Plugging the gap

A manufacturing business's people are its most expensive resource. So getting the most out of that resource makes obvious sense. Yet doing this isn't as simple as it sounds—as anyone familiar with manufacturing industry knows all too well. Ask any manufacturing manager, and the litany of challenges is all too familiar. Poor productivity. Sub-standard quality. Late orders. Cost over-runs. And so on. So what's the answer? According to Jeremy Harford, managing director at factory-floor human capital specialists Mestec, companies often make the mistake of trying to fix the wrong problem. "The issue isn't just poor performance," he argues. "It's variable performance—so while traditional solutions to factory floor issues can raise output levels, they also increase the variability. The result? Problems remain." As an example, he suggests considering someone performing a task—such as putting together a wiring harness, or building a sub-assembly. One person might perform it well, resulting in high-quality output and top-notch productivity. But the next person to perform the task isn't quite as skilled. It takes longer to carry it out, and the quality isn't quite as good. Multiply this across an entire factory, and the impact on cost, productivity and delivery reliability soon mounts up. So how should businesses eliminate this variability? The answer, fairly obviously, lies in upskilling the poorer—or more variable—performers. And according to conventional wisdom, says Harford, there are a range of ways to address this human capital challenge. "The problem is, they're for the most part fairly poor at the job," he argues. "Human resources skills management systems, for instance, work at the wrong level of granularity. Factory-floor skills matrices? They tend to be used as a tick-box scattergun, intent on putting everyone through training, irrespective of whether that training is needed or not. Supervisors' own informal black-book 'systems'? That's often how we got to where we are in the first place." And in any case, he adds, what all of these approaches fail to deliver is the Holy Grail of skills training: consistency. "They're a 'train and forget' solution," says Harford. "They're not clever enough to provide information on who might need remedial training, because of slow output rates, or due to problems with quality. Which, he explains, is where factory-floor terminals and Manufacturing Execution Systems come in. The problem? Most companies in the Manufacturing Execution System market offer solutions that are focused on boosting equipment performance—and not people performance. "You can't overlook the human dimension," he insists. "Yes, equipment productivity is important, but so is people performance, and people productivity. You can't discount the impact of people, and their respective skills and abilities. Yet this is precisely what many companies in the Manufacturing Execution System market do." Mestec's factory-floor terminals, he explains, are 'plug-compatible' with ERP systems, and provide a rich set of in-built analytics and dashboards to pinpoint variabilities in operator, cell, or shift performance—thereby highlighting opportunities to precisely target remedial measures. What's more, Mestec's solution can be implemented quickly. At Basingstoke-based cable assembly manufacturer GTK, for instance, the pilot cell was up and running within a week. "We weren't installing any software on site, or impacting our existing IT systems at all," says operations director Steve Robinson. "All that was required to integrate with Mestec was a single spreadsheet downloaded twice daily from our ERP system which automatically fed into Mestec. It really couldn't be simpler—and unlike our previous system, we soon found that our people trusted it, and found it intuitive to use." In short, stresses Harford, variabilities in output, quality and cost don't just get lost in the day-to-day bustle of the factory floor, but are intelligently used to drive factory-floor training. "We call it 'closing the circle': capturing and analysing the granular data that is necessary to know, operator by operator, how well tasks are being performed—from an output rate point of view, or a quality point of view, or a standard time or standard cost point of view," he sums up. "It really is a gap—and it's one that neither ERP systems, or Manufacturing Execution Systems, provide much help in filling. But at Mestec, we do." For further information, please visit www.mestec.net