. One example is PDCA: Plan, Do, Check and Act. This technique can be applied to any manufacturing sector. Below is a short summary and details what a continuous improvement approach generally looks like in manufacturing. With the help of Matics manufacturing analytics and access to Real-Time Operational Intelligence (RToI), continuous improvement objectives can be identified and implemented even faster.?

• Plan: this step entails the identification of potential areas of improvement as well as brainstorming ideas to solve the problems. This is where access to real-time data really elevates the opportunity to identify continuous improvement opportunities in a timely manner. This is also where personnel involvement can really pay dividends as personnel are able to identify the “pain points” in their specific work processes as well as suggest cost-effective resolutions. For each improvement, you need to assess the cost-to-benefit ratio of any potential solutions and ensure key stakeholders are aligned with the pathforward.? In some cases, a trial or pilot solution may be the best next step.?
• Do: this is where the plan above is implemented to test its validity. For each improvement, you will need to collect ample data to understand the process status before and after the improvements were implemented. Again, access to RToI with Industry 4.0 technologies like Matics manufacturing analytics is extremely valuable when it comes to executing continuous improvement objectives as companies are able to easily access data trends.
• Check: data from the prior step is evaluated to determine if the process improvement was effective and if further improvements need to be made to reach full success. Continuous improvements are sometimes iterative and require teams to work through the PDCA steps more than once in order to achieve success.
• Act: this step fully implements the plan above and establishes current operations as the new baseline for the production process – against which future improvements will be assessed. This step of continuous improvement also benefits from access to real-time data and the ability to quickly reestablish a new baseline for operations and to identify future areas of opportunity.

?

Continuous Improvement with Matics Manufacturing Analytics

At Matics, we give companies the tools they need to enable them to better focus on continuous improvement initiatives and lean manufacturing – practices that result in tighter quality control, saving OEMs time and money. The use of advanced Industry 4.0 technologies empowers businesses to use real-time data to drive continuous improvement decisions. Within Matics, Our team fosters a continuous improvement mind-set, and we never rest when it comes to quality. It is this commitment that has positioned Matics as a strategic software provider to leading OEMs worldwide.??

Offering a holistic view of the manufacturing process, Matics is a real-time operational intelligence ? platform. It transforms vast amounts of operational data from both old and new machines, people, IoT sensors and environments into actionable information, accessible from any device.

By leveraging cutting-edge technologies, Matics integrates seamlessly with legacy in-house systems and absorbs existing information. Matics captures your shop floor data in a secure way and delivers straightforward insights for improving production efficiency. All the aggregated data becomes easily accessible from one source (an app or desktop dashboard). Personnel are able to streamline workflows, boost productivity and break down any silos disrupting manufacturing excellence. Personnel are also able to pinpoint problem areas from root cause analysis and instantaneous reporting. Additionally, Matics solutions are fully scalable. Easily scale from a few machines to hundreds of machines while supporting the management of multiple sites.

Matics’ solution gives your company the vital ability to communicate in real time across all machines and processes, improving quality and efficiency. Our streamlined chat-based system fosters trust and collaboration amongst the whole workforce. With complete visibility, managers can easily see all communication between staff, assign responsibilities, track progress and make adjustments for greater productivity.

About Matics

Matics is a Real-Time Operational Intelligence solution that was designed to enable rapid Industry 4.0 best practice adoption via a user-friendly non-disruptive digitalization platform. Matics manufacturing analytics instantly improve visibility and shop-floor management, reducing response time to critical events, and increasing OEE and profitability.

Matics manufacturing analytics solution continually aggregates data in real-time, transforming it into knowledge manufacturers can use to optimize key metrics on their shop floor. Matics provides manufacturers with powerful work management tools that deliver notifications when attention is needed and enable remote tasks management, process automation, and more.?

Over 80% of manufacturers do not have real-time solutions on their shop-floor. Below are a few leading manufacturers who choose to digitize their facilities with Matics manufacturing analytics solutions:

Ready to upgrade your shop floor to Industry 4.0? Visit our website to learn more about Matics manufacturing analytics or to book a demo .