How to Improve Shop Floor Productivity
What is shop floor productivity?
Shop floor productivity measures workforce efficiency and factory output. Manufacturers might set goals to improve factory floor productivity when high attrition, siloed teams, or disconnected data are negatively impacting production KPIs. Best-in-class manufacturers look to improve workforce productivity by adopting connected worker solutions to better optimize the employees they already have.
>>> Click here to learn more about improving shop floor productivity with connected worker solutions.
Why is it important to have a productive shop floor?
Improving shop floor productivity is crucial to hitting production goals, achieving optimal equipment uptime, and meeting customer expectations. Low productivity can have various consequences, such as over-leveraged experts, unplanned downtime, poor product quality, unhappy customers, and revenue loss.
What does a productive shop floor look like?
On a productive shop floor, connected frontline workers are fully empowered with all the operational data and product information they need to hit production goals and maintain excellent product quality. New hires have access to tools that help them learn while on the job, and while experts are still seen as a resource for knowledge, they no longer need to be interrupted during important tasks. As a result, manufacturers with a productive shop floor realize reduced costs, improved quality, and faster time to productivity.
The challenges that impact factory floor productivity
Before they can reach these goals, manufacturers must first address the challenges standing in the way of their connected workforce and shop floor productivity.
Inefficient tools and processes
Outdated information and traditional processes can create inefficiencies for the manufacturing workforce, complicating and delaying important tasks.
Complex products
Increasingly complex products and processes create a greater need for training and on-the-job support. But without the right training tools, frontline workers can be stuck in the classroom for days. Once their training is complete, those workers might not have any tangible resources to use while on the job during complicated procedures or unexpected problems.
Multiple systems for operators
Multiple software interfaces and disconnected or siloed data can create inefficiencies for operators and complicate the instructions they use on the job. Overcoming these obstacles is paramount to ensure the enterprise-wide visibility and up-to-date information that drive productivity.
Inability for frontline workers to provide closed-loop feedback
Frontline workers often lack the proper channels to share concerns or recommend improvements. Without a way to provide closed-loop feedback, manufacturers will continue dealing with the same problems. Over time, this can become a roadblock to improvement and innovation.
Outdated work instructions
In fast-paced manufacturing environments, paper-based work instructions become quickly outdated. Making the required updates, reprinting, and redistributing instructions is both costly and time consuming. And in the meantime, operators are working with out-of-date information. This can lead to inefficiencies, costly errors, unplanned downtime, and faulty products getting out the door.
Growing skills gap
A widening skills gap is making it difficult for manufacturers to find workers with the skills and experience needed to keep up with increasingly complex products and processes.
Workforce shortage
Demographic shifts, turnover, retiring experts, and an increasingly competitive job market have created a dire workforce shortage in manufacturing. Attracting new workers is increasingly difficult, and according to research by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute, an estimated 2.1 million manufacturing jobs could be unfilled by 2030 as a result of the skills gap.
Long training times
Traditional classroom training experiences eat into valuable time that frontline workers could be spending on the factory floor. And without on-the-job support tools, workers must rely on recall and assistance from experts to retain important information from training. However, transferring knowledge from experts to new hires is no easy task, especially without sufficient tools, which usually means experts must take time away from their jobs to help.
Customer demands
As customer demands increase, manufacturers must maximize the productivity of a smaller workforce. Failure to do so can result in poor product quality and damaged brand reputation. With a growing customer base and limited workers, leading manufacturers are seeking scalable solutions to make the most of the workers they have, reach their productivity goals, and exceed customer expectations.
Top 4 ways to improve a shop floor with the connected workforce
Improving factory floor productivity requires a multi-step approach focused on empowering the connected workforce.
Invest in training
Investing in more effective training tools and solutions ensures frontline workers retain critical information long after the onboarding phase. Taking time away from important tasks to interrupt experts is not only an unsustainable practice, but a highly counterproductive one. Solutions for on-the-job support give operators the guidance and information they need in real time, whether it’s during routine tasks, complicated procedures, or critical inspections.
Enhance collaboration
Uniting the workforce with access to data insights and up-to-date work instructions improves enterprise collaboration. A collaborative workforce works together toward shared goals, improving productivity despite the challenges of turnover and attrition.
Optimize processes
By prioritizing organization, manufacturers can optimize processes to improve productivity with a smaller workforce. This can look like removing silos (both siloed data and siloed teams), organizing data insights on a single dashboard, streamlining training, and ensuring work instructions are always up to date.
Invest in workforce solutions
It can be difficult to prioritize investing in a workforce that’s shrinking due to turnover and retiring experts, but leading organizations have found that an empowered, connected workforce is a more productive one. To improve factory floor productivity, business leaders must consider innovative approaches and connected worker solutions that remove data silos, improve training and on-the-job support, and transform outdated instructions. For best-in-class manufacturers, the answer to these shop floor productivity challenges is leveraging a combination of industrial connectivity, Internet of Things (IoT), product lifecycle management (PLM), and augmented reality (AR) solutions to connect the frontline workforce.
Industrial connectivity ensures secure, seamless, and standardized connectivity to optimize operations for maximum productivity. With unified data access and real-time insights from the IoT, frontline workers always have the information they need when they need it. This streamlines everyday tasks and enables predictive maintenance to avoid unplanned machine downtime. Meanwhile, PLM solutions provide downstream data for always up-to-date instructions and procedures. AR provides 3D visual context and real-time guidance enhanced with IoT and PLM data, mimicking the experience of working side-by-side with an expert (while that expert stays productive on their own work). Remote assistance solutions enable frontline workers to collaborate more efficiently across multiple business locations.
Empower the connected workforce to improve productivity
Improving shop floor productivity starts with the workforce—but business leaders can’t overlook the outdated and counterproductive tools their frontline employees are working with. To truly transform workforce productivity for increased revenue and improved customer satisfaction, manufacturers must carefully examine their unique use cases and consider solutions that drive efficiency. Implementing industrial connectivity, IoT, PLM, and AR solutions is a great start, but adopting them the right way is crucial to connecting the workforce and achieving a complete digital transformation.
To learn how these technologies enable a connected workforce, improve productivity, and drive impactful business results, explore the Three Outcomes of Enabling a Connected Workforce in Manufacturing eBook.