A colleague on a church board once said to me many years ago, when the two of us were assigned a task, “If you want to get something important done, ask a busy person.”
Here’s why that’s a great tip for a manufacturing setting. Truly busy people in manufacturing have a knack for getting things done. They are not looking to put new things on their list but instead are trying to find the quickest way to get an item off their list. Yes, there are people in manufacturing that know how to make themselves busy or keep themselves busy, but successful company leaders innately know the difference between routinely busy people and truly busy people that get things done. How do I know this is true? Easy. A task that is critical and needs to get done seldom gets assigned to a person with a track record of managing never-ending projects that seem to go on. They get assigned to people trusted to deliver an outcome. Without even deliberately knowing they delegate tasks in this way, they do.
Truly busy people know how to delegate, when to stay out of the way and when to roll up their sleeves and just do it themselves. Their focus is on getting the important tasks done and making themselves less busy. Routinely busy people are looking to remain busy, and often without knowing they are doing it, they keep tasks open and keep themselves positioned as a critical communications conduit. They resist closing the task out to get assigned another task, or worse (in their minds), have no important task assigned to them. Truly busy people don’t have this aversion, because as soon as they have any bandwidth at all, other important tasks are assigned (or reassigned) to them. What I’ve observed over the last four decades is that most progressive company and department leaders already instinctively know this. They just aren’t aware of it. The key is to not burn out your truly busy people. Instead, let them graduate up the ranks as they succeed, confident that there is another high-achieving candidate ready to follow their lead and fill their shoes.
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The second tip comes from someone I was also on a board with. We faced many challenging situations together. His closing mantra was “leaders find a way”. And indeed, they do. The leader is not the person with the position or title, or the education, or the letters behind their name. The leader is simply the person that finds a way when others don’t or can’t. In all of our workplaces, there are many people that can point out the reasons why something can’t get done. In fact, we often admire, empower, and even promote individuals that have great abilities to foresee or articulate problems that others can’t see. But how does that get a company ahead?
At best, it keeps the company from going backwards – It doesn’t pull the company forward. Many managers are to some degree inclined to keep companies from going backwards, but leaders are more often inclined to find a way forward. There are leaders in every organization, in roles up and down the org chart. In the most successful organizations I have come across, the people that find a way (leaders) are supported, encouraged and appreciated. In less successful organizations, the folks that have a knack for finding a way become discouraged and move on. A leader’s true role is to develop new leaders. A successful company’s culture fosters and encourages people to imagine, plan and persist on finding ways to move forward.
This is a key differentiator that I’ve observed that sets successful thriving manufacturers apart. They build on the people that take them forward. As they empower, enable and grow those people, they build their businesses.
Who are those people in your organization – the ones that find a way and get things done? Are you building on them?
Paul Hogendoorn co-founded FreePoint Technologies with the goal of giving manufacturers the benefit of information technologies that inform, empower and motivate their most critical asset – their people.
Access Paul’s full series of Leading For Success: Tips in Manufacturing Automation Magazine here: https://www.automationmag.com/author/paul-hogendoorn/
@AutomationMag #SmartManufacturing #Industry40 #IIoT #MESsystem #MachineMonitoringSystem #ContinuousImprovement #ManufacturingAutomation #LeanManufacturing
For many manufacturers, increasing efficiency and production capacity is the primary focus. However, where the challenge really lies is in increasing production capacity without hiring additional staff or purchasing more machines.
Fortunately, manufacturers can leverage industry 4.0 as a driver for growth as well as productivity; with machine monitoring technology, you can unlock the full potential of your factory, and those who operate within it.
Machine monitoring provides a long list of benefits to manufacturers, these benefits result in increased production capacity and increased profitability. For a real world example, a client of ours managed to improve overall efficiency by a 69% in just 1 year – saving roughly $325/day without increasing personnel or machines.
Read below to learn the 4 ways to increase productivity without hiring new employees or procuring new equipment.
Employee engagement through machine monitoring is focused on inviting collaboration between management and machine operators. It is not a “big-brother” tactic, quite the opposite actually, by showing employees how their contribution affects the big picture, you help unite management and plant employees working towards the same goals.
Using visualized dashboards, employees can easily see their role in the manufacturing process from a data perspective – which helps them fully realize the value of their contribution. This can even evolve into a “gamified” environment, as employees compete to see who can be most productive. This encourages employees to constantly improve, as they can now view their performance in real-time.
