Business process mapping is a powerful tool that can immediately expose redundant work processes and procedures. Most companies use business process mapping to streamline operations and improve the time it takes to complete day to day work tasks. However, an equally effective tool is to use business process mapping to map out a company’s work flow in manufacturing. The focus is to concentrate on how manufacturing work tasks progress from one production work cell to the next. Since manufacturing typically falls under operations, it’s really a natural progression to map out the work processes within manufacturing and to concentrate on those work tasks that do nothing more than add time.
Improving Manufacturing Operations
In my previous post “Business Operations: Critical Steps to Business Process Mapping”, I used an example of how a company might use a business process map to map out their operations. It focused on how something as simple as a customer inquiry for quotation, can become a convoluted mess when it involves one approval after another. For manufacturers, these approvals are sometimes commonplace. This is especially true for those manufacturers who pride themselves on designing and manufacturing custom made parts.
Unfortunately, these customer requests for quotation can fall into a myriad of delays and confusing processes – and that’s before the customer even receives the quotation! Once the order is placed, it progresses through the entire time-consuming process all over again. Needless to say, it can be an extreme source of frustration for the customer and a colossal waste of time for the manufacturer. So, why should you use business process mapping to streamline manufacturing?
- Time-Consuming Work Tasks Costs Money
As a manufacturer, it doesn’t matter how idle or lost time occurs. Regardless of whether lost time is due to machine downtime, high cycle times or unclear work instructions, wasted time is a killer. If your work processes and procedures in manufacturing are too time consuming and redundant, you will see the consequences in lost customers and higher costs. To eliminate lost time due to a convoluted work process, take the time to map out your work processes in manufacturing.
- Time-Consuming Work Tasks Impact Cycle Times
When a manufacturer has convoluted work processes, the consequences are far reaching. Imagine a situation where a product employee is in the middle of a given work task and must suddenly stop because he/she notices something that wasn’t properly approved or signed-off on. The mere presence of redundant work processes can force production employees to second guess decisions and work tasks. In a culture where everything requires a signature or sign-off, wasted time is no longer a minor issue, it’s a serious one!
- Empowered Production Employees are Proactive Employees
One of the most important reasons to use business process mapping to streamline manufacturing is to empower your employees. This makes them want to become more efficient and allows them to take charge. Eliminating redundant work processes and doing away with useless “approvals”, allows production employees to focus on being proactive, instead of reactive. Part of it involves training, but a large part of it involves removing those roadblocks.
One of the main causes of redundant work processes is the company’s culture. Typically, mistakes are made and a decision is then made to limit those mistakes as much as possible. So, companies decide that to accomplish this requires someone of higher authority to oversee or approve work tasks before they’re started. While mistakes are serious within manufacturing, sometimes they happen because of poor training. Regardless, this solution is short term and does nothing other than add idle time in manufacturing.
When you use business process mapping to map out your entire manufacturing work processes, you are better able to isolate those redundant, time consuming operations that do nothing more than add to your costs and upset your customers.
The above video explains how to use lean manufacturing principles when designing and laying out multiple work cells within work stations. It is taken from the article: Manufacturing Work Cell Optimization: Design, Layout and Analysis
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