Whether you’ve continued to manufacture or you’re ramping back up after COVID-19, you may find yourself with fewer people for any number of reasons:
- People out sick
- People not wanting to come to work
- Fewer people can work at one time for social distancing
- Layoffs you needed to do to live to fight another day
Whatever the reasons, fewer people mean less capacity. So how do you get MORE done with FEWER people so you can achieve pre-COVID-19 output with FEWER people?
Or maybe you have all your people, but you really need to ramp up because demand is increasing from the customers that previously cancelled or postponed orders. How do you get MORE done with the SAME people and resources?
If you find your shop needing to increase productivity NOW, read on …
First let me point out a few things that DON’T work but are nevertheless the first approach of most.
Increasing Job Shop Manufacturing Productivity – What Doesn’t Work!
- Lean does NOT work in Job Shops
- Investing in new Technology like ERP or scheduling module.
- Trying to detail schedule or adding even more detail to your schedule like trying to schedule when every job will be on every machine. (This is explained in the 47 minute How to Get More Jobs Done Faster and at the end, I tell you exactly what to do tomorrow to get started.)
- Value Stream Mapping (this is a Lean tool, so see above)
- Focus on Efficiency – run away screaming from anyone talking about efficiency! Seriously, it’s that bad.
I know that’s 3 articles to read (so far) and one 47 minute webinar to watch, but this is well worth your time if you need to increase productivity quickly. Increasing productivity in job shops is not easy, job shops are complex and there are a multitude of job shop scheduling challenges and problems that I’m sure you’re all to familiar with.
Increasing Job Shop Manufacturing Productivity – What DOES Work!
FLOW is key for job shop productivity and the biggest blockage to flow is work in process (WIP). Watch the webinar and read the 6 articles linked to here and you will be armed to start getting results quickly.
If you have questions or would like step by step guidance, that’s what we do in the Velocity Scheduling System (VSS) Coaching Program.
Most job shops start seeing improved flow in 2 to 5 weeks* depending mostly on how fast they action. VSS is an inexpensive online step by step go and do coaching program. It’s NOT a training program and you will only get results if you take action!
Before you can start, I need to make sure YOUR shop is a good it and give you an idea of how much improvement in productivity is likely. So, watch the webinar, then sign up for a free strategy session. The strategy session is necessary because the program has a 100% money back guarantee and I need to make sure your shop is a good fit. It takes about an hour for this evaluation and we do deep.
Increasing productivity is hard, no question. But it can be done quickly if you know what to do and it’s a big payoff. Hope is NOT a strategy that will get you there, improving flow is.
Bottom-line Benefits of Improving Productivity
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