Is your Manufacturing System leveraging Digital?

Many organisations have developed and implemented their own Manufacturing Operations Management System. It is typically underpinned by the organisation’s principles and desired behaviours and ways of working. Many companies adopt or base their system on Lean and Operational Excellence models such as The Shingo Model.

Some of the tools and techniques used to check that associates are working according to the Manufacturing Operations Management System are done manually – usually in Excel, on paper, whiteboards or Visual Management displays.

Examples of these would be Action Trackers, Issue Trackers, Problem Solving methodologies (E.g. A3 Problem Solving technique), performance monitoring and Process Checklists.

While these work quite well, they have several short comings:

• It’s difficult to collate and trend data
• It can be time consuming to transcribe the data, so that some form of analysis and reporting can be done
• It’s difficult to track the status of actions or problems, and update Associates and Management
• It’s more difficult to support multiple users of the data if using Excel, and content can be inaccurate and over-written if using paper or whiteboards
• They are difficult to incorporate into a central repository to deliver true insights, and really support a data driven decision making process
• Difficult to report on what is being done well or needs improvement

When technology is embraced in the correct manner, and supports your People and your Processes, then it really does present an opportunity to truly optimize and transform how you execute, monitor and improve your Manufacturing System.

The adoption of technology to support the execution of your Manufacturing System can take many forms and should be used in a way that enhances your current process. In recent years a Digital Strategy is core to Medical Device and Pharmaceutical manufacturing and the digital transformation of the Manufacturing System presents a real opportunity to further unlock time and cost savings. We have delivered a number of projects addressing similar problems as outlined above within their Manufacturing System.  They have reported that the benefits of digitally transforming these processes are:

• Reduction of inefficiencies associated with gathering data manually (on paper, excel or whiteboards)
• Reduction of time spent monitoring and checking that tasks are being completed as per the process
• Reports can be produced to show tasks that have been completed or outstanding
• Ability to analyse data and identify trends or further opportunities for improvement
• Having the data at your fingertips will easily allow you to present the data visually to “tell the story” Of how your Manufacturing System is operating within your organisation
• Technology can simplify the logging of this data leading to greater buy in from associates as it reduces the pain, they may be feeling by logging this data in an archaic manner.

If you find that you are currently spending too much time manually collecting and logging numbers into Excel, on paper or on whiteboards for processes such as Problem Trackers, Issue Trackers, Action Trackers, Performance Monitoring or Process Checklists (to name a few) related to your Manufacturing System we can help you to remove this pain by digitally transforming how you work.

The technology used will depend on the process that you want to digitise but you need to ensure that an easy-to-use slick interface is developed to enable ease of use for associates at all levels of the organisation. You also may want to consider where and how associates will fill in this information i.e., at a PC or on tablets depending on how they work.

We have extensive experience and domain knowledge within the Life Sciences sector and our Project Managers and software engineers will work with you tease out your real business need and deliver the right application to suit your needs.

Contact Us

If you would like to learn more about how we are helping our clients address their critical objectives, while also building their internal capabilities and tapping into the true potential that their own resources have to offer, Contact Us at sales@dataworks.ie or call us today on 051 878 555.

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