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Manufacturing Improvement : Focus On Your Manufacturing Target

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Focused improvement is a way to approach manufacturing improvement that will help you improve all levels of the manufacturing process and your entire company. By implementing a focused improvement approach, then you will be able to ensure that your entire organization is working smoothly and that your organization's goals and efforts are being accomplished.
Before you can implement focused improvement in your manufacturing processes, you need to decide what your goal is going to be for focused improvement. You also need to set up a way to measure the improvement of your manufacturing performance. By measuring performance, you will be able to see how well your organization is succeeding at implementing your new plans, strategies, and goals. While you can use financial measures as a way to measure your performance and your improvement, financial measures end up having a number of problems with them. Here are some of the problems with traditional financial performance measures:
Problems with financial measures of performance-- they do not give you a good reflection of what the customer wants-- they do not give you strategies that you need in order to beat your competition-- they identify problems, but they cannot identify the causes of those problems-- they do not
support measures to solve problems-- they are inflexible-- they do not support innovation, but rather prohibit it-- they encourage a large volume of activity, but they do not encourage useful activity
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A focused improvement approach to improving manufacturing operations will help you work against these problems with traditional financial performance measures. A focused improvement system will be more relevant to your actual strategies and goals, and will help you improve your overall approach to manufacturing. Focused improvement will support changes in your operations, rather than working against change and innovation.
The following are the different parts of the control system that you must implement in order to control and contain your manufacturing operations.
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Elements of control include the following:
Establishing a target or an overall plan.
Establishing a tolerable deviation from that plan or target.
A way to measure the actual deviation from the plan or the target.
A comparison between the actual results and your plan.
A way to identify potential areas for improvement as a result of the comaprison.
Feedback that will identify significant deviations from your plan or target.
A way to correct deviations.
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The only way that you can establish focused improvement in your manufacturing systems is by implementing a process of control that will let you take charge of your manufacturing operations. A focused improvement approach to manufacturing will help you achieve your goals to beat your competition, fulfill customer demands, and then measure how you are achieving what you desire. Your focused improvement approach to manufacturing will also help you communicate your goals and communicate whether or not your strategies are up to date and your decisions are helping you achieve your goals and your objectives. Finally, a focused improvement strategy will also help you come up with innovative ways to meet your goals and will help you find any problem areas. In addition, a focused improvement strategy will help you compare your practices to other practices, record your achievements, set your goals, and will give you feedback to how your strategies are working. Employing a specialist in focused improvement will help you implement focused improvement throughout your organization, helping you achieve your goals and improve your overall manufacturing processes.
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Manufacturing Improvement : Avoid "Free Passanger" In The Manufacturing Team

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All organizations seek to avoid setbacks in their manufacturing processes. There are a number of different ways that you can avoid setbacks in your manufacturing processes. One of the most popular and successful approaches to quality management and control that will help you avoid setbacks in your manufacturing processes is Six Sigma quality control and manufacturing organization.
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In essence, six sigma is a management plan geared towards producing better results, better products, and better service. Developed by Joseph M. Juran and Peter Senge in conjunction with Motorola, six sigma is technically an objective of quality. This objective very specifically defines how variable a process needs to be in terms of product specifications in order to meet and exceed customer demands in terms of product quality and product reliability.
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Confused? Well, that's the technical definition. Ultimately, six sigma is an overall quality management program that uses leadership approaches, makes use of business infrastructure, and different management tools. General Electric was one of the very first users of six sigma, after Motorola, and defines it as "a disciplined methodology of defining, measuring, analyzing, improving and controlling the quality in every one of the company's products, processes and transactions--with the ultimate goal of virtually eliminating all defects."
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Six sigma is tailored to meet each company or business' specific needs. However, there are overall basics and tools that are used in order to achieve the ultimate level of organizational performance. The cycle of methods used is called DMAIC, which stands for define, measure, analyze, improve and control. The entire approach is oriented towards product--the quality, reliability, and production of quality products. Six sigma is different from other quality control approaches, because it combines statistical programs and tools with observation and experimentation. This means that experiments should take place on two levels, and then are analyzed using graphical methods. This is a combination of the analysis of product variance and also observation so as to aid instead of blocking the work of both statisticians and engineers. Another way to understand the basics of six sigma is to look at the term itself. Sigma, which is a Greek letter, is also a symbol used in statistics that measures how far a process (or product) moves from what is considered to be perfection. So basically, in six sigma, the idea is that if you can measure how many problems or defects exist in a process, then scientifically you can decide how to get rid of those defects and then move as close as possible to no problems or defects in a process or a system.
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There are several basic and central concepts that form the basis of six sigma. First is critical to quality. These are the attributes of a product that the customer considers to be most important. Defect is the failure to provide what the customer ants. Process capability is what the process or the product is capable of delivering. Variation is based on what the customer feels about a process/product and sees in that product. Stable operations are the attempts to make sure that processes are always the same and predictable in an effort to ensure that the customer always feels the same way--good--about a process or product. DFSS stands for design for six sigma. This is the methodology that uses tools, measurements, and specific training geared towards helping you design the processes and products that meet the needs and expectations of your customers.
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Six sigma is a highly technical and mathematical approach to product control and organizational efficiency. Individuals take courses in six sigma, and are then certified to be at different levels of understanding and proficiency. The terms for the different levels of certification are taken from martial arts practices that we're all generally familiar with--green belt, black belt, and master black belt.
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Manufacturing Improvement : Manage Crises In Manufacturing

