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Many people want to improve factory operations to increase productivity and boost sales. Many workers experience inconveniences and challenges in their factory work. To bring positive results to both companies and employees, improvement proposals are essential.
This article introduces ideas that can be utilized in factory improvement proposals and presents key points for implementation.
【Boosting Production Efficiency】Ideas for Factory Improvement Proposals
Here, we introduce ideas for improving production efficiency.
Reviewing Work Flow Lines
To improve production efficiency, review your work flow lines. For example, if the flow lines for receiving, pre-processing, and processing are disorganized, coordination between workers becomes difficult and management becomes challenging.
Additionally, when passage flow lines are complicated, people’s movements overlap, increasing the risk of contact accidents. Inefficient work flow lines not only make work difficult but also pose accident risks, requiring review. When reviewing work flow lines, check whether multiple flow lines overlap.
Reviewing Equipment, Ingredient, and Material Placement
To improve factory work efficiency, reviewing the placement of equipment, ingredients, and materials is another important point beyond just work flow lines. Without designated storage locations, items may not be found immediately when needed. Production efficiency suffers when items cannot be retrieved quickly at the moment they’re needed.
To eliminate the effort of searching for equipment and supplies, it’s recommended to establish fixed locations and share these locations among employees. By deciding on consistent locations, equipment can be retrieved immediately when starting work. Additionally, it’s recommended to keep equipment used in the same task together in one location. This eliminates the effort of going to various places, enables smooth work flow line review, and boosts production efficiency.
Building and Equipment Inspection and Repair
Are you leaving building and production equipment deterioration unaddressed in your long-operating factory? Neglecting this not only creates risks from deteriorating sanitary conditions but also leads to decreased production efficiency.
Taking meat slicers as an example, blade deterioration leads to poor yield and alignment. The impact of a 1% yield loss naturally increases proportionally with production volume. For 10,000 yen worth of ingredients, it’s a 100 yen loss, but for 100 million yen worth, it becomes a 1 million yen loss. Don’t overlook “just 1%”!
Poor alignment causes rework effort and production efficiency decline due to resulting minor stoppages. Additionally, unexpected downtime from breakdowns directly impacts production efficiency, and in the worst cases, production may become impossible.
Conduct regular inspections of buildings and production equipment, repair any maintenance issues immediately, and ensure optimal production at all times.
【Cost Reduction】Ideas for Factory Improvement Proposals
Next, we introduce ideas for reducing costs and stabilizing operations.
Reducing Expenses by Reviewing Consumables
Consider reviewing sanitary equipment and consumables such as gloves and detergents used daily in factory operations. When reviewing, it’s recommended to compare not just prices but also performance and whether work efficiency will decline between currently used items and new items being considered.
If the review makes work more difficult, it will lead to decreased work efficiency and productivity. Along with price considerations, choose items that don’t reduce work efficiency.
Skill Standardization and Enhancement
Standardizing the skills of workers directly engaged in production on the floor enables production according to plan.
Without standardization, production may not proceed according to plan depending on the day, resulting in overtime costs, or excessive staffing may generate wasteful labor costs.
By standardizing worker skills and then providing education and guidance for further skill enhancement, labor cost reduction can be achieved.
Reviewing Production Processes
First, analyze the entire production line in detail to identify bottlenecks and wasteful operations. Then, design an efficient production flow. For example, to smooth work flow, consider consolidating specific work processes or rearranging work spaces.
Another consideration is optimizing personnel allocation. With skill standardization, if any worker can achieve the same production level, it becomes possible to determine the number of personnel to assign to production lines and the number required for producing one item. By conducting optimal personnel allocation according to set numbers, wasteful labor costs can be avoided and cost reduction can be achieved.
Key Points from Improvement Proposals to Implementation
Here, we introduce key points from making improvement proposals to implementation.
Start with “What’s Possible”
The key to factory work improvement is starting with what’s possible. Attempting to improve major operations involving the entire organization right away can be difficult to change. By starting improvements with small tasks or operations involving few people, employees have less resistance to change, allowing smooth progress.
If you tackle improvements with high hurdles immediately, employees may become confused and stop participating in the initiative. Proceed step by step with what’s possible, also serving as employee awareness improvement.
Clarify Objectives
To implement improvement proposals, it’s necessary to clarify why improvements are needed. Some employees won’t be convinced if they don’t understand the purpose of improvements. By sharing specific objectives throughout the factory, employees can work on improvements with unified purpose awareness.
Even if there are proposals for work improvement, without objectives, employee empathy cannot be gained and implementation may stall. If each individual employee recognizes that work improvement is necessary, the initiative proceeds smoothly.
Don’t Stop After Improvement
After implementing factory work improvements and seeing actual improvement effects, some cases stop the improvements. It’s wasteful to halt measures when effects are promising. After work improvements, conduct status assessments and run PDCA cycles—discovering issues and implementing improvements again.
If improvements are stopped despite having implemented factory work improvements and seeing employee awareness reform and active participation emerging, motivation may decline. By proposing new improvements and showing a posture of pursuing further operational efficiency, employee enthusiasm for work and improvement increases.
The New Company Image Revealed Through Business Improvement
When factory work business improvements are implemented, companies can receive various benefits and expect to transform into a new company image. Here, we introduce what secondary effects can be expected from business improvement.
Leads to Labor Shortage Resolution
When wasteful work is reduced through operational efficiency and improvement activities, labor shortage resolution can be expected. If fewer personnel are needed for tasks, personnel can be allocated to other operations. If factory business improvements can systemize or automate simple tasks, human resources can be concentrated on creative work requiring human thinking.
Secured personnel can be assigned not only within the same department but also to areas experiencing staff shortages in other departments, contributing to resolving company-wide personnel shortages.
Leads to Quality Improvement
Eliminating waste and conducting facility improvements also leads to quality improvement of products manufactured in the factory. For example, if factory lighting was previously inadequate, insufficient light was available, or product colors were difficult to judge, inspection work efficiency was likely compromised.
Through facility improvements, lighting improvements brighten the factory interior and make product verification easier. Inspection work can be expected to be conducted accurately and speedily.
Creating a Safe Workplace by Preventing Near-Miss Incidents
As factory facility improvements progress through improvement proposals, near-miss incident prevention is also achieved. For example, if the workplace is cluttered with equipment and supplies, not only do work errors occur, but it can also become a factor in injuries and accidents such as tripping over objects.
Implementing facility improvements reduces workplace clutter, so work efficiency improves while near-miss incidents are expected to decrease.
Summary
Factory work improvement proposals are essential initiatives not only for improving work efficiency and productivity but also for protecting employee safety. By maintaining facilities and creating comfortable work spaces, employee motivation increases, leading to productivity improvement.
If you’re considering implementing food factory work improvements, please consult with Nantsune Co., Ltd. Based on our accumulated experience and track record, we provide improvement proposals tailored to each individual company. Field diagnostics are conducted free of charge, so please feel free to contact us first.