Machine monitoring allows for real-time narration of downtime, another way a manufacturer can leverage IIoT to increase production capacity, without increasing headcount. Not only is downtime narration critical for plant managers seeking seamless production, it’s also a strong motivator for employees as well. Obtaining insight into what causes delays allows employees to better understand the impact of any delays in their work station.
It’s important to understand all data is good data. Even unexpected downtime or broken machines can give you valuable insight into your process. With proper real-time narration, managers can identify and mitigate root causes of machine downtime, as well as highlight strong points in the production chain.
Like we mentioned earlier, machine monitoring provides valuable insight into your manufacturing processes, one of those insights is bottleneck identification. When one process is being delayed due to another person or machines performance, you know exactly where along the workflow the delay is occurring – empowering you to address the problem in real-time, and create fixes to prevent it from happening in the future. By proactively identifying holdups in your process, you are better positioned to make actionable changes to your workflow that will increase both efficiency and productivity.
Machine monitoring also enables a more proactive approach to machine maintenance. Rather than having to wait for someone to notice a machine is broken, then communicate that to management, you can get real-time alerts as issues arise. That means a significantly faster response time when a machine unexpectedly goes down, and a much quicker fix. It all comes down to maximizing machine uptime, the more value-added time that a machine contributes, the more efficient your plant becomes.
With FreePoint’s globally deployed solution, manufacturers are seeing near-immediate benefits to their processes. Increased efficiency, mitigated machine downtime, and improved employee engagement are accessible benefits to all those willing to shift into the IIoT world. Machine monitoring not only helps management make more informed decisions, it also provides real-time visibility into individual contributions and the entire production process overall.
If you’re interested in saving time and money, being proactive about your machine maintenance, and gaining total transparency into your entire production process, you should consider making the transition to industry 4.0.
ShiftWorx™ MES software enables manufacturers in the collection, monitoring, and visualization of machine or process data; putting vital analytics in the hands of management and plant floor workers resulting in improved productivity, quality, and reduced waste. ShiftWorx™ empowers your organization to continuously improve.
The optimization of your shop floor can begin as a low-cost, low-risk pilot project that:
Contact us today to consult with our shop floor optimization experts:
#SmartManufacturing #Industry40 #MachineMonitoringSystem #IIoT #ManufacturingExecutionSystem #MESsystem #ContinuousImprovement #ManufacturingAutomation #DowntimeTracking #OEE #LeanManufacturing
Today we highlight the 3 Key Benefits of Machine Monitoring. Step 1 though is getting the machines cloud-connected, at which point you gain real-time visibility into your shop floor with ShiftWorx MES SaaS; all by simply opening a web browser on any device, anywhere!
Now that your machines are connected, what are the 3 Key Benefits of Machine Monitoring (or monitoring manual processes, and assembly workstations alike)?
Every manufacturing plant wants to run their operations as lean and efficiently as possible and one of the biggest obstacles that stands in the way is downtime. Downtime consumes valuable resources that could have been used for productivity. When ShiftWorx™ machine monitoring system is integrated with your machines, managers and supervisors are notified as soon as the machine goes down. They can then investigate the issue, find out what the problem is and prevent it from happening again..
At FreePoint, we believe in the importance of empowering and engaging employees with modern technology. Manufacturing processes need to be re-humanized and provide an environment for workers to play a bigger role in identifying productivity improvements using factual, real-time process information. Machine monitoring enables that. When our customers share their machine data with their employees, operators and shop floor supervisors alike start to feel engaged and gain a sense of accountability. When management invests in a machine monitoring system, it demonstrates to their workforce that they are committed to increasing productivity and continuous improvement.
The data received from your machines helps you to make more informed decisions on a daily basis. Here are just a few ways the information is used:
FreePoint Technologies is dedicated to helping manufacturing companies improve their bottom line, engage their employees and bring modern technology to the plant floor. Through the power of the internet and our patented technology, we are able to cloud-connect ANY machine, and give you the software tools you need to continuously improve manufacturing operations with visualized data, and more. Reach out to us today for your Industry specific consultation and demo! Also, have a look at our latest customer reviews at Capterra.
#SmartManufacturing #Industry40 #MachineMonitoringSystem #IIoT #ManufacturingExecutionSystem #MESsystem #ContinuousImprovement #ManufacturingAutomation #DowntimeTracking #OEE #LeanManufacturing
In the first column, the tips were: “Don’t make a big production of it”, and “Your people are the smartest people in the room”. The two tips in the previous column were “What gets measured gets improved” and “You can get a lot more done when you don’t care who gets the credit.” They all seem relatively straightforward, but there’s more to it than just an easy-to-remember slogan.