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Crisis management for manufacturing can take a number of forms and can be implemented in a number of different situations. For example, crisis management must come into play if your company has to admit to environmental quality control violations, or must answer to a lawsuit. Crisis management is necessary if a flaw in a product or a service is revealed and the news goes to the press and you must recall the product. Also, crisis management becomes necessary if you end up with a union strike, or if your equipment malfunctions, or if you are trying to wage a publicity campaign in a community that doesn't want you to move into their neighborhood. No matter what situation may arise, you must have a good crisis management plan and a good crisis management team in place so that any type of crisis can be handled, no matter what that crisis is.
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For an example for our discussion of crisis management for manufacturing, let us use the example of a very important critical piece of equipment failing. Even if you have the best maintenance team in the world, machinery is never foolproof nor perfect, and so something is going to break down sometime. The problem then becomes that your machine is not producing money. You should have a crisis management position in place so that you can minimize the impact on your business, the customers' products, and your credibility.
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Crisis management for manufacturing can take a number of forms and can be implemented in a number of different situations. For example, crisis management must come into play if your company has to admit to environmental quality control violations, or must answer to a lawsuit. Crisis management is necessary if a flaw in a product or a service is revealed and the news goes to the press and you must recall the product. Also, crisis management becomes necessary if you end up with a union strike, or if your equipment malfunctions, or if you are trying to wage a publicity campaign in a community that doesn't want you to move into their neighborhood. No matter what situation may arise, you must have a good crisis management plan and a good crisis management team in place so that any type of crisis can be handled, no matter what that crisis is.
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For an example for our discussion of crisis management for manufacturing, let us use the example of a very important critical piece of equipment failing. Even if you have the best maintenance team in the world, machinery is never foolproof nor perfect, and so something is going to break down sometime. The problem then becomes that your machine is not producing money. You should have a crisis management position in place so that you can minimize the impact on your business, the customers' products, and your credibility.
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Manufacturing Improvement : Always Remind Your Self

In any organization, Human Resource development is very, very improtant. We can say that the development is the heart of the company. Potentional employee is value to the company. Company should identify this type of employee, before other company 'detect' this employee and hire them for their company.
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There is many ways to keep this kind of employee, such as built up good relationship with them, setup good environment in the organization, hire only employee that can contribute something to the company, reward the employee (according to company gain), and soo on.
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Selecting correct is not only depend on the qualification and / or experience. Many of Human Resource Manager forget to include this to thier one of the list - attitude.
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Attitude will determine attitude. For me, that statement is 100% correct. If my employer give me an option - 1) 10 employee with high skill, good qualification but bad attitude, 2) 10 employee with fair qualification, and no experience but have very good attitude, I'll immediatelly will select group 2. WHY? because I'm part of them before.
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Manufacturing Improvement : Manufacturing Improvement : Kaizen

