Monday, 21 March 2016

Everything you wanted to know about TPM for Every Operator

What is TPM?
TPM or total productive management is a system which maintains and improves the production and quality systems. It evaluates the performance of machines, equipment, processes and employees to generate comprehensive and exhaustive analysis. It calculates time required for each process, to produce results which reflect the organization’s production capabilities. AIAG manuals can tell you more about the process, along with details pertinent to pull production for the shopfloor.
What does it do?
TPM seeks to increase productivity of equipment, by demanding a relatively smaller investment towards maintenance. It is usually considered to consist of eight pillars: focused improvement, autonomous maintenance, planned maintenance, quality maintenance, cost deployment, early equipment management, training and education and striving for a safe, healthy environment. It deploys the entire workforce towards a common mission, which is managing growth.
What is pull production?
It is a common occurrence in organizations, where final processes are ‘pulled’ from previous processes, which pull from the processes before it, and so on. This allows businesses to work without creating excesses and avoiding waste. This is also known to help with time management, as borrowing from prior processes can greatly save time and effort. It comes in handy typically when production is based on actual demand, as opposed to push production, in which case production is not based on actual demand.
What are the benefits of pull production?
One of the key advantages is that the pull production can work with a limited inventory, thereby saving you potentially huge costs in replenishing stocks. It follows a customer centric approach to service, where the consumer’s needs are prioritized over everything else. It follows a make-to-order pattern of business, and is generally known to improve cash flow.
However, one must insure that balanced systems are in place before incorporating pull production. Setup times tend to affect throughput and any glitches in the process will lead to customer dissatisfaction.
Pull production can go a long way in eliminating risk, wastage and unpredictability, provided it is implemented while exercising great caution.

Saturday, 19 March 2016

Following the Cellular Manufacturing: One-Piece Flow for Work teams

The book Cellular Manufacturing: One-Piece Flow for Work teams is the perfect book on the working of a manufacturing business based on the basic cellular concepts. It helps to introduce the teamwork and basic cellular manufacturing concepts in a business. It helps managers to understand the process and encourage them to build an individual production cell. This can be done through participation of new designs of production cells. These AIAG Books give such wonderful concise information that helps you to get all the different members on board. This helps in the smoother production process on the whole.
How are these books helpful?
The most important thing these books help in doing is giving the managers a clear idea regarding the Standard Work for the Shopfloor. You can use this book to encourage everyone to get onto the board and participate in the smooth running of the floor. The books gives you detailed instruction on how to decrease the lead time, ways to decrease the amount of products keeps as work in progress inventory and even helps to understand the basics of profit drawing waster. The good part about these books is that you will find the language very easy and approachable. You can use the words in the book to explain things to your staff and sub staff.
Another bog benefit of opting for these books is that each of the chapters in the books is followed by a little summary. The summary is a comprehensive overview of the whole chapter. This helps to reinforce the concepts that have been taught in that particular chapter. It also has many reflection questions that can be used to check your understanding. Another very good thing about this book is that you can use these questions during group discussion or seminar. So this encourages the team to come together and work in a collaboration throughout the process.
Thus this book is a very good book that offers very simple and cost effective approach towards building basic knowledge among the work force. It helps to build basic knowledge and improve the key manufacturing of the production process.

Friday, 18 March 2016

Eliminating and identifying waste on the Shopfloor

OEE or Overall Equipment Effectiveness is a system of hierarchical metrical evaluation devised by Seiichi Nakajima in the 1960s. It gauges how effectively a manufacturing operation is utilized. It is a means of assessing labor efficiency, so that the organization can keep track of its progress and observe its flaws. It identifies areas for improvement and how time, labor, efficiency can all be enhanced if combined to work together in a synchronized fashion. More about it can be found in the CMTI handbook.
 How does it work?
OEE takes into consideration three factors while tabulating results.  The time the machine is running for, the quantity of products the machine is producing, and the quantity of output of goods. It considers all three factors to generate a combined score, which indicates overall efficiency of the machine. The analysis thus acquired can help organizations implement newer standards, manage inventory and also handle the workforce.
 How does it benefit me?
OEE is a universally accepted form of measurement and is used as the norm in almost all places. It makes tabulation easy by reducing all pertinent statistics to just one coherent number. It helps organizations strategize better, to formulate its resources better so as to achieve better results with the same elements available.
What makes this even more user friendly is the fact that it can work even in mostly manual operations. This might require some pruning and tweaking, but is mostly achievable.
By enlisting operators to take responsibility for OEE, organizations can ensure that the division of labor is smooth and hassle free. This chalks out clear and well defined rules and duties, so as to maximize efficiency. This can enhance the capability of the machine, cause lesser wastage of resources both manual and mechanical, can save power and also time. Operators in charge of OEE tend to develop a great relation with the machine, understanding its needs and are better equipped to handle any malfunctions.
OEE is tried and tested by generations of workers and everyone who has used it has vouched for its viability.

Thursday, 17 March 2016

Enhancing productivity through autonomous maintenance for operators

It is important to implement and ensure autonomous maintenance as it enables a harmonious relationship across the command chain. It empowers each element across all strata of the workforce, thereby achieving maximum results. The Shopfloor series books can come in handy if you are looking to reorganize your business skills and innovate your strategies. If you want to buy standards online in India, there are also other similar publications that you can check out.
What is autonomous maintenance?
Autonomous maintenance is the process by which operators handle machines rather than technical personnel. This eases the pressure on the trained individuals who can then focus on other aspects of management. Since it is the operators who handle the tools on a daily basis, handing over the responsibility of machinery to them helps foster better working relations and also makes them feel more involved. In traditional usage, operators would work with machines for inhumanly long hours, performing extraordinarily hard tasks. With better working conditions being instituted, these operators now only work with lubrication, bolt tightening, monitoring, etc.
Autonomous maintenance generally consists of seven steps, namely, cleaning and inspection, removing causes of contamination and improving access, defining cleaning and lubrication standards, training for general inspections, conduct autonomous inspections, implement visual maintenance management and strive for continuous improvement.
Importance of setting standardsIt is essential to chalk out standards in any organization. This helps document all progress, identify regressive patterns, infer time taken to complete one cycle of work, and therefore set goals for the company. This helps achieve optimum allocation of resources so that the best results can be achieved, with minimum wastage.
How will this help?
Standard work is unanimously agreed upon as a set of working principles that brings together people, materials and machines in the most efficient combination possible. It eliminates risk factors and elements of unpredictability, thereby increasing quality, efficiency and safety. Standard work devises a method by which inventory management can also be handled without any hassle. Pull production techniques are largely benefitted by this system, which improves performance standards exponentially.
This is a simple recap of easy procedures which will go a long way in aiding performance and progress.

Sunday, 6 March 2016

SAP Press Book- Finding Them in Library

Buying books are not easy. One may have to look for them in every market still all their effort may go into vain due to the unavailability of it. One may try looking for them online which may be out of their budget. But what would happen if one cannot get the books that they need? Books like that of the SAP Press Books are difficult to find already. Has anyone considered going to library? Well every city has at least one of them apart from the ones in the schools and colleges.
Opting For The Libraries Is A Very Good Option:
Libraries are houses of books. People can get hold of many different kinds there. Books like that of the Pull Production for the Shopfloor are difficult to get hands on yet with the library around one can easily get them. One can also get books like TPM for Every Operator in the library. These simply prove that rare kind of books can be easily available in the library. One another advantage of reading books in a library is that the books can be got hold of very easily without much searching. After all these books are organized in the most neat way that one can imagine of. These books are also in the neatest condition.
Other advantages:
Another advantage of going to a library is that one can peacefully sit and read their books there and that way can concentrate better. If one wants to bring a book home for a project they need to complete then they are most welcome to do that too. They can carry the books back at home very easily. If one really has a small place to live and cannot afford to keep a lot of books then for them choosing to borrow books from the library is the smartest option.
Reading books and the habit of it is really good for people. But then going to a library, selecting a book and reading it peacefully has its own perks. One also helps in saving paper if they go and read books in a library.