A common and expensive mistake many companies make is that they tamper with proven plant floor processes in order to digitize them to achieve their stated Industry 4.0 goals. The mistaken belief is that it’s okay to change an effective plant floor process to accommodate a new digitized system, and the new process with a digitized system will be inherently better than the current process with an older manual system. This is a mistake on two counts. The first is that you may have reduced the effectiveness of a fairly effective production process, and you make money on the production process, not on the administration process. The second is that you will likely have made gaining buy-in on the implementation of any new digital system even harder to achieve by starting out on the wrong foot.
There’s a natural tendency to leave working processes alone and tackle problem areas first. However, in this case, it’s better to eliminate one major project variable by digitizing a process that you know already works. You are not trying to do two complicated things at the same time by introducing a paradigm-shifting technology and trying to fix a broken process. Fixing a broken process is a major task and objective by itself, as is digitizing a working process. For your whole Industry 4.0 plant floor digitization plan to have the best success, you need an early win. Digitizing a manufacturing administration process that you already know works well (checklists, scheduling, buy-off forms, etc.) can get you that early win. Taking on a broken process and trying to fix it with technology could stall your digitization initiative or send it in the wrong direction.
The larger an organization is, the more layers there are, and the more important this tip becomes. Advancing an idea or trying to get something critical done often means moving the conversation up the ladder one rung at a time. Or, it may mean delegating it down, but again, one rung at a time. Each rung on the ladder has a different stakeholder with a different agenda. A few years ago, my company’s marketing department developed a “persona chart” to help our sales team be more successful by aligning their pitch and terminology with the audience they were addressing. Seeing it all laid out on a single chart revealed how complex manufacturing organizations really are, and how important it is to understand “what’s in it” for everyone on the other ladder rungs.
On the far left of the persona chart are the machine operators and “value-adding, hands-on” people in your organization. On the far right is the C-suite, with the CEO on the very far right. In between, you have supervisors, department managers, plant managers, CI, maintenance and other functional managers, and perhaps division managers. The two main things that change as you go from left to right are the metric of concern and the period of interest. On the left, the metric of interest is parts, cycles, and rate, and the period is this hour, this shift, this day. On the far right, the metric is financial and the time view is this quarter, this year, this stage. On the left, the interest is personal financial security and stability. On the right, it’s profitability, sustainability and growth. On the rungs in between, it’s somewhere in the middle. Knowing how to advance your cause up the ladder, or delegate an objective down the ladder, requires a good understanding of what constitutes success for all the folks you are working with. The better you understand their position and what’s in it for them, the better your chance of achieving collective success.
Paul Hogendoorn co-founded FreePoint Technologies with the goal of giving manufacturers the benefit of information technologies that inform, empower and motivate their most critical asset – their people.
Access Paul’s full series of Leading For Success: Tips in Manufacturing Automation Magazine here: https://www.automationmag.com/author/paul-hogendoorn/
#SmartManufacturing #Industry40 #MachineMonitoringSystem #IIoT #ManufacturingExecutionSystem #MESsystem #ContinuousImprovement #ManufacturingAutomation #DowntimeTracking #OEE #LeanManufacturing
You might’ve heard this before, but there’s a catch – two actually. The first is “what” you measure is very important. If you measure the wrong thing, the improvements you make won’t make much difference – if any at all – to your operation. The best example I saw was a large tool and die company undertaking a major project to measure the OEE of their critical machines to improve that number. Several years into the project and their second attempt at doing it, one very astute manager concluded that they were focusing on the wrong thing. He observed that the time “under spindle” was relatively short compared to all the time that the pieces of work sat on skids at the end of aisles waiting for the next process to be run on them. He also found that minimizing the time between machining processes was a more pertinent objective than minimizing time under the spindle. The net result of measuring and improving that more relevant metric was a near 100 percent capacity increase in their facility, eliminating all overtime and outsourced operations as well as winning more business and taking on more work. The second catch is that to engage everyone in the improvement effort, the measurement must be shared in real time and be meaningful for the people actually involved. Sharing reports at the end of a month may be good for plant managers and executives to review in their meetings, but that has little motivational or behavioural change value.
I learned this one early on, from one of my mentors at the London Economic Development Corporation (LEDC). He quarterbacked all sorts of small and large initiatives, deferring the credit to others. He was making investments into the people that he knew could leverage the projects’ successes, and if he ended up placing great champions to lead them from that point on, it would become a recurring win with an exponential result. Plus, he’d be free to quarterback another project. One of his most successful endeavours was the formation of the London Region Manufacturing Council. He initiated it and then placed it in the hands of a series of people (myself included) that received a lot of the credit for what the organization accomplished. Twenty years later, his initiative continues to be a strong advocate for manufacturers in the region.