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Kaizen principles are a comprehensive way of approaching the continual improvement of your manufacturing processes. Kaizen is the Japanese term for "change for the better" or it can be translated as "improvement". Kaizen is often translated into English as "continual improvement." Kaizen works to improve quality in the workplace, particularly in manufacturing companies, though it has also been applied to service providing companies and other types of companies. Kaizen is most often used in reference to Toyota Production System and is the combination of a number of different systems that are geared towards quality control.
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What the overall purpose of Kaizen is is to eliminate waste. Joshua Isaac Walters defines wastes as "activities that add cost but do not add value." Very little of the process that goes into producing a product is paid for by the customer; instead, you as the manufacturer have to pay for all of this waste. Reducing waste is ultimately an effort to improve your bottom line, so there is nothing that you can lose by reducing waste. Implementing Kaizen is a way to improve your own financial standing. Kaizen also works to standardize the production process through doing things like leveling off the production flow so that there aren't variations in the production process, and also by doing things like switching from push production to pull production.
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Kaizen principles are a comprehensive way of approaching the continual improvement of your manufacturing processes. Kaizen is the Japanese term for "change for the better" or it can be translated as "improvement". Kaizen is often translated into English as "continual improvement." Kaizen works to improve quality in the workplace, particularly in manufacturing companies, though it has also been applied to service providing companies and other types of companies. Kaizen is most often used in reference to Toyota Production System and is the combination of a number of different systems that are geared towards quality control.
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What the overall purpose of Kaizen is is to eliminate waste. Joshua Isaac Walters defines wastes as "activities that add cost but do not add value." Very little of the process that goes into producing a product is paid for by the customer; instead, you as the manufacturer have to pay for all of this waste. Reducing waste is ultimately an effort to improve your bottom line, so there is nothing that you can lose by reducing waste. Implementing Kaizen is a way to improve your own financial standing. Kaizen also works to standardize the production process through doing things like leveling off the production flow so that there aren't variations in the production process, and also by doing things like switching from push production to pull production.
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Manufacturing Improvement : Visual Control

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Visual control is a key component of lean manufacturing. Lean manufacturing is a way of approaching manufacturing that strives to eliminate all waste, from materials that are not used to time that is spent doing unnecessary tasks. Waste, in lean manufacturing, is defined as anything that does not add to the actual value of the product. The customer is not paying for the process of manufacturing, so any waste that goes in to the production of a production or of a service is paid for by you, the manufacturer or the provider of the service. Lean manufacturing improves your bottom line, ultimately; lean manufacturing is a way to improve your flow of production by reducing variances in the flow of production. Lean manufacturing also continually improves your production and your production processes, and also improves the experiences of your employees by reducing the waste of their time and their own efforts.
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Visual control is a key component to this improvement of production through lean manufacturing. Visual control is a process that visually compares products as they move through the production process to other products to ensure that they are all the same. Visual control also works to ensure that the production processes are the same, and that there are not variances in production processes or production products. Visual controls works to eliminate variances in production processes, and strives to reduce variances in the flow of production. By doing so, visual control works to eliminate waste. By visually controlling aspects of the production process rather than testing each product for possible defects, quality is improved and less time is wasted by employees.
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Visual control is a key component of lean manufacturing. Lean manufacturing is a way of approaching manufacturing that strives to eliminate all waste, from materials that are not used to time that is spent doing unnecessary tasks. Waste, in lean manufacturing, is defined as anything that does not add to the actual value of the product. The customer is not paying for the process of manufacturing, so any waste that goes in to the production of a production or of a service is paid for by you, the manufacturer or the provider of the service. Lean manufacturing improves your bottom line, ultimately; lean manufacturing is a way to improve your flow of production by reducing variances in the flow of production. Lean manufacturing also continually improves your production and your production processes, and also improves the experiences of your employees by reducing the waste of their time and their own efforts.
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Visual control is a key component to this improvement of production through lean manufacturing. Visual control is a process that visually compares products as they move through the production process to other products to ensure that they are all the same. Visual control also works to ensure that the production processes are the same, and that there are not variances in production processes or production products. Visual controls works to eliminate variances in production processes, and strives to reduce variances in the flow of production. By doing so, visual control works to eliminate waste. By visually controlling aspects of the production process rather than testing each product for possible defects, quality is improved and less time is wasted by employees.
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Manufacturing Improvement : From Manufacturing Operation to Custom Manufacturing

