The engineering industry is well known for its strict schedule and high-pressured deadlines. With that in mind, your business efficiency, particularly, your production efficiency, needs to be on point to ensure that all targets are met and everything runs smoothly.
If projects are delayed due to your production capacity not being met, it may lead to a wide range of problems for your business. Regularly pushed back deadlines usually result in disgruntled customers and a tarnished reputation, just to name a couple.
By improving your production efficiency you’re exposing your business to a whole range of new possibilities. Exceeding current standards, improved productivity and increasing your capacity for potential new projects are just some of the knock-on effects.
So, how can you improve your production line efficiency? Don’t worry if you’re not sure, this post will outline everything you need to know and how you can easily implement the best practices within your processes.
We’ll cover:
- Evaluate Current Performance
- Plan Effectively to Achieve Goals
- Streamline Processes Where You Can
- Pay Attention to Productivity
Evaluate Current Performance
The first step to improving your production efficiency is to evaluate your current performance. A lot of businesses are unbeknown that there are problems with their output production until they scratch beneath the surface. What might seem to the eye like an efficient and effective department, might be ridden with issues and areas that can be improved to maximise potential.
For example, as a plant manager, you could be witnessing customer satisfaction and tight deadlines being met daily. Which is all well and good, but is it the optimum level that your employees could be performing at? Until evaluating current performance, you may not realise that there’s further scope for a larger volume of projects.
In this case, your business won’t be operating at maximum productivity and, therefore, profitability too. Both of these are massive factors for businesses within the engineering industry. If you’re not operating at the maximum potential for both of these metrics, there’ll be some explaining to do to the business owners and shareholders – who won’t be best pleased.
To start your evaluation of current performance, firstly, note down how many workers are on a selected shift pattern. Then take a look at the hours worked and what projects have been completed on that shift. It may be the case that other shifts are more productive than others, which indicates where you need to utilise more resources to increase your production engineering.
Plan Effectively to Achieve Goals
As with anything in business, if you don’t have an effective production output plan, the likelihood is that you’re barely going to get off the ground. If you have clear goals, your business then has a specific target and action plan to work towards, don’t they? Without goals, your business flounders aimlessly and won’t reach the potential success levels you’re capable of.
When setting goals to improve your engineering production efficiency, you should ensure that they’re always SMART. But what does that mean? Well, using SMART goals ensures that your targets are always specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. It makes sure that the goals you set are always attainable.
Unachievable goals are one of the main sources of demotivation for your team members. Constantly not hitting targets and running behind schedule can lead to teams being criticised and punished regularly. This isn’t good for morale, as your team should always feel like they’re making inroads in larger goals with little quick wins.
Demotivation can slow workers down, so your productivity is likely to slip too by setting unrealistic goals. By planning effectively with SMART goals, you’re ensuring that your workforce has a specific goal to achieve, knowing exactly what they’re working towards. This goal is then measurable to see whether they’re on track or need assistance too, rather than them failing and being punished as a result.
You’ve got to keep things realistic. Sure, reach for the sky at all costs but don’t try and get there in one big leap! Set smaller, achievable goals to climb the rungs on the ladder of success and you’ll find that you get there a lot more efficiently than ever before. Set time limits on goals to ensure that your team is always focused and can see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Streamline Processes Where You Can
Unnecessarily long-winded processes slow down your overall production efficiency. Therefore, to improve it you should shorten these to save time. That way, you can then use the time saved more effectively and focus on the areas of your business that need fine-tuning the most.
For example, engineering warehouses can be particularly messy places. Operational debris and general traffic dirt can quickly build up and increase the risks of daily hazards, so they need deep cleaning regularly. Warehouse floor cleaning is often seen as a tedious and laborious task, especially if you don’t have the right equipment in place.
Therefore, you can streamline your processes by introducing the right cleaning equipment. With an industrial floor cleaning machine, you’ll be speeding up the time it takes to carry out a full deep clean. This means that there’ll be less resulting downtime and your business can operate at full efficiency for longer periods without disruption.
Cleaning your site is often overlooked – but why? Ensuring that your floor is immaculately clean is essential to minimising process time and maximising efficiency. By keeping the floor clean, you make sure of a smooth transportation of goods from your warehouse to storage or to the delivery bay too. So, quality is always assured and high standards are consistently achieved.
Within engineering, businesses create vital products for vehicles and aircraft that will likely need checking at various stages. Whilst crucial quality check stages can’t be streamlined, it means that shortening other processes is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, you’ll be operating too closely to your maximum – leaving no room for any human error or unavoidable mistakes.
Pay Attention to Productivity
Productivity improvement is always a high priority for engineering businesses. The more productive your business is, the more efficient you are and it’ll result in operating more profitably. In an industry where time is money, productivity is exceptionally important.
Increasing your productivity will have a natural knock-on effect on your production efficiency. Jobs will be carried out in optimum time needed to maintain a high standard of work and little time will be wasted. Therefore, you can guarantee that projects will run smoothly and will always be on time.
Poor productivity could be the key indicator that your efficiency isn’t up to scratch. But how do you improve productivity? Well, there are various ways that you can have a positive impact on the productivity of your workforce. These include:
- Offer appropriate staff training. Team members that aren’t brought up to speed quickly are a hindrance on the productivity of your business. By offering them appropriate training, you’re investing in their career and fast-tracking their development. Plus, keeping them safe from any accidents that could increase downtime cost.
- Use the right equipment. Using inadequate equipment only slows down your operations. Therefore, you need to invest in the right equipment to ensure that the job can be carried out as quickly as possible but maintain high standards.
- Reduce avoidable downtime. Are your operations having to wholly or partially stop due to avoidable mistakes? This is poor practice and can lead to your business losing a lot of money and harming your overall reputation.
An Industrial Floor Cleaner Can Improve Production Efficiency
We know it sounds far fetched – but that’s where you’re wrong. Industrial floor cleaners can improve the overall efficiency of your business, in particular, your production efficiency. Think about it, if you don’t have to spend as long cleaning your engineering warehouse, you can focus more of your time on important client work, right?
Whether you’re a large or small engineering firm, there’s an industrial floor cleaning machine that’ll suit your unique requirements and needs. If you’d like to find out more about how a simple change can have such a large knock-on effect throughout your business, download our free guide.
It covers everything you need to know about the machines and how they can benefit your organisation. Grab your copy today!
