|
How much downtime does your plant have? I
recently asked a client this question and was astounded to hear,
“well we don’t have any definite numbers, but…” If you don’t
have accurate information about something as important as when a
machine or line is running, how can you ever hope to improve its
operation? Producing or not producing. There are not many more
straight forward issues that can directly affect your bottom
line, yet it amazes me that many facilities I visit have little
or no accurate information concerning their equipment run
status. Oh, they may know this or that was down for a few hours
the other day or this system never seems to run right, but with
these anecdotal kinds of tracking they never have a firm grip on
what is going on in their facility. Every production facility
should have accurate information about when they are and when
they are not producing - no matter what size. Without solid
tracking of this vital information, they are sure to be
blindsided by a system going down for significant downtime that
with accurate numbers would have been preventable.
Downtime costs can be significant. The
argument can be made that downtime doesn’t just result in a loss
of profit, but in a loss of the total revenue generated by the
product that could have been produced. With unplanned downtime
you have the full costs of production with the exception of the
raw materials. The facility costs (lights, power, heat, etc)
are still required and the production personnel are also still
being paid. Most all of your costs of production are still
bleeding out in addition to the lost profit. Ouch.
>Part 2 |
