Maximizing Efficiency: How Production Tool Building Can Streamline Operations

Production tooling includes specialized equipment, fixtures, molds, dies, and jigs that help manufacturers shape, form, and assemble products efficiently. Efficient tooling enables manufacturers to consistently meet tight production schedules and deliver quality products.

The parts department and engineering team must work together to ensure the right tools are in place when production begins. This collaboration translates into greater efficiency and reduced costs for your business.

Reduced Downtime

Manufacturing is high-stress, and even the most efficient production lines can experience unplanned downtime. Companies lose critical revenue when a machine or assembly line cannot produce as intended.

A company’s true downtime costs go beyond the immediate loss of product and can include lost customer orders, person-hours spent rescheduling operations, unexpected repairs, and damage to reputation. Understanding these costs is critical to developing effective strategies to minimize downtime in manufacturing.

Effective manufacturing companies prioritize the integration of modern technologies, including production tool building, to streamline processes and enhance overall productivity in today’s competitive market landscape.

Manufacturers can reduce unplanned downtime by analyzing their existing processes and identifying areas of improvement. This process should involve a cross-functional team, including managers, engineers, and operators. Streamlining maintenance and ensuring employees have proper training can also help reduce downtime. With profit margins already slim in the food manufacturing industry, any opportunity to improve productivity should be seized. This includes implementing technology that reduces human error. This helps prevent the need to halt production and decreases the risk of workplace accidents.

Increased Productivity

Boosting productivity is vital to any manufacturing facility. It helps increase revenue, decrease production costs, and improve overall quality. In manufacturing, productivity is calculated by analyzing the output of labor and resources against the amount of input used. This includes work, capital resources, raw materials, and energy.

To increase productivity, companies must examine their current workflow and find areas for improvement. This can include evaluating the physical processes in place, finding ways to streamline them, and delegating tasks effectively. Keeping a clean and organized construction site is also important to help reduce wasted time and effort.

Streamlining operations and increasing productivity will save your business money and give you a competitive advantage in the industry. Whether you need to invest in new equipment or organize your workflow, these changes will make all the difference. A well-oiled production machine works at full speed with minimal hiccups and quickly solves problems.

Improved Quality

The best production efficiency practices can only work if manufacturers deliver quality products. In this area, looking for ways to reduce human error in manufacturing while fostering innovation and reducing scrap is important.

This can be as simple as minimizing physical movement where possible. For example, if a product must be moved from one machine to another, can you make that move less arduous by orienting the product more efficiently or reducing travel time?

Maximizing productivity by tracking dozens of metrics and KPIs can be tempting, but achieving a strong production efficiency profile requires reducing complexity. Be selective about the data you follow and develop a system for sharing that information with all teams. For instance, a mobile CMMS can help workers access quality control checklists and safety audits from anywhere with an internet connection.

Reduced Waste

Production tooling focuses on large-scale use, requiring the most precision and being more expensive than prototyping or bridge tooling. It’s important that your company strives for efficiency and reduces waste. While mistakes are unavoidable, minimizing them will save you on unnecessary costs and materials.

A common source of waste is excessive inventory levels of raw materials, work-in-progress and finished goods. This can result in delays in providing finished products to customers.

To minimize inventory, perform a waste characterization for your facility to see what’s being generated and determine if any items can be recycled, repurposed or reused. This can help you identify and reduce the nine common waste generation points within industrial facilities: