One of the most common needs in the manufacturing industry is to speed up production times. Back orders and low stock make clients and consumers impatient and frustrated, enough so that they may take their business elsewhere. Fortunately, as technology continues to be developed at an ever increasing rate, there are many new tools available to you to help decrease production times and get your products out more quickly.
Assembly Automation
Your business is made from people, and they are what continues to make your company great. However, while humans are vital for many tasks in your product development and manufacturing process, you may find that machines can speed up assembly processes. Even the best trained human beings can only work so fast when they’re putting together small, intricate, or unwieldy pieces.
Machines can work much quicker and can do the work with a much higher level of consistent quality. Because of that, many manufacturing facilities are utilizing assembly automation to put together their products. While you may still need humans for certain parts of the process or for quality assurance, you can increase production and decrease production time by incorporating machines into your process.
Internet of Things
Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a network of technology—such as sensors and devices—that send each other information over the internet. Together, these things work with one another to optimize your manufacturing facility. They can help improve safety for your employees by shutting down production, raising alarms, and employing countermeasures if it detects a hazard in the work area. It can also do things like schedule maintenance for a machine or device that is underperforming or measure production and other vital statistics.
Inventory Management
Your manufacturing process relies on having enough of the proper parts and materials to make your products. If you run out of any of those, you will waste valuable time waiting to restock. Inventory management systems analyze the materials you have versus the materials you plan to use and will alert you if you are running low. If you wish, they can also automatically create an order for the missing material so that you don’t have to spend time doing so.
Additionally, by using barcode scanning processes, you can track where products, materials, and parts are in your warehouse or facility. That way, you can avoid ordering new materials just because something was misplaced.
With so much technology, there’s no reason why you can’t improve your production time. These are just a few ways you can improve your facility’s processes. Look at other available technologies to see how else you can make big changes to increase your productivity.