MORE PRODUCTION CAPACITY, BETTER CONTROL, IMPROVED PRODUCTIVITY
When I started my sheet metal job shop, I had no money (sounds familiar?), and I had to borrow it initially. So, I had to choose wisely what machinery I purchased. My initial focus was on functionality, ensuring I could do the work, and then on capacity so I could handle the volumes I dreamed about.
As business was growing, we needed more machines. Capacity and reliability have become a focal point of our interest, with new functionalities being less critical. We always bought the best equipment we could find and never regretted spending the extra money. This philosophy always worked out and gave us the edge against the competition.
As the business has grown further, more factors were added to the complexity of running our job shop. There were more people, smaller volumes, a wider variety of work and more demanding customers. As a result, I had less time to manage the business and started to depend on intuition rather than facts. Quite a typical progression with a growing company! I wish we had ZOOMFAB at that time. Why?
Firstly, it is about being in control.
In my days, we had no real-time visibility and no useful analytics to understand the impact of our decisions.
Today’s ZOOMFAB does that exceptionally well. It shows real-time machine status like setup, exceeded setup, unplanned interruptions, faults and up-to-the-minute machine utilization, which are essential for proactive management. It also provides daily, weekly and monthly utilization analytics with performance data which are necessary for the process of continuous improvement.
Secondly, it is about managing production capacity.
When we needed more capacity, we hired more people or purchased more machines. Yes, that gave us more capacity, but also more headaches. When we had less work, we started to panic. The last thing we wanted was to lose our valuable employees who we trained and became part of our team and our culture. In both cases, it became harder and harder to maintain productivity, directly impacting our production capacity and return on investment.
Luckily today, there is a third option, more economical and flexible, which will help you increase the production capacity of your existing resources. It is a ZOOMFAB. Smart solutions for Smart Factory.
The impact of managing productivity is evident:
- When employees are productive, they can either produce more work or take less time to accomplish it.
- Producing the same output with less effort helps reduce operational costs, increasing profitability.
- Better work centre utilization with less downtime also frees up additional capacity.
- By controlling productivity, your business becomes more profitable and competitive, securing its future.
Controlling productivity without dedicated tools is very difficult, if not impossible. Current manufacturing management systems like MRP and ERP lack effective productivity management tools. MES appears to be an option, unfortunately, it is inherently designed for large repetitive production and not for ever changing volumes and workflows of sheet metal job shops.
So the benefits of having dedicated and easy to implement productivity management solution like ZOOMFAB are apparent.
Conclusion?
When a company needs to increase production capacity, it can hire more people and buy more machines. Unfortunately, with a shortage of skilled labor and a lack of confidence about the future, this is not an easy task. ZOOMFAB represents a third option that can provide additional capacity without the need for the above commitments. It is a full-time factory monitoring and productivity management service which will give you more production capacity, better control, improved productivity, shorter lead times and more time for the owner and managers, making their work more efficient. It is also a strategic tool that will help you find the right time for your next equipment purchase to maximize your return on investment.