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Custom manufacturing setups can seriously improve your manufacturing processes and your overall productivity within your company. If you have highly specialized products that you are turning out, then you need custom manufacturing setups so that you can eliminate waste and produce truly excellent products and services. By looking at a particular example of a custom manufacturing setup, you can see how implementing a custom manufacturing setup in your own manufacturing business can improve your productivity and your bottom line.
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Let's use Custom Machining Services as an example. This particular company serves a variety of industries but needed to expand its milling capabilities and turning capabilities in order to increase production levels. Because Custom Machining Services wanted to make better parts faster with less work, they needed a multitasking machine. So they turned to Mazak's Inegrex 30Y and Integrex 200Y so that they could use fewer setups for each process and thus reduced labor hours. Because they used custom manufacturing setups, they could cut machine cycle times on some products, and could also cut down on the actual human work. The production costs go down, yet the value costs stay the same, so that profit goes up.
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Custom manufacturing setups can seriously improve your manufacturing processes and your overall productivity within your company. If you have highly specialized products that you are turning out, then you need custom manufacturing setups so that you can eliminate waste and produce truly excellent products and services. By looking at a particular example of a custom manufacturing setup, you can see how implementing a custom manufacturing setup in your own manufacturing business can improve your productivity and your bottom line.
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Let's use Custom Machining Services as an example. This particular company serves a variety of industries but needed to expand its milling capabilities and turning capabilities in order to increase production levels. Because Custom Machining Services wanted to make better parts faster with less work, they needed a multitasking machine. So they turned to Mazak's Inegrex 30Y and Integrex 200Y so that they could use fewer setups for each process and thus reduced labor hours. Because they used custom manufacturing setups, they could cut machine cycle times on some products, and could also cut down on the actual human work. The production costs go down, yet the value costs stay the same, so that profit goes up.
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Manufacturing Improvement : Reduce Manufacturing Waste : SMED

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If you have been involved at all with business, especially with manufacturing, then you have probably heard of a number of different waste reduction strategies. One of the more popular waste reduction approaches to business is called SMED. SMED stands for Single-Minute exchange of Die. SMED is a theory and also a practical technique that works so that setup operations can be put together and performed in less than 10 minutes. In other words, setup operations should be able to be performed in a number of minutes that is only represented by a single digit: one minute to nine minutes. While SMED was first developed in the 1950s in Japan, it did not move to Europe in the 1970s (West Germany and Switzerland in 1974, and the United States in 1976). SMED was not really accepted in other countries outside Japan, however, until the 1980s.
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There are a number of different components of SMED, or Single-Minute Exchange of Die, that work together in order to improve production and manufacturing processes, and in order to reduce waste. All of these ideas are associated with and compatible with lean manufacturing.
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If you have been involved at all with business, especially with manufacturing, then you have probably heard of a number of different waste reduction strategies. One of the more popular waste reduction approaches to business is called SMED. SMED stands for Single-Minute exchange of Die. SMED is a theory and also a practical technique that works so that setup operations can be put together and performed in less than 10 minutes. In other words, setup operations should be able to be performed in a number of minutes that is only represented by a single digit: one minute to nine minutes. While SMED was first developed in the 1950s in Japan, it did not move to Europe in the 1970s (West Germany and Switzerland in 1974, and the United States in 1976). SMED was not really accepted in other countries outside Japan, however, until the 1980s.
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There are a number of different components of SMED, or Single-Minute Exchange of Die, that work together in order to improve production and manufacturing processes, and in order to reduce waste. All of these ideas are associated with and compatible with lean manufacturing
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Manufacturing Improvement : Manufacturing Strategy

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There are many custom manufacturing strategies available for your manufacturing plant. These different manufacturing strategies can be anything from the latest philosophy to the old tried and true manufacturing strategy. No matter what program you may choose you need to make sure it is a right fit for you, your employees and most of all your manufacturing plant as a whole.
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One of the most widely used custom manufacturing strategies for your manufacturing plant is a strategy called six sigma. Six sigma is one of the most powerful process improvement strategies out there. The goal of six sigma is to do things better, faster and at a lower cost then you have done before or even other manufacturing plants. The best part about six sigma is that it can be applied to every part of your manufacturing business making it easily customized to your particular problems. This includes production, human resource, technical support and any of your employees on the maintenance floor.
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There are many custom manufacturing strategies available for your manufacturing plant. These different manufacturing strategies can be anything from the latest philosophy to the old tried and true manufacturing strategy. No matter what program you may choose you need to make sure it is a right fit for you, your employees and most of all your manufacturing plant as a whole.
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One of the most widely used custom manufacturing strategies for your manufacturing plant is a strategy called six sigma. Six sigma is one of the most powerful process improvement strategies out there. The goal of six sigma is to do things better, faster and at a lower cost then you have done before or even other manufacturing plants. The best part about six sigma is that it can be applied to every part of your manufacturing business making it easily customized to your particular problems. This includes production, human resources, technical support and any of your employees on the maintenance floor.
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Manufacturing Improvement : Low Cost Manufacturing Improvement Method

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There are many available low cost improvement methods for your manufacturing program. These programs can be anything from the latest philosophy to the old tried and true manufacturing programs. No matter what program you may choose you need to make sure it is a right fit for you, your employees and most of all your manufacturing plant as a whole.
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There are plenty of programs available to improve your manufacturing plant. One of the most popular low cost improvement methods for your manufacturing plant is called Lean manufacturing. Lean manufacturing is a business model and it is also a multitude of manufacturing methods that focus on getting rid of the waste while at the same time producing quality products. This type of manufacturing program is all done at the lowest cost to you the manufacturer and also the lowest cost for the consumer.
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There are many different techniques to implement a low cost improvement method for your manufacturing program. When choosing a program you need to make sure that all management is on board and then get the employees involved and excited about the new ideas your company will be implementing. To decide what improvement programs may be best for you and your company the following is a list of 5 of the most widely used methods.
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There are many available low cost improvement methods for your manufacturing program. These programs can be anything from the latest philosophy to the old tried and true manufacturing programs. No matter what program you may choose you need to make sure it is a right fit for you, your employees and most of all your manufacturing plant as a whole.
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There are plenty of programs available to improve your manufacturing plant. One of the most popular low cost improvement methods for your manufacturing plant is called Lean manufacturing. Lean manufacturing is a business model and it is also a multitude of manufacturing methods that focus on getting rid of the waste while at the same time producing quality products. This type of manufacturing program is all done at the lowest cost to you the manufacturer and also the lowest cost for the consumer.
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There are many different techniques to implement a low cost improvement method for your manufacturing program. When choosing a program you need to make sure that all management is on board and then get the employees involved and excited about the new ideas your company will be implementing. To decide what improvement programs may be best for you and your company the following is a list of 5 of the most widely used methods.
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Manufacturing Improvement : Idea For Manufacturing System

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There are so many different things that you can incorporate into your manufacturing systems. Depending on what type of manufacturing company you have will depend on what type of manufacturing systems you will have. If you have different types of manufacturing processes that other manufacturing companies do not, you might have to have more of a custom manufacturing system then others. If this is the case you might have to come up with creative concepts for custom manufacturing systems. Here are some tips for creating some of the creative concepts for custom manufacturing systems.
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The first tip is to decide what types of concepts are going to make your manufacturing company run better. For example you might have a line that gets very dirty do to the residue left behind from one of the processes that is done on that line. Instead of waiting until the end of the day to clean it up, this will take you longer. Have it done during schedule maintenance checks. If you do not have schedule maintenance checks on your machines during each shift pick a time that the machines are down and do it on a regular basis. The reason why it might be better to have your line areas cleaned more frequently is so that there will be cause for fewer accidents.
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There are so many different things that you can incorporate into your manufacturing systems. Depending on what type of manufacturing company you have will depend on what type of manufacturing systems you will have. If you have different types of manufacturing processes that other manufacturing companies do not, you might have to have more of a custom manufacturing system then others. If this is the case you might have to come up with creative concepts for custom manufacturing systems. Here are some tips for creating some of the creative concepts for custom manufacturing systems.
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The first tip is to decide what types of concepts are going to make your manufacturing company run better. For example you might have a line that gets very dirty do to the residue left behind from one of the processes that is done on that line. Instead of waiting until the end of the day to clean it up, this will take you longer. Have it done during schedule maintenance checks. If you do not have schedule maintenance checks on your machines during each shift pick a time that the machines are down and do it on a regular basis. The reason why it might be better to have your line areas cleaned more frequently is so that there will be cause for fewer accidents.
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Manufacturing Improvement : Productivity And Location of Material Consideration

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Productivity decisions in the modern corporation have a lot to do with time savings, costs and the flow of paperwork, product and services needed to run the organization. In manufacturing the location of the raw materials needed for production are a huge consideration, not only due to transportation costs, but also to insure timed deliveries as needed. If a shipment is missed this could take down the entire assembly line or cause a complete work stoppage.


To insure this does not happen, often a manufacturing company must store the raw materials as they arrive until they are needed during the production cycles. The further the distance or potential disruption in transportation or other issues, the more must be stored on the property or nearby, thus, drastically increasing costs and complicating the supporting supply chain.


A manufacturing company that wishes to stay competitive in a global economy must be as close to its' raw materials as possible to save in the transportation and storage costs to insure flawless and continuous production schedules. Work stoppages in assembly lines can quickly destroy profit margins and render the manufacturing company insolvent. The competitors seeing this weakness will flood the markets with products and make major inroads in market share if this occurs.


When a raw material mine closes often the manufacturing customers of the mine are putting into a terrible situation, often one that is unrecoverable and increases their costs to a point that they can no longer compete. It is like a cascading cost pile-up with inevitable consequences, so please consider this.

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