When you are running a manufacturing business, there is always a temptation to hire cheap unskilled labor and look for lower-priced software to keep costs down and hand the savings to your customers, just to get the orders in the door. However, while that might sound like a good idea at the time, doing it can be detrimental to your business in practice.
You could indeed hire cheap unskilled laborers if you are genuinely going to make them skilled by training and educating them, but not when it comes to lower-priced software packages that are not 100% useful to your business. Normally you are just creating work and slowing down your employee’s daily output. You would find that you could save money by obtaining the right software in the first place as this will save your employees stress and time in completing their job roles.
Benefits of using specialist software
It is obvious that there are some real benefits from using specialist software to aid in getting some jobs done, and yet there are a lot of businesses that are still making do with inferior software packages that are outdated and insufficient.
In the manufacturing sector alone there are some significant benefits to using scheduling software to keep on track of workloads, time frames, and the all-important deadlines. This is especially so when everyone in the workforce has access to it and everyone’s workload is uploaded to the scheduling software. Just allowing managers or team leaders to have access is not enough (unless, of course, your employees are working continuously on flowlines).
Enabling your employees to update and be able to add notes to the tickets on their schedules is a must for the smooth running of any manufacturing business as this will keep everyone in the loop as to what is going on within a job and the progress that it is making through your system.
But there are worthwhile and highly beneficial software packages which should be in every manufacturing business that include scheduling as part of what they have to offer such as Statistical Process Control (SPC). SPC also includes many other benefits that will help your inspection teams take snapshots of your products rather than having to constantly monitor everything that leaves your production lines, as well as help your business meet your customer requirements.
Update procedures
It is important that from time to time you update your procedures in order to make manufacturing more efficient and as a cost-saving project. You may find that those workers that are constantly performing the same job day in and day out could see easier, faster, and more beneficial ways to get jobs done, they may even be able to amalgamate different procedures into one. You may also find that certain tasks or jobs have changed, whether a product has been modified or upgraded and the procedures have been either left the same or not investigated for a cost-effective or efficient way of doing the job in hand.
If employees aren’t allowed to deviate from a procedure set down ages ago and is now woefully out of date, your business will only suffer.
Introduce quality checks during procedures
As mentioned earlier you will want to keep control of the quality of the items that you are sending to your customers. Having a designated quality team checking over key stages of any build is highly beneficial so that faults, damage or omissions to be spotted. But they can also inspect components that come into your manufacturing business to check that they are fit for purpose and not in any way counterfeit.
Quality inspectors are there not only to make sure that the products go out the door within a certain spec but are also there to protect the customer’s investment in their order and to make sure that your business can uphold a reputation of high and unyielding quality. Should an inspector find an issue with any particular piece of work, procedure, or component, it should be thoroughly investigated.
Identify training needs among staff
You will find that when you have your products inspected by qualified inspectors, they may throw light on those members of staff that require a little more training in certain aspects of their job. This is not to say that they are doing anything wrong as everyone requires a refresher course every now and then to keep the brain focused. Not only that, but business and manufacturing (especially with the use of technology) are fast-paced and constantly changing in order to keep customer happy as regards costs, materials, and expertise.
Training is something that every business should give willingly, whether it is in-house or via exterior online courses. Training, after all, is for the benefit of your business, your products, and your customers.
