Food Factory Executive

A Complete Line of Site: Unlocking Profits from Your People

What would you do with productivity improvement equivalent to 1 new plant this year?

Do you know what your plant efficiency is?  Do you see what your labor force sees?  Well, your Shift Supervisor and your Foreman know—and they are the keys to your profit bottleneck. 

It's not about faster equipment, automated supply chains, or electronic posts to your general ledger.  These improvements are important, but their impacts only go so far to increase your profitability.

Instead, we are talking about renewable and sustainable resource—your front-line labor force.  Enabling your workforce is key to unlocking the profits that are wasted on your factory floor.  There is a huge latent opportunity to improve margins and profitability quickly through harnessing the untapped intelligence of your shop floor operators and factory managers. 

To harness this power, leading manufacturers are gaining A Complete Line of Site.  From plant to plant, site to site, the workforce knows how to make each line and each shift more efficient and productive.  Unleash that power, and then roll up the intelligence to senior management in near real time.

Here's a description of A Complete Line of Site in action, according to a recent research report from AMR.  Lora Cecere interviewed George Jurkovich, senior vice president of operations at Bay Valley Foods.

    Q: How do you use the data?
    Mr. Jurkovich: We use the data in multiple ways. Let me explain how it works:

    • Every two hours, the production teams meet on the production line. This meeting is with the folks—operators and maintenance—that can make a difference.
    • We also use the data at the end of the shift to review and analyze shift performance with the data while it's still fresh. CDC Factory provides a summary detail with cost per unit, yield, and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), with comparisons to targets and event details that impact performance. The end-of-shift analysis is also used to ensure there is a proper handoff to the next shift.
    • The data is also summarized and used in weekly improvement meetings. In this session, we review the downtime and focus on getting to root issues.

      This is visible from the top of operations. I can see how the factories are running in near real time from my desk, but I am careful to not use it as a big hammer. I have to let the people who can drive change use the data. My goal is to enable the right improvements and actions to be taken.

Bay Valley Foods is already harnessing 4% production improvement in just 4 months.  When he launches 8 more factories he will recognize the equivalent of nearly 100% productivity gains.  That's like building a new factory—at a small fraction of the cost.

For the complete AMR research report, click here.