The heart.
It is an often-used analogy for something central and indispensable to an operation. In the Manufacturing realm, the very heart of a business is the Shop Floor. It’s where “the magic happens.” After all, it’s your product that defines you, and the shop floor is where that product is born. All the supplies in the world and the most strategic distributor network possible won’t help you at all if you can’t fulfill promises and meet demand.
At Fabtech 2018, we gave a presentation that showed how provides tangible, measurable benefits at the shop floor level, and how using it to bring your “heart” into top condition can put you in a prime position for growth and success. Let’s take a closer look:
Faster Information Flow
While the workers on the shop floor have a huge role to play in the success of your manufacturing line, there are many decisions to be made behind the scenes, and those decisions depend on knowing what’s happening right now on the shop floor. Dynamics 365 gives you visibility into production processes that are being performed. You can sort by order number, resource, product, and status. From there you can set the priority of specific operations, and even coordinate operations across divisions.
Transparent Problems and Variations
A large contributing factor to manufacturing waste is the slow detection of problems and variations in labor hours and material consumption. If these spike, it’s indicative of a potential production bottleneck. This problem is compounded when there are multiple stages running concurrently, when processes are interdependent, and so on. With Dynamics 365, online exchange of information immediately shows deviations and problems, so reaction time can be faster. Drill down to identify, review, and validate hours and material consumption variations. Track finished quantity variations. Quickly create corrections, eliminating bottlenecks and ensuring smooth production, filling quotas and reaching goals.
Cost Reduction
Who doesn’t like saving money? Dynamics 365 brings major cost reductions by improving efficiencies across the board. And data critical for process improvement and decision making is collected for the management officials who will ultimately decide on manufacturing and process improvements. For example:
- Time spent by management staff is better utilized, since the information flows directly from the floor instead of individuals having to go there to find it.
- Training costs are reduced based on an easy Touch Screen Interface for the end user.
- Production Time Logging for processing costs is done based on the floor input, not on “guesstimates”.
- Secure Logins to a Touch Job Card Device provide accountability and security.
Measurable Return on Investment
Implementing improved business processes and fostering collaboration between team members and management facilitated by Dynamics 365 brings dividends that can be counted. Here’s a sampling:
- Total visibility and control over plant environment
- More efficient, streamlined operations and lowered manufacturing cycle times
- Data-driven, higher quality production
- Immediately actionable, proactive data and analytics when employing a real-time SFC system
- Empowered supervisors and managers
- Increased operator motivation, productivity and performance
- Improved accuracy in reporting on resource status, workflows, inventory and human resources
- Accurate updates on labor and machine usage
- Improved valuation and costing capabilities
- Reduction of excess labor costs
- Reduction of payroll computational errors
- Reduction of work in process inventory
As you can see, Dynamics 365 has far-reaching capabilities that unite the disparate departments in your organization, always listening to your “heart” and ensuring its optimum health.
Want to learn how to take advantage of these benefits? to find out how Dynamics 365 can transform your manufacturing operation into the lean machine it should be!
By - Microsoft Gold Partner headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri.