But there is a catch to this tip too. Be careful that the right people get the credit. There are ‘credit takers’ in every organization who will quickly fill every credit void. Even worse, there are ‘credit destroyers’, people sensitive to the perception that when someone else looks good, it’s not good for them. To counter this, praise and credit should be shared publicly and evenly sprinkled over a larger group. The primary praise and credit should be shared more specifically and shared up the ladder a couple of rungs so that the individual may receive more opportunities to do even more great things for your company. Giving credit where it’s due adds to your currency in the organization as well as puts another potentially impactful contributor on the corporate radar. True winning team players are never afraid of having another high performer on the team. ‘Credit’ is an important currency and needs to be invested back into the business wisely.
Paul Hogendoorn co-founded FreePoint Technologies with the goal of giving manufacturers the benefit of information technologies that inform, empower and motivate their most critical asset – their people.
Access Paul’s full series of Leading For Success: Tips in Manufacturing Automation Magazine here: https://www.automationmag.com/author/paul-hogendoorn/
@AutomationMag #AutomationMag #SmartManufacturing #Industry40 #MachineMonitoringSystem #IIoT #ManufacturingExecutionSystem #MESsystem #ContinuousImprovement #ManufacturingAutomation #DowntimeTracking #OEE #LeanManufacturing
In Microsoft VOX ISM’s webinar on Thursday, May 5 from 1:30-3:30PM EST, you’ll learn about the Top 10 New Apps for manufacturing businesses; including FreePoint’s ShiftWorx™ that helps you to improve productivity, employee engagement and profitability over-all. Read more details and register here: https://voxism.com/event/microsoft-best-apps-conference-2022/
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FreePoint’s founder, Paul Hogendoorn, presents at 3:10PM. He looks forward to sharing how ShiftWorx™ software digitally transforms manufacturing with visualized data. From machine connection to the cloud, to production scheduling, machine or process downtime tracking and more; it’s the real-time visualized data presented in easy to understand dashboards and reports that afford you the means to improve. You can’t improve what you don’t measure, right? The proven means and key to continuous improvement is in the ShiftWorx™ app!
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ShiftWorx™ affords manufacturers a shop floor optimization solution that:
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One of the biggest manufacturing problems U.S. businesses face is the growing skills gap. Approximately 22% of existing skilled manufacturing workers will be retiring by the end of 2025.
Connected machines on the shop floor let manufacturers collect real-time data; and even enable remote machine diagnostics and repairs. Manufacturers that want to stay ahead need to identify how they can use the IoT to its full potential.
Manufacturers have been looking for efficient solutions to decrease costs and increase efficiency at their operations. Instead of sacrificing product quality, manufacturers have resources at their finger-tips to increase efficiency and capacity by adopting new technology.
There is a communication gap between management on the shop floor – info is not being shared in real-time to affect positive change. Facilitate on-the-ground communication among employees, customers and partners with digital collaboration tools.
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ShiftWorx™ affords manufacturers of any size a shop floor optimization solution that can begin as a low-cost, low-risk pilot project that:
Read our Reviews at Capterra: https://www.capterra.com/p/188388/ShiftWorx/reviews/
#SmartManufacturing #Industry40 #MachineMonitoringSystem #IIoT #ManufacturingExecutionSystem #MESsystem #ContinuousImprovement #ManufacturingAutomation #DowntimeTracking #OEE #LeanManufacturing
Lisa Bailey, FreePoint Technologies’ CRO, discusses the key problems manufacturers face today in their transition to Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). In this presentation Lisa provides insight into how ShiftWorx™ MES Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solves these problems with the visualization of downtime data, which once known serves to engage and empower people in all levels of the manufacturing operation.
Learn more about FreePoint Technologies continuous improvement philosophy and see a demo of ShiftWorx™ software in action as she shows you the most powerful features of the machine monitoring and manufacturing execution solution; with real-time manufacturing KPI dashboards, shop floor communications (Andon), email/txt notifications, analytics reports, and much more.
Step-one is machine connection, which can be deployed in days to instantly relay data in real-time, metrics that can be displayed on large shop floor monitors or HMIs, or accessed from any web browser on any device.
http://getfreepoint.com/mes-software/
#SmartManufacturing #Industry40 #MachineMonitoringSystem #IIoT #ManufacturingExecutionSystem #MESsystem #LeanManufacturing #ContinuousImprovement #ManufacturingAutomation
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