To improve productivity in manufacturing operations, real-time machine data displayed on large screens provides instant visibility into performance issues and bottlenecks. This visibility enables teams to address problems during shifts rather than waiting until end-of-day meetings to spot them.
On-floor displays create alignment between teams, facilitate smooth shift handovers, and drive fact-based decisions that boost efficiency. Your organization can reduce manual data collection through digital performance tracking while gaining accurate, unbiased insights that lead to measurable gains in output and equipment utilization. These proven methods help your teams spot opportunities and take action to enhance performance throughout each shift.
Real-Time Machine Data Visibility and Problem Resolution
With on-floor displays, you can instantly detect productivity problems. Large screen TVs provide visual alerts that give you insight into performance impediments and help identify bottlenecks, ultimately reducing response time to issues.
Proactive Problem-Solving
Traditionally, these bottlenecks or performance drops may not become apparent until the end of the shift when people gather to discuss how the day went. But with on-floor displays, you have the opportunity to course-correct during the shifts and hopefully reduce the impact of any performance or production impediments.
Enhanced Team Communication
On-floor displays also enhance team communication. Being out front in public view for all to see, they align mindsets and productivity for that particular shift.
Here's what makes it easy for everyone to stay on the same page:
Disseminating utilization and output needs for each shift and machine
Ensuring awareness of where productivity should be taking place and where it shouldn't
Displaying information on large screen TVs for everyone to easily understand what's going on
Seamless Shift Handovers
Hand-in-hand with on-floor displays is the ability to see how a shift concluded. Perhaps they made better than expected progress, but the important thing is that during shift handovers, it's easy to see:
What was accomplished
What still needs to be done
Any impediments the next shift might run into
This gives the incoming team a heads-up and more insightful information as they start their shift.
Data-Driven Decision-Making
On-floor displays also drive data-driven decision-making. Supervisors, heads of operations, and frontline managers have a sense of what's going on based on their experience and intuition. However, sometimes the things getting the most attention at the time might lead us in the wrong direction and cause us to lose focus on what's really holding back our productivity.
The real-time machine data helps understand specifically what's impeding our performance and how we can optimize our resources to improve productivity and machine utilization. For instance, we've worked with many customers where, as a result of the data, we were able to prove that continuous maintenance on older equipment wasn't netting them enough gain. In fact, it was costing more to take the machine down for maintenance and disrupt productivity than it would be to get a new, more reliable machine.
Data has really helped drive good decisions and improve the time devoted via labor and effort to help productivity. Again, it's those on-floor displays bringing everybody together, honing in on what's going on with productivity in real time to help reduce unexpected downtime and improve overall efficiency.
Employee Engagement and Productivity Improvements
On floor displays heighten engagement with operators and employees in a positive way. They influence behavior and create accountability for helping the business by being more productive.
Real-Time Feedback and Goal-Oriented Development
Employees can easily see their current productivity, understand where it should be, and receive visual feedback on whether they are maintaining pace. Goal-oriented development has evolved around these on-floor displays, motivating individuals who strive for achievements and understanding their performance and how to improve it.
It is interesting to observe the self-directed problem-solving that emerges from these displays. Employees are motivated to improve productivity, not only for themselves but also for those around them. The machines are visible to all, and clear performance targets shift in real-time, allowing employees to track their progress throughout the shift, just like in a performance event. They do not wait until the end to get a score. Instead, they focus on how their productivity is progressing and what they can do to improve it during the shift.
Best Practice Sharing and Skill Development
This operational excellence fosters best practice sharing. Consider this scenario: if one machine outperforms others, there is an opportunity for knowledge sharing. Employees can discuss the best practices that keep that machine running at a high level of utilization, allowing others to apply those practices to their own machines. This process develops skills among the team and labor force.
Performance Benchmarking and Forecasting
With consistent output, performance benchmarking can be established based on productivity. Real-time machine data enables the creation of benchmarks and forecasting of potential output. The focus is not on discussing KPIs after the fact but on creating awareness and accountability among everyone to perform at a level that improves the business in real-time.
Imagine this: if the business improves, it will improve the lives of everyone who is part of it. That is the ultimate goal of using On floor displays to enhance employee engagement and productivity.
Maintenance Optimization for Enhanced Productivity
Real-time machine data can improve productivity by alerting maintenance activities if unexpected or unplanned downtime starts to occur. This could be due to an operator struggling with tooling or a nuance developing with the machine as a result of a lack of maintenance.
Benefits of Real-Time Displays
Having real-time displays helps maintenance efforts stay in tune with what's happening during the shift. In case they need to perform emergency maintenance to prevent the machine from continually going down unexpectedly, this is more effective than waiting until the end of the shift to find out that an operator or operation was struggling due to a maintenance issue.
On-floor displays also make it easy for maintenance to track early warning indicators of potential issues. They can stay aware of how productivity is going in real-time, which is much easier than waiting until after the shift to have a one-on-one discussion with the operator and have them interpret or discuss what's going on.
Firsthand Experience Saves Time
When maintenance has an awareness as issues are happening and can experience the issue firsthand, it saves significant time in:
Diagnosing the problem
Developing a plan to remedy it
Planning Maintenance Cycles
Maintenance teams are also able to plan maintenance cycles accordingly so they don't interrupt productivity. Imagine they had planned maintenance scheduled for a particular shift and the machine is actually being used. They can easily see this and reschedule their planned maintenance tasks to optimize uptime and efficiency.
Digital Performance Tracking and Efficiency Gains
On-floor displays make it much easier to digitally transform from manual data collection. They help prevent mistakes or gaps in data collection. This digital format encourages operators and managers to surface information to the team, which can improve productivity by reducing data collection efforts and making them more concise.
Reducing Manual Efforts
By leveraging real-time machine data, you can reduce paperwork and the effort operators spend outside of running cycles and producing parts. Digital tracking eliminates the need for someone to babysit the process or manually collect data by poking and prodding operators to record their work.
Improving Data Accuracy
Digital tracking also makes data collection more accurate:
Canned responses create consistent metrics and standardized reports instead of free-form fields
Information recorded throughout the shift is visible to everyone in real time
If a setup takes longer than expected, it's noted during the shift, enabling faster decision making and streamlined efforts to remedy productivity issues
Eliminating Biased Manual Tracking
Manual tracking efforts are error-prone and often fail to identify the main factors holding back productivity. They tend to only highlight the hot button topic of that particular day or shift. Or they might focus on what the person driving the manual data collection is interested in or biased towards.
Capturing data digitally makes it more honest and simpler. You avoid the need for someone to maintain and drive manual tracking efforts.
Maximize Your Plant's Performance with Real-Time Machine Data Solutions
Real-time machine data displayed on your plant floor gives your teams the ability to boost productivity and reduce downtime through faster problem-solving. Your operators, maintenance staff, and managers can make informed decisions with instant access to performance metrics.
Manufacturing companies partner with us to implement these solutions, turning machine data into measurable results. Our team stands ready to guide you through practical steps that will improve your plant's output and efficiency. Let's start a conversation about how real-time data displays can help your operation reach its full potential.