Predictable production

Producing quality products while keeping costs as low as possible is undoubtedly one of the most important challenges for manufacturers. This is possible only if manufacturing process flows are stable, and have limited variation around target values and result in minimized overproduction.

There are, however, some barriers to achieving stable and predictable processes - including overprocessing - and many businesses experience this problem to some degree. As a result, they face overproduction.

Overproduction is making more products than required by customer demand, which leads to excessive inventory and preventable costs. It’s widely referred to as the most dangerous type of waste in Lean Manufacturing, as it:

• Increases preventable costs
• Makes the company vulnerable to market changes
• Creates excessive inventory that takes up storage space
• Makes it harder to control other business risks such as product defects.

In order to mitigate the issue of overproduction, manufacturing managers need reliable and consistent data on work in process progress and the utilization of the involved assets to build a roadmap for increasing the predictability of processes, including:

• Identify how and where the most common disturbances and delays occur
• Measure and minimize work in process
• Define the average process times.

An Industry 4.0 technology, namely real-time location systems (RTLS), is a tool capable of providing managers with this information.

How Does an RTLS Work?

An RTLS is a system designed to provide the user with precise information on the location of an asset and track its movement in real-time. 

By using an RTLS to track work in process as well as other assets involved in production processes, the user can:

• Track Processing of Individual Products or Batches of Products in Real-Time
• Reduce Overproduction and the Need for Storage
• Monitor Process Performance Trends

The above benefits help production managers to achieve the overarching goal, which is to make processes more predictable. Thus, precise work in process and asset tracking data delivered by RTLS are critical to increase predictability and minimize overproduction.

If you would like to know more about how you can start tracking work in process at your manufacturing facility, feel free to contact with KTT by email [email protected]