For many businesses, data offers insight into what is working and what needs improvement. Careful analysis can unlock problems in your plant that could be affecting cash flow and productivity. You probably already track hundreds, if not thousands of data points, but gaining actionable insights from that information is the challenge. The best data in the world won’t help if it is never used to drive change.
Here are some simple data processing steps that can help benchmark your current operations and improve them through the remainder of the year and into the next.
First Priority: Benchmarking
In order to improve any processes, you must first understand your starting points. Some data points to consider include:
- Maintenance costs
- Breakdowns and downtime
- Product delivery
- Employee performance
- Company performance
- ROA (return on assets)
Getting a high-level overview of your plant, and identifying the core strength and weaknesses, is a good place to start before you start digging into data.
Looking at the Numbers
For plant managers, some of the biggest costs come from breakdowns and downtime. These can be killers for ROA and affect year-end numbers. Any slowdown on the line sees a cost increase, but where are these issues and what are the causes?
You’ve probably collected all of the data you need over that last several decades. It might be scattered through your organization in different spreadsheets, but you have the raw numbers. The trick is to put those numbers to work in an effective and useful way, and let those numbers tell a story.
Leveraging Data For Process Improvement
When you have all of the tracking data in one place, you gain incredible insight into operations. You see workflow, slowdowns and where to make incremental improvements for the greatest gains.
Here are a few ways in which data can drive operational change:
- Establish your existing benchmarks using organizational data collected.
- Begin process mapping for all customer-facing activities to identify and rework faltering operational pieces.
- Define performance metrics based on your established benchmarks.
- Evaluate performance and missed targets to identify areas of weakness.
- Track trends and project changes to customer demand.
- Gain greater insight into your supply chain, tracking quality and performance over time.
- Bring compliance and quality management under one roof for better transparency.
It’s Not All Numbers
While analyzing the numbers will make the biggest impact on your bottom line, it’s important to also consider information directly from your customer and your production floor.
Consider interviewing key industry players and contacts to get information on their impression of your plant. This will allow you to review your company standards and practices, giving you a chance to improve your alignment with the customers you serve.
Take the time to talk with your workers on the production floor. They may be able to identify some of the biggest workflow interruptions and make suggestions for process improvement.
The Bottom Line
Other industries are using big data to shape future business, reduce spend and grow operations. They respond to changing customer behavior and adjust their practices to meet new industry standards using a lean approach to plant operations.
Putting some of your data to work could make the difference for your plant, and utilizing available tools to drill down to specific numbers could impact your operations long term.
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Sources & Additional Reading:
- Control Global: “Leveraging big data to streamline plant operations” by Paul Studebaker (Link)
- Oracle: “Improving Manufacturing Performance with Big Data” (Link)
- Power Engineering: “Ones & Zeros: How Digital Power Plants Are Leveraging Big Data and Analytics for Greater Reliablity and Profit” by Tim Miser (Link)
- Forbes: “Ten Ways Big Data is Revolutionizing Manufacturing” by Louis Columbus (Link)