Calculating manufacturing company productivity

How is the productivity of your manufacturing facility looking? Are you able to be productive and are your processes working in a manner where it is cost effective to your organization? You might think that your productivity level is great and everything is fine but if you don't have the actual documented information in front of you, it's hard to really know. You may have staff members that are wasting a lot of time because they are waiting on machines and other things. You could have a lot of wasted products as the machines tear them up thanks to faulty equipment or cheap raw materials. There are so many factors that lead into productivity that it is necessary for you to identify everything and understand how they all lead into the costs of the company.

Hours worked
The first cost to look at is the number of hours that your employees are working and the amount of product that is being produced in these hours. Get a good understanding of the actual hours the employees have worked so you can see how much time is being wasted. All the breaks that they take can really slow production but not just the 15 minute breaks, you need to add in bathroom breaks or time spent talking to co-workers and others. One employee that is scheduled to work 8 hours in the day is actually only working for at least 6 hours thanks to the number of breaks and down time that they have set in their day. Machines are the only things that work consistently but they still need humans to run them.

Determine your productivity rate
To calculate the rate you need to take the hours worked and also determine what the lost time is. Lost time will refer to all of the time when the floor is not running. This is when you have delays and problems that are causing work stoppage to occur. Power outages can cause this but you also have issues with other things such as faulty equipment or lazy employees. Find out all of the things that are leading to stoppages so that you will be able to track the lost time and really get a good understanding as to what is really going on.

What is a good productivity rate for a company to have? Most like to shoot for anything above 75% as this shows you are getting a good amount of work out of your employees. You need to watch out for lower rates as they will hurt the company and can lead to loss of income thanks to delays and other concerns. What you will need to do if you notice you have a lower productivity rate is to go back to the drawing board and look at all of the things that play a role in the company's productivity. This will be things like employees, faulty equipment, delivery delays, etc. As you are able to create this list, it's much easier to find ways to fix the problems before they start frustrating the customers and can lead to other issues for the company.

Often times manufacturing plants need to turn to alternative teaching methods and styles to help their employees learn how to work better. Behavior-based safety is one method that will aid in proper training procedures. This will allow your company to be able to identify multiple wastes and find a way to fix them. It helps employees to see that if they will change their working styles, they can contribute to a successful organization and will be able to stay safe